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Jarec
Hireling
Joined: 09/23/2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 14
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| Posted: 09/30/2004 at 12:16am | IP Logged
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Are there any plans to release a tool to allow user art to be packaged as Dundjinni art sets rather than as individual PNG's. It would make it a lot easier to install large themed art sets this way.
Edited by Jarec on 09/30/2004 at 12:16am
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shadowchaser
Legend
Joined: 03/13/2004
Location: Germany
Posts: 421
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| Posted: 09/30/2004 at 12:48am | IP Logged
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The guys from Fluid will be doing the Userart Packaging themselves, or AFAIK ask some fans to do it.
They do not plan to release a tool that can make DJX files from PNG for obvious reasons:
If they were to, it would be way to easy to reverse-engeneer the coding process and thus you could simply 'steal' their protected artwork.
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Sometimes it seems like the only things that do make sense
are the things that happen to other people.
Marya 'The Books of Magic' No.12
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bakermail
Legend
Joined: 04/17/2004
Location: United States
Posts: 402
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| Posted: 09/30/2004 at 2:47am | IP Logged
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There are some very nice user art packs in beta now. 
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RPG design is a race between the GM designing a more idiot-proof adventure and the world creating more idiots...so far the world is winning...
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Philippe
Henchman
Joined: 08/27/2004
Location: France
Posts: 33
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| Posted: 09/30/2004 at 7:02am | IP Logged
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One thing that I would like, if possible (and that I feel is lacking very much from dundjinni), is a preview of the contents in a .pdf file for example.
To make my request more clear, one my my problems with the art .djx art packs is that it is fairly difficult to know what is in there. You need to open the preview pane and to go over it section by section to get ideas.
I don't have that problem with user art, as I simply open an explorer window and I can view thumbnails of all the art.
But if user art becomes packaged in .djx, I will lose that capability.
So what I would suggest is simply to paste thumbnails of the art and put them in a .pdf. That way you have a complete gallery of the available art and you can leaf through it easily.
I would of course suggest that fluid does the same for the official art packs. A relatively low quality pdf would preserve the original art but would be very useful in knowing all the possibilities.
Cheers,
Philippe
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slashdevnull
Djinni (Admin)
Joined: 04/15/2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2597
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| Posted: 09/30/2004 at 7:31am | IP Logged
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The way I might like to see it done (and as a moderator in the User Creations forums I might be able to arrange this) is to have a moderated forum thread dedicated to each User Art Pack where all of the PNG files are displayed, so that everyone can easily know what they're getting in each pack, before or after they download it.
Having User Art pack art available as .DJX isn't going to, as far as I know, make the original .PNGs unavailable.
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slashdevnull
Djinni (Admin)
Joined: 04/15/2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2597
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| Posted: 09/30/2004 at 7:40am | IP Logged
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Additional: The User Creations section of the forums currently has three sections, Maps (JPG and DJA files), Adventures (HTML and DJA files), and Objects and Textures (PNG files).
J.T. and Mindy, if this isn't what you were already planning, I suggest the creation of another section called User Art Packs (DJX files with installers), which is moderated (no user posts) with a formal format/structure to allow quick and easy browsing of User Art Pack content. I'm usually not a proponent of user read-only forums, but I think that implementing it this way would reduce the amount of browsing/searching that people will need to do in order to find exactly what they're looking for.
I'm willing to work on format/structure definition. Hopefully Darkness is with me on this. 
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jdale
Legend
Joined: 09/27/2004
Location: United States
Posts: 520
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| Posted: 09/30/2004 at 9:46am | IP Logged
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Since I'm a big fan of the PNG format (easy to modify, easy to browse in Windows Explorer), I want to also suggest that you can easily create a zip file which contains a directory structure. You could set it up to create a directory tree and put all the files (including ~properties files) in the correct directory. All the user would have to do is unzip it in the correct place (which could simply be the Dundjinni program folder). For example, in WinRAR you just have to create the zip with the setting "Store Relative Paths" and unzip without checking the "Extract without path names" box (unchecked by default).
You would still need to decide on a directory structure (but anyone who downloads all the art needs to do that anyway), but you wouldn't need to convert to DJX. You would gain the benefit of one step installation and everyone who uses the pack having the same art in the same places with the same filenames.
This is fairly standard for art distributed in the Poser community.
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Dundjinni Mapping Software - Forums : Feedback
Topic: Art packaging
