I'm not sure why I never cross-posted this here from omnimaga, but I have been thinking about doing this project for a while.

I was thinking that it would be cool to have a web tool that would allow artists to upload sprites in png form with a name and possibly tags, and then the server-side software would convert it to SourceCode-style sprites, and upload it to the server. Programmers could then search the site for sprites that they need, and have the sprite data ready to copy and paste into their programs.

My idea is to have a one stop calc sprite database. The homepage would have a searchbar, and popular sprites below it. The search bar would be a live search, so that as you type the sprites are filtered.

When you click on a sprite, it takes you to a page with the sprites description, other sprites by the same author, and all the supported formats for the sprite, ready to copy/paste into your code.

This makes it easy both for artists and programmers. The programmers simply search for what they need, and the copy/paste the code. Artists only need to upload an image, and it is automatically converted to the various sprite formats.

I may also make a sprite requests section.



Please post any feedback, and I may be asking for volunteers to help me with this in the future, so if you would like to join the programming team let me know.

Sounds like a good idea, I don't think I could help out very much as I have some knowledge on Html5, css and jQuery, but not a ton. But good luck with this! Sounds pretty nifty. If you need help on designing the webpage, I guess I could help.

I don't have the time to direct contribute code to the project, but I'll definitely do what I can in terms of helping out from this thread. Good luck, and I hope it becomes a popular resource. If it becomes sufficiently popular and feature-complete, I might consider an API to send sprites directly from SourceCoder to Open Sprite Library.

i have an ok knowledge of php i would be more than happy to help. I'm not great with css but I can indeed use it. I would love to help with this project.

EDIT: I think you should add something though, which by the way i would be happy to program. This would be a simple piece of software that could be used to draw sprites and directly upload them to the server.

Sounds good!

I'll let you know when I need volunteers.

EDIT:


I was planning on implementing that, although I was actually going to ask deep thought if his sprite drawing program on ClrHome could be used in the project.


EDIT2:

Does anyone have PHP code on hand to convert 24-bit color to 16-bit?

Here's how you convert 8-8-8 (24-bit RGB) pixels to 6-5-6 (16-bit RGB):

Inputs: $r, $g, $b
Output: $p

Code:


Hope this helps (and that I didn't make a mistake there).

Huh, if you ever want to do sprite editing on the site, I have the code for SpC (SpriteCoder) which still is intended for SC3, but it is completely modular and can be thrown into a site for editing various types of image formats. I will need to eventually finish it

Oh yeah, I need to nag you to work on that, and I need to clear away all my pending TI-84+CSE projects so that I can get back to SourceCoder 3 (assuming people think it's worth my while to work on it). I meant to suggest to FlyingFisch that your sprite editor might be useful to him in some way.

AHelper: I may end up needing that, so code on, my friend!

why does this SQL code throw an error instead of creating a table?


Code:


I have determined that there is something wrong with CURDATE(), but I got that line from a w3schools tutorial so I think it should work?

OK, fixed the problem in my last post, had to do with a MySQL idiosyncrasy.

Should I use OpenID for the login system, or should I implement one myself?

My personal preference is to dislike third-party authentication systems, as they force people to have an account under those services. I feel like there are practically as many of those services as there are websites with their own authentication mechanisms, so I vote you just implement something yourself. It will be a good learning experience for you, too. Just be sure to salt your hashes!

Yeah, I have done login systems before, I was just wondering if it would be more convenient for users to be able to login with google or facebook.

Doing a login with both OpenID and have your own with the ability to link them if times change. IIRC, sourceforge did that, and I much prefer to use OpenID.

OK, the login system is implemented, and the url is now http://osl.cemetech.net (thanks Kerm!).

Todo:
- Comment system
- Custom search engine
- Most of the front-end
- Adding more sprite formats than luazm and Prizm C 16 Bit


If you want to try out the site, that's fine, just be aware that it is currently in an alpha state, and the database may be reset at any time.

Register: http://osl.cemetech.net/login.php
Upload Sprites: http://osl.cemetech.net/uploadsprite.php
Test Page (check this out for sneak peaks on what I am currently working on ): http://osl.cemetech.net/test.php
Login: http://osl.cemetech.net/login.php
View uploaded sprites: http://osl.cemetech.net/viewsprite.php?id=<sprite id> (try 1 and 2, when more sprites are uploaded, try others. It does not fail very gracefully though.)

Have to work on comments, need to make more sprite generators. Besides that, this project is almost finished. Please report bugs!

I am thinking of making an API so that other sites can integrate with OSL, what kind of functions would you like? I was thinking one that would return an XML of all search results given a query would be good, let me know.

Does a "400 Bad Request" error count as a bug?

Yes, where do you get it?

Have you done any security verification of your registration and login system yet? If not, I'd be happy to do the honors later. Keep up the good work; you're making swift progress here. Also, on the API question, I think the option you present sounds reasonable.

Each of the links in your post seems to throw that error

I have not checked to make sure everything is up tight and secure yet, if you want to do that I would appreciate it. But I am pretty sure everything is fine.

EDIT:

Xeda: i am not getting any 400 bad requests... If you are, that's weird...

does this give you a 400 bad request? osl.cemetech.net