#TRILOBYE:FLC-PLAYER
24 messages in this thread
To:72330,3276
Concerning: Trilobyte SVGA FLICK & Groovie Player. Copyright 1991 Trilobyte,
all rights reserved.
Trilobyte
PO Box 1412
Jacksonville
Oregon, 97530
(503) 899 1113
Dear R.LANDEROS / ALL and Anyone with Info !!
*********************************************
Can you tell me if you still are supporting the PLAY program ?
.. And if so, where can I get a copy of this script player. Is it possible to
write a script for Play.exe without this script program? Rumour has it you are
no longer supporting the product. If this is true it is a shame.
*** I have a problem, when I have 2 .flc files I want to run, one after the
other, I use the -g option, which in theory is supposed to keep the screen in
graphics mode — But I see writing on the screen, it is very dim, but I can see
some message scrolling by between the flicks. The message is a full page long
approx. Perhaps I am doing something wrong, it keeps the graphics mode running,
but I do see a CGA mode message in the background. Thank you in advance.
Sincerely, Mark Schneider Montreal, Canada.
Mark,
I believe Trilobyte stopped supporting Play when their game, the 7th Guest,
hit it big. –dkm
thanks David, too bad!, I have tried you program, but if you erase the other
files the player alone doesn't work, — this is why trilobytes is good, it is
only 13k, and is a stand alone program, and has scripting abilities, and they
are very powerful. Even supposts tracks from Cd-Rom ! oh well, thanks! Mark
Mark,
Yes, I agree Trilobyte's play is great… which is why I included it with
both my books. –dkm
What is all this about Trilobyte's SVGA FLICK player? Is this
a programming library to play SVGA .FLC files? Is it available for
commercial use? Also, what books have you published — maybe I'll
pick them up <g>
Jesse,
Way back in the days before the 7th Guest, Trilobyte released a shareware
viewer for .FLI and .FLC files called PLAY. It was real quick and came in a
small .EXE file. They've stopped supporting it, sad to say, now that their
game business has taken off.
I've done two books: the first, which I wrote with Alexander Enzmann, is
called "Making Movies on Your PC", and it deals with creating ray-traced
animation using the Polyray renderer and DTA. The new one, which I did by
myself, is called "Morphing on Your PC" and is about (guess what?) 2d morphing.
–dkm
This is an extremely OLD product, by Trilobyte, they don't even
bother answering mail or messages to them. I've already sent them 3
messages, and I received NO response. The play.exe is a 13k PLAYER
for all AutoDesk .fli /.flc animations, and supports the highest
resolution format, 1024×768, or whatever it is, anyway, being on 13k,
it blows away AutoDesk's aaplayhi.exe, which is around 300k!, why
would you want to use a huge player like this, when you can use a 13k
player ??? and this player has very advanced scripting
capabilities. There is also a newer player from John Hinkley, that
loads the entire .flc into memory before playing it, which is very
nice. Trilobye stopped production on this player, from what I have
read on this forum. I think AutoDesk should have taken it from
there. Anyway, that is my 2 cents worth.
I modified the READFLIC code from Dr. Dobbs to read an entire flic into
memory, but I'm still not satisfied with the playback speed. And, I'm not sure
how to handle very large animations (that don't fit into memory). Is the code
for John Hinkley's player public domain — can it be licensed or anything like
that? I just need a more sophisticated example of how to play a .flc file than
the READFLIC code and play it fast. The READFLIC code was great, it really
helped me to understand the file format and everything — now I just need
something more…
Jesse
Hi Jesse,
Hopefully someone will jump in here, and help you, I do not know if the source
is available, and if so, where it may be found. This Dobbs,
what is this ? a magazine that shows source code for programs ?
is this available on CompuServe ?
very interesting,
anywy, best of luck for your search. I know the John Hinkley loads
pretty large animations totally into memory.
…
Also David K. Mason, is also working on a a player that does what you are
interested in. He just uploaded a new version, you may check this out. Leave
him a message, he is a member of this forum, and is very easy to talk to. He
knows his stuff. He creates lots of different programs. – Again, Good Luck –
The version of playflc, by Hinkley is shareware. Got it here on a local
Montreal BBS.
…
Mark Schneider,
Montreal, CAnada.
"This Dobbs, what is this ? a magazine that shows source code for programs ? is
this available on CompuServe?"
Dr. Dobb's Journal is a magazine which has a forum here on CompuServe: GO DDJ.
The March 1993 issue (I think!) had an article by Jim Kent, the main author of
Animator and its Flic files. Some of the code was posted in the GO DDJ forum;
it is now available here too.
File Info for FLIC.ZIP
Section: Autodesk Animator Contributer: 70421,76 Size: 37067
Submitted: 16-Feb-94 Type: Binary Accesses: 237
Title: The Flic File Format
Keys: FLIC FLI AUTODESK ANIMATOR ANIMATION KENT C READFLIC DDJ DOBBS
Complete system as described by Jim Kent in his article on the Flic file
format in the March 93 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal. This includes Listing
One and Listing Two referred to in the article. Flic files are a sequence
of still frames which can be flipped through to achieve the illusion of
movement. Uploaded by kind permission of Dr. Dobb's Journal.
(Approximate download time at 2400 bps using CIS B: 2:15)
Hi Nik,
thanks for all the info,
I'm wondering why someone would give away source code to a program, or is this
source code only for the way the .flc or .fli are written ?
I guess we are not talking about the actual source code for the program, but
rather it's OUTPUT files.
This would facilitate others making programs to play, view, edit the .flis ?
I'm not a coder, but it is interesting. I love learning new things.
Thanks again.
Mark Schneider
"source code to a program, or is this source code only for the way the .flc or
.fli"
Mark,
Good point – I realize I hadn't specified what source code I was referring to.
You are correct in assuming the source was for the flic format, so that others
could author their own player/conversion utilities.
Nik
Hi Nik,
thanks for the info on Dr. Dobbs!
I've captured the text.
Mark
Sorry to nose in, but we also have a new player that ships with our
Smacker flic compression product. The player and a sample flic can
be downloaded in this forum. Search for "SMACK" and download the
player and dino.smk.
Thanks, I'll check out the Smacker player <g>. I think I
missed the introduction of your product; what is smacker, what can it
do, and how much is it?
Well, it seems to be a nice product, it actually compresses .flc or
.fli files, but this of course also makes the animations more rough,
so it is a question of space, if you have the space, keep them
original, if you lack space, you can use smacker. Too bad, they
refuse to give out a shareware version. Mark
Thanks for filling Jesse in!
P.S. FYI, Smacker has a lossless setting that keeps the quality
perfect, but still beats PKZIP by 5%-10%.
Hi Jeff,
Really, a mode that still keeps the original, well this is something I didn't
know existed on this product. I believe the sample player and a few files are
in the forum, but not the actual program to do the compressing ?
thanks
Mark Schneider
Mark:
Correct, the complete player is available for downloading to use for
non-profit purposes. The complete Smacker product is only available from RAD.
Thanks,
->Jeff
Mark:
Yup, if you want perfect quality, Smacker can still get you at least as good,
or better than PKZIP. The really-high compression ratios need some loss,
though.
->Jeff
Smacker is a compressor and playback system for flic animations. It
can compress animations at several different settings – perfect,
minimum, moderate, maximum. The perfect quality is lossless – it
looks exact the same and will beat PKZIP by 5%-10%. On the opposite
end, the maximum setting will usually get 6-to-1 compressor (or about
four times smaller than PKZIP). The playback system has lots of
special options for developers and CD authors.
There's a press release in the libs that describes Smacker fully and I
can answer any specific questions.
Oh yeah, the compressor costs $295.00.
a lossless setting and save 40%-60% (a bit better than PKZIP)
Jeff,
Are there any plans to make a 16 bit creator/player or even a 24 bit
player? If so I would be very interested. Some animations can't be reduced to
256 colors even in rel 3. Thank you.
Richard Petersen
I've got a flic builder called DTA which can create (nonstandard)
15- and 24-bit animations, and a viewer called DFV which can play
them. DFV is in the lib here in ASOFT. The final release of the
version of DTA which can create the hicolor and truecolor flics isn't
online yet, but a beta is over in GRAPHDEV as DT21PB.ZIP.
Warning: these hicolor and truecolor flics can get pretty big, and
and won't run with the Autodesk viewers. –dkm
Yes, it won't be started on until after a Windows-Smacker, and a
DOS-Sound-Smacker, though. We will have a converter that will move
TGAs into a flic much sooner that though. I'm planning on the
converter being able to rotate colors through the palette on each
frame to up the apparent color depth.