Today saw me redesigning the animation interface for the third time, mainly because the layout wasn't entirely user friendly. The one disadvantage of making a mockup in PhotoShop is that you focus on the look rather than the feel - only when this is translated into Blitz can I actually get a good idea of how it works in practise.
As I'd added some extra buttons, I tweaked the setup code as well as the button detection code to make the whole shebang a little easier for me to get my head around.
Next came the addition of the speed controls, as my animations currently run every vblank (i.e. 70-80 times a second, depending on the monitor refresh rate). The speed control is basically a delay, and counts down to zero before animating the tile; although this isn't everyone's idea of how speed should be implemented, the exported data will be flexible enough to translate into most environments.
Next came the text labels, which show the user key details (current frame number, total number of frames, animation number, tile number, etc.). This always seems like a more arduous task than it actually is, but really helps to bring the Editor to life.
Rounded off the night by adding the import function - this allows the user to import the range of tiles between the current Left Tile and Right Tile selectors, and is a very simple way to generate an animation sequence.
