Tulunk Village

For what it’s worth, I would recommend PNG format over GIF for the actual images.

The problem is that transparency doesn't work properly with PNGs in IE 6 (they show up as light gray instead of transparent). And GIF has enough colors for items, given that the items only have four colors. Here's what happened when we used PNGs in the past:

http://z15.invisionfree.com/Tulunk_Village...p?showtopic=178

IIMarckus wrote: For what it’s worth, I would recommend PNG format over GIF for the actual images.

For what it’s worth, that is a very bad idea.

Gif is perfect for sprites since sprites have a limited number of colours. Gif supports everything from 1-bit to 8-bit with custom pallettes and is fully supported in all browsers, unlike png which had transparency display issues in IE up until IE7.

Though you could get around the transparency issue by exporting it as an "8-bit png" with "index transparency", but why bother when the better supported gif format could do the same thing with very little size difference and less hassle.

Look at any website's source code and search for png. You won't find much.

Blaziken257 wrote:The problem is that transparency doesn't work properly with PNGs in IE 6 (they show up as light gray instead of transparent).

This is true.

Blaziken257 wrote: And GIF has enough colors for items, given that the items only have four colors.

This is also true, but what about GBA sprites? They have a higher color depth, IIRC.

As for IE6, that browser is eight years old and antiquated. Do we really have to hold back the technically superior image format just because of the backwardness of one browser? Animations are another matter, where GIF really is the only practical solution; but for still images the answer should be obvious.


This is all a suggestion besides, and you don’t have to take me seriously (as if you would anyway )

Given that GIFs can hold up to 256 colors, that's more than enough even for a GBA sprite. A sprite can only have 16 colors (including transparency), so 256 is way more than enough. Screenshots, though, are another story, because I think it can potentially have 512 colors. Please correct me if I'm wrong, though.

And according to this, IE 6 still has a 18.36% usage share, which is quite a bit. I'd understand if was something like 1%, but 18.36% is still a considerable amount, so using PNGs will still frustrate some people. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if there were people on this board that still use it. In the future, though, PNGs will be more desirable, because less and less people will use IE 6.

Your comment about GBA sprites leads me to assume that you know very little about gif format images and your assumption that gif is meant as a format for animation manages to back it up. Static gif images are far more commonly used than animated gif files. In fact the animated gif images would seem rare when compared to static gif images. There are 34 different gif images on this page so far, and only 2 are animated.

Png is a good format for web as long as you use it for images that lack transparency.

IIMarckus, trust me on this. I do web design/development for a living.

Oh and when you say IE6, you don't mean this program that just happens to be on my computer do you? Lots of people prefer XP over Vista, guess what comes installed on XP?

andwhyisit, please stop being so combative. The “you don’t know what you’re talking about” stuff is unbecoming of you. I never stated that GIF is meant to be an animation format. I said that it is most practical as an image format for animations, because PNG is a superior format for still images. PNG supports alpha transparency and has a higher color depth than GIF. However, it is true that neither of these is needed in the case of GBC sprites.


Blaziken257, thanks for your reply. If you think that supporting IE6 is important, then feel free to use GIF for sprites. I still think PNG is a good solution, but again I was just suggesting it.

The wiki originally used pngs instead of gifs, but both Kimbles and I use IE6 as our main browsers, so we asked to have them changed to gifs.

So, it's not as obscure and outdated as you might think.

DeKaFu wrote: The wiki originally used pngs instead of gifs, but both Kimbles and I use IE6 as our main browsers, so we asked to have them changed to gifs.

So, it's not as obscure and outdated as you might think.

It definitely is outdated, you’re just behind the times

Anyway, after all the work we have done to convert to GIF, I really don't want to do the same thing for PNGs.... Just a point of information.