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D
dyamanoha@gmail.com
Participant
September 20, 2017
Answered

Suggestions on how to improve game asset content pipeline?

  • September 20, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 705 views

I'm working on a game that's built on Adobe AIR and Stage3D. Right now preparing content from Animate is a multistep process that requires

  1. specific naming conventions between symbols and linkage

  2. exporting a swf

  3. exporting a sprite sheet

  4. modifying game data files that bundle the exported assets together with game specific properties

Each of these stages are opportunities for human error and should be automatable. I'm looking for some guidance/advice from other developers on how to build this automation.

Ideally, I'd like to

  1. Embed an engine preview rendering window within Adobe Animate so assets can be viewed and parameterized against engine shaders.

  2. Add a custom export menu that validates assets and bundles everything in one step

Other possible solutions could include things like... streaming data to a running engine instance for preview, processing an FLA into engine assets...

Questions:

Has anyone had success extending Animate to solve this type of problem?

Would Extension Builder 3 provide the tooling to build these features into Animate?

* If yes, how well supported is Extension Builder 3 in the latest versions of Animate?

* If no, are there SDKs for loading FLA content (similar to .fbx libraries)?

Thanks ahead of time!

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer zwetan_uk

If possible put as much as you can into command-line builds

for example:

instead of generating a SWF, generate a SWC and then reference the SWC and its inner symbol in AS3 code

use case:
you can have 1 personn that just produce the SWC and save it into svn/git etc.
another person that build the whole project from command-line can just "svn up" or "git pull" to refresh the assets

now the real meat to automate assets is to use JSFL
in short most Adobe products have a JS DOM that you can program in JS

see those ref

Automating tasks with the Commands menu

Flash Extending Reference (PDF)

markknol/flash-jsfl-tools on Github

those can allow to automate some stuff but there is no UI

to have a UI to your extensions yeah install Extension Builder 3
and follow Creating an HTML extension

look at jiborobot/pixi-animate-extension on Github
for an example of somewhate advanced extension

2 replies

A
ASWC
Inspiring
September 25, 2017

When I worked with animate/flash cc (6/7 years ago) I used to have a jsfl exporting on the fly my stuff and a little AIR app that would load them and preview them automatically, note I do remember (at least then) using jsfl to export your srpitesheets was tricky and buggy but the rest was fine. Overall jsfl is the easiest and fastest way to do what you need, sure you can develop extensions but I've done that as well but it requires a lot more developing time.

D
dyamanoha@gmail.comAuthor
Participant
September 30, 2017

ASWC, that's exactly the route I ended up going. Getting sprite sheets exported was trivial (perhaps the experience has improved). So far I'm thrilled with the tooling Adobe provides for content pipeline development. For those that are curious, once you've collected up all your SymbolItem references, this is the code snippet that exports them into an Atlas.

var spriteSheetExporter = new SpriteSheetExporter();

var format = {"format": "png", "bitDepth": 32, backgroundColor:"#00000000"}

spriteSheetExporter.layoutFormat = "Starling";

for each(var symbol in atlases[atlas])

{

spriteSheetExporter.addSymbol(symbol);

}

spriteSheetExporter.exportSpriteSheet(atlasDir + "/frames", format);

Z
zwetan_ukCorrect answer
Inspiring
September 23, 2017

If possible put as much as you can into command-line builds

for example:

instead of generating a SWF, generate a SWC and then reference the SWC and its inner symbol in AS3 code

use case:
you can have 1 personn that just produce the SWC and save it into svn/git etc.
another person that build the whole project from command-line can just "svn up" or "git pull" to refresh the assets

now the real meat to automate assets is to use JSFL
in short most Adobe products have a JS DOM that you can program in JS

see those ref

Automating tasks with the Commands menu

Flash Extending Reference (PDF)

markknol/flash-jsfl-tools on Github

those can allow to automate some stuff but there is no UI

to have a UI to your extensions yeah install Extension Builder 3
and follow Creating an HTML extension

look at jiborobot/pixi-animate-extension on Github
for an example of somewhate advanced extension

D
dyamanoha@gmail.comAuthor
Participant
September 30, 2017

JSFL was exactly what I needed. I decided to take a clue from Unity and Unreal and just reload assets into my game engine on the fly (thankfully the engine was abstracted enough to make this possible). Thanks a ton for pointing me towards the scripting and command solution.

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