Why was sprite animation removed from LÖVE?

[Eamonn]

I was looking into the AnAL library, and I really like it. Apparently the functionality of this library WAS once in the LÖVE library. I think it was removed in LÖVE 0.6.0. Why was that? Did it conflict? I think it's very useful for games! I use it all the time!

So yeah, who was it removed?

[veethree]

I can't really answer the question, But i will say this, Does it really matter? We have AnAL don't we?

[Eamonn]

I can't really answer the question, But i will say this, Does it really matter? We have AnAL don't we?

We do, but it's the exact same as the feature, isn't it? It just puzzled me! I supposed no one but the developers can answer it, and what are the chances that they'd read this? Maybe someone knows! I wasn't around for 0.6.0 or anything, I only found out about LÖVE when it was in 0.8.0! Needless to say I'm excited for 0.9.0 and every other version after that! LÖVE's been going since 2008, right?

[veethree]

I can't really answer the question, But i will say this, Does it really matter? We have AnAL don't we?

We do, but it's the exact same as the feature, isn't it? It just puzzled me! I supposed no one but the developers can answer it, and what are the chances that they'd read this? Maybe someone knows! I wasn't around for 0.6.0 or anything, I only found out about LÖVE when it was in 0.8.0! Needless to say I'm excited for 0.9.0 and every other version after that! LÖVE's been going since 2008, right?

I believe the chances of the developers reading this aren't that low, Dudes like bartbes are on the forums quite frequently. I actually don't even know if he's a developer, but his name is green and he seems to know what's up so i just assume. I've only been around since 0.7.2 myself.

[Eamonn]

I can't really answer the question, But i will say this, Does it really matter? We have AnAL don't we?

We do, but it's the exact same as the feature, isn't it? It just puzzled me! I supposed no one but the developers can answer it, and what are the chances that they'd read this? Maybe someone knows! I wasn't around for 0.6.0 or anything, I only found out about LÖVE when it was in 0.8.0! Needless to say I'm excited for 0.9.0 and every other version after that! LÖVE's been going since 2008, right?

I believe the chances of the developers reading this aren't that low, Dudes like bartbes are on the forums quite frequently. I actually don't even know if he's a developer, but his name is green and he seems to know what's up so i just assume. I've only been around since 0.7.2 myself.

Wow! I thought Bartbes was just a cool guy with an awesome glowing name!! He actually manages AnAL and develops it!!

[NightKawata]

I would assume sprite animation was removed because there's no point to having that natively. It's incredibly easy to come up with sprite animation without libraries in general, so using a lib makes it even easier.
At least, that's my guess.

[bartbes]

Oops, I meant to reply to this, but forgot...

Anyway, it was removed with the introduction of Quads, along the lines of "you now have everything to make them yourself, make them yourself", and I, at the time, made a complete implementation of the old API, and named it AnAL. Do note that it has gone without changes for a long time, because the API still matches the old one, and I intend to keep it that way, that said, if it breaks, I intend to fix it.

One of the reasons love tends to follow this trend (of giving you the tools to make things, instead of the things itself) is because it means that people can make their own version according to their own needs, and if they don't want to make their own, there's probably a bunch of libraries for it already, from which you can pick the one you like most.

That said, wrt animations, it seems most people roll their own, but of course there's also kikito's anim8, which provides a completely different API (last I checked), which is exactly what this is all about!

[raidho36]

And all of the sudden this change have started to make perfect sense.

[jjmafiae]

Oops, I meant to reply to this, but forgot...

Anyway, it was removed with the introduction of Quads, along the lines of "you now have everything to make them yourself, make them yourself", and I, at the time, made a complete implementation of the old API, and named it AnAL. Do note that it has gone without changes for a long time, because the API still matches the old one, and I intend to keep it that way, that said, if it breaks, I intend to fix it.

One of the reasons love tends to follow this trend (of giving you the tools to make things, instead of the things itself) is because it means that people can make their own version according to their own needs, and if they don't want to make their own, there's probably a bunch of libraries for it already, from which you can pick the one you like most.

That said, wrt animations, it seems most people roll their own, but of course there's also kikito's anim8, which provides a completely different API (last I checked), which is exactly what this is all about!

yeah bartbes you are right, but i dos´nt even use libraries at all

[Lafolie]

Following one of bartbes' points, not including this system (which, as stated, is pretty easy to implement) is actually quite flavourful. Lua itself follows the same paradigm and Löve embraces this too.

I also feel that having to create such a system yourself is a good exercise. Animation is such a core element of computer games, and having it done for you so you never learn how to actually make it, well, that's pretty lame. I anticipate "but what about particle systems?!". These are better handled outside of Lua, and they're basically just animations with 'entity' attributes, so if you can write animated game entities then you pretty much get a priory on how particles work.

But yeah, having quads and batches is useful and allows for more löveliness factor. Some of the animation APIs have really interesting workings, such as Kikito's way of giving arguments when defining the animations.