Hello,
I am looking for a manual organisation of my sprite.
There are already many poor man’s solutions dated from 2006 and earlier.
Since that time is there some better solution to just point and click to swap sprite?
Cheers
For what reason do you need to control the location of the sprites? The entire idea for using Texture Packer is that it automates the otherwise arduous process.
I understand the point of texture packer: to create very useful sprite sheets and improve memory usage.
However there are many reasons, the first one is to simplify the use tile mapper editors and autofill options. (e.g.Tiled software)
For this reason some sprite sheets are given like a squared shape as following: https://forums.unrealengine.com/filedata/fetch?id=1186781&d=1467070527 and it makes life easier. The texture packer software helps me to organize 300 sprites, but some sorts appear to be very random and I have 10-20 tile fields to sort. So when sprites are split in a smart way I basically can’t find my elements very easily.
Additionally, some sprites are very similar to other because of color.
After 3y investigation I would have except something might have been done
cf. https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/61673-need-help-arranging-my-tiles-in-a-logical-way-everything-lays-out-sort-of-randomly/) I hoped someone would have managed to get something functional as it does not remove the main feature of texture packer but give some additional features.
I think it is not very difficult, but in some cases this manual sort might be for some users very useful. For big sprite sheets I understand the point of memory gain, but for small sheets it is sometime also good to keep it simple
Cheers !
Just to add to @spyric it doesn’t get any more simple than sprite sheets. You open the sprite sheet project, add the new image (or update one), save the project, click a button and texturepacker spits out the files to correct location. Then create a helper class that returns an image object based on a name. I was hesitant at first but even with 10 images it makes life so much easier.
The reason why nothing has been done is basically because nothing really needs to be done. For game engines, it doesn’t matter in which order the assets are visually because game engines locate the sprites through the associated definitions file. Since TexturePacker will list the assets in alphabetical order, you could name the images in a way that they’ll always be in a specific order.
A bit disappointing for a not-free software but ok, thanks for the answer
I generally do not post often. This is my first post here, and I am posting here to ask you to reconsider this.
It would have saved me quite some time today if simple mouse-based re-ordering would have been possible in TexturePacker Pro. Today I had to hand over a fairly large tilemap to the developer of a game we are working on. The code by the developer (who uses Godot) required the various types of tiles to be grouped in specific locations for automatic randomized level generation.
Renaming all of 128 tiles to match the requirements took a whole day, including fixing mistakes. It is just too much work and very cumbersome to be renaming that many tiles. And it is not possible in Godot to re-arrange tiles easily, so the only option left was to manually rename most tile graphics, and then re-import for testing. It took a long time and takes the fun out of a job that TexturePacker is supposed to be automating and simplifying for me.
If TexturePacker would have allowed me to drag and drop tiles in the visual editor to re-arrange them as required, including an option to shift and ctrl multiple-select tiles I could have finished the job in a few minutes tops.
I think it is important to point out that game artists often have no control over how the code interprets spritesheets. I was asked to deliver the tilemap sheet in a very specific format and arrangement, and TexturePacker wasn’t helpful at all in this case.
And I have more of these tilemap sheets to generate in the upcoming weeks and months. Sigh. Not looking forward to those at all.
Anyway, TexturePacker prides itself in claiming to be one of the best sprite generation tools. Yet, not for this job. It’s great in all other respects - just simple manual re-ordering is missing to cater for these use cases.
Please reconsider your position. Game engines may not care in which order assets are arranged in a spritesheet/tilemap, but unfortunately the way developers implement their code may very well require a tightly controlled order. And TexturePacker could make life in these cases SO much simpler, instead of making it more difficult by allowing to quickly reorder tiles visually.
Or just a very simple option to drag the order of sprites in the left panel. That should be relatively simple and quick to implement.
Thanks.
Hi @wfteuling and welcome to the Corona community forums.
I have a feeling you’re asking a question in the wrong place. This forum is for people using Corona to build apps who use TexturePacker as part of their tool set. It is not a forum to reach out to the TexturePacker creators. As such feature requests like this are very likely to go unnoticed.
I would suggest that you reach out to the makers directly with your question.
Rob
Isnt this unnecessary? The files would be in alphabetical list in any case or they are referenced by their key, so no matter how much shifting is done in app, the game engines will always find the right ones
I made an account just to agree with this post and express my frustration that this functionality isn’t in a program this expensive.
I use Tiled Map Editor, a program in which you can assign tiles to lay out 2D terrain shapes with correct edges and corners automatically. This is a CRUCIAL part of many people’s workflows to build 2D levels quickly and efficiently.
It is absolutely ridiculous that I can’t manually change the position of a sprite on my tileset in TexturePacker. For this price, I should be able to drag and drop things to be located where I need them, constrained to the grid. Yet for some reason I can’t. Why not??
These are forums for the Solar2D game engine. Solar2D is in no way affiliated with TexturePacker.
From the sound of it, you are looking for TexturePacker’s forums/support page.
Answering on the point, I agree with you.
Additionally I stopped using TexturePacker, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Best,