I am creating the "perfect" sprite packer. This is a sprite packer that makes sure the output sprite is compatible with most if not all game engines and animation software. It is a program that merges images into a horizontal sprite sheet.
It converts (if needed) the source frames to BMP in memory
It considers the top-left pixel fully transparent for the entire image (can be configured)
It parses the frames each individually to find the real coordinates rect (where the actual frame starts, ends, its width and height (sometimes images may have a lot of extra transparent pixels).
It determines the frame box, which have the width and height of the frame with the largest width/height so that it is long enough to contain every frame. (For extra compatibility, every frame must have the same dimensions).
Creates output sprite with width of nFrames * wFrameBox
The problem is - anchor alignment. Currently, it tries to align each frame so that its center is on the frame box center.
if((wBox / 2) > (frame->realCoordinates.w / 2))
{
xpos = xBoxOffset + ((wBox / 2) - (frame->realCoordinates.w / 2));
}
else
{
xpos = xBoxOffset + ((frame->realCoordinates.w / 2) - (wBox / 2));
}
When animated, it looks better with it, but there is still this inconsistent horizontal frame position so that a walking animation looks like walking and shaking.
I also tried the following:
store the real x pixel position of the widest frame and use it as a reference point:
xpos = xBoxOffset + (frame->realCoordinates.x - xRef);
It also gives a little better results, showing that this is still not the correct algorithm.
Honestly, I don't know what am I doing.
What will be the correct way to align sprite frames (obtain the appropriate x position for drawing the next frame) given that the output sprite sheet have width of the number of frames multiplied by the width of the widest frame?