Hollywood forums

There is now a Kickstarter campaign for BASIS:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/145 ... y_launched

more about that in a bit, but my previous showcase game "Clone Pacman faces the Dragon" was using unreleased plugin for Hollywood.


This plugin was making it possible to use characters created with BASIS on hollywood.

What advantage does this give to us Hollywood programmers? Well, it is like Spriter, except it works in Hollywood.

Idea is that instead of making your characters from just one picture and drawing say 5 different pictures of character walking, 3 for hitting etc. You are making up your character from pieces. Similar to older Beat Em Up games, legs, hands etc. were all separate graphics and handled by the code to form the whole character. This is what Basis does, except it does it much more sophisticated than those old 2D Beat em Up games since Basis will for example do so that you make posture of the guy sitting, standing and hitting, then Basis plugin will take care that if you move from any of those 3 to any other 2, it will automatically make calculations to move all the joints naturally to that next position with the speed that you wish.

Instead of making one animation sequence from sitting to standing, and another one from sitting to hitting, you just have one sitting, one standing and one hitting position, and then you can move freely from each of these to any other one. And there can naturally be endless amount of these positions.

And theres much more in BASIS, but this was just to give brief idea what it is about.


You can see example of BASIS in work on that example game of mine:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/337 ... 22aos3.zip
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/337 ... 22aos4.zip
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/337 ... 2linux.zip
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/337 ... orphos.zip
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/337 ... indows.zip

Except for Linux version, I have compiled these examples with Hollywood5.3, and autoscale bug should be removed from them now and hence they should work.

Except for Amiga OS 4 version which probably isnt working yet. I was talking with Scott and he plans to get his hands on Amiga OS 4 plug-in in couple of days.


I am sure you will see the benefit that this plugin gives to us Hollywood programmers and hence I am telling you about BASIS Kickstarter.

Scott Williams, the creator of BASIS doesnt have any background on Amiga, and only reason he knows about Hollywood is because I showed interest to his BASIS program in early stages already, and feeling encouraged by that, he wanted to make plug-ins for Hollywood.

He have now released first public release of Basis that you can get from: http://achild.wikidot.com/basis

Example binaries include Hollywood plugins as well, although notice that the whole program is still on early stages, and for example Amiga OS 4 plugin is currently not yet working. Notice also that while BASIS files work with Hollywood with BASIS plugins, the program itself (that you use to create the characters with) works with windows only.


He is planning to make BASIS the way he is currently making it regardless if kickstarter succeeds or fails, but main difference with succesful kickstarter campaign would be the development speed. he is hoping to be able to concentrate on developing BASIS forward full time for some time making years shrink into months perhaps?, but that is dependant upon kickstarter campaign, since hes plan is to release the BASIS itself for free (like he already just did).

Spread the word about this, and lets get him some funds so he hopefully keeps supporting Hollywood for us.

Thanks Bugala!

Yes we've released Basis, and we need your help to keep it going! There are implementations in SDL, SFML, Allegro, and even libogc on the Wii! But the first implementation we ever created was for Hollywood. Andreas was very helpful when I had questions about the plugin system, and learning to (begin to) use the Amiga was very neat! Learning Lua for the first time was cool too! Hollywood really is fantastic... I know not of any other cross compiler that makes native binaries on so many systems like this, to tell you the truth.

Anyway, feel free to check out Basis, and check out the Hollywood plugins created for it. The source code for the plugins is included in the demos package. It can all be found starting at this kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/145 ... ers/report

I will ask Andreas about putting the plugins on the front page with source code, to show more support for Hollywood. Anyway, thanks guys!

Wanting to try this baby but with no time. Lets hope this weekebd. Thanks for the support.

Hi guys! This has nothing to do with the (massively failed) kickstarter, but I didn't want to start yet another basis thread. First, thanks to all who supported us! We will probably try one more time in the near future after correcting a couple things that we feel may have been an issue.

The reason i am really posting though, is because we are trying very hard to get OS4 support working now. We really need to get this resolved so we can continue moving forward, confident OS4 will be supported in the future. Will someone please try this example build? It is new. If you don't trust it for any reason, source code is included for everything, but it is perfectly safe

Thanks to anyone who can try this os4 build of the plugin + hollywood example!
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3330000/TestOs4.zip

@Bugala:
Have you any info on what happened with Basis?

Even the basis2d.com is vanished.
The last beta was quite useable state, but unfortunately the Hollywood plugin did not reached a stable state AFAIK.

The program or plugin will has version for MorphOS and Windows or only for AmigaOS4?

Basis is/was a windows only prog, but as someone sponsored (maybe Bugala?) a Hollywood plugin to use the Basis datafiles, it could be good for every Hollywood script.

However the story did begun way before Andreas released the plugin docs, maybe this was the reason why we have not got any stable plugins for Basis.

I asked it because after the failed Kickstarter attempt there is silence around this project, which is sad.

Now that you reminded me, I have been planning to write the author about BASIS to ask what is his mind about it right now.

It was less than year ago that he was feeling like he had to think about BASIS for a while. The point was that he felt he had put a lot to it, and hadnt really received much from it. And although it did concretely mean money, as in, if he is going to concentrate on it as much as he was wishing and feeling it to be necessary, then it couldnt be just a side hobby project but he would also need to receive some income from it since he has to support his family one way or other, and future prospects didnt seem very good yet from his point of view. But also in addition to receiving money he also hadnt received much attention to BASIS, that except for couple of very interested ones, like me, BASIS hadnt really gained much interest.


The latest state of BASIS as far as i know:

First of all, the actual BASIS program, which was used to make those skeleton animation things to be used, was only available for windows, and there was no other plan for it to be otherwise at that point at least yet.

But possiblity to use those BASIS skeletons were to much more many, including to Hollywood. However, the bigger problem is, that as lazi already pointed out, the plugin was made way before Andreas released the plugin docs and the new plugin system. therefore as far as i have understood from Andreas talks regarding difference between new and old plug in system, BASIS plugin shouldnt work with version 6 at all, that only way to have it work, is to use Hollywood version 5.

Another big problem is/was, that in addition to that, he never was able to get that plugin to work with AOS4, he meant to fix it, but other things came first, and then came the thought of what to do with the BASIS at all.


Those were the bad news.

Good news (at least if we remain optimistic) is, that first of all he did develop BASIS, i would say, even much further than what it was when the plugins were made. I already forgot what those differences were, but i do remember thinking them being quite significant, at least to my own use. And these significant were in addition to lots of small things.

All in all, even in its current version, it is more than useful, you could compare it to having to stick to Hollywood 5 instead of 6. Sure, knowing how much more hollywood 6 is, it would be a shame - but Hollywood 5 or no Hollywood at all? Give me 5 any day!

reason why i think these to be good is, that when he made those original plugins, except for the AOS4 part, they were pretty easy and quick for him to make, and for this reason I believe, that unless he have completely decided to burn anything BASIS related from his mind forever, he could well be willing to make up to date plugins of the most current BASIS for Hollywood 6 at max for a small fee only.

Since I am very much counting on using BASIS plugin for my next game project after the latest one is done, I have been planning to contact him about it. And now that you reminded me about it, I will do it now. Thanks for reminding me.

@Bugala:

Thanks for your post.
Please let us know if you got some news from author of Basis.

Anyway even the old version of Basis can not be reachable anymore on the web AFAIK.

I think he could count on that we can support him with some money for a working Hollywood plugin.

Bye!
Lazi

Heres a bit of update.

I have received answer from him. Once again, bad and good news both.

Bad thing is, that as probably expected by website having disappeared, he havent developed BASIS any further at all (but last version is much further than last plugins were). However, good thing is, it seemed to me from hes answer that it is not that he wouldnt be interested in continuing, actually seemed to me quite the contrary even, it is just that real life is such to him right now, that he has to concentrate on things that actually make money, and as the income from BASIS seemed uncertain, he simply couldnt afford to work on it in hes current state of life.

He even mentioned that he has couple of big improvements to the basis in mind, but which obviously wont happen unless he picks BASIS again first.

He estimated it would take 2 - 4 weeks (i suppose of full time work) to make the plugins for Hollywood. If we pay to him enough wage, it seems he is (more than?) willing to do it. I already sent him another message and started talking about the price more specifically, it might take some time as i mentioned him that I would probably need to time the payment a bit, and hence there isnt hurry with the answer, therefore he is probably thinking what would be the price that he could afford to work for the plugins the necessary time.

All in all, looks like there is a good chance we will get the plugins eventually, perhaps it even sparks hes interest to the BASIS enough again that he makes time to continue its development.