0-100% is what Photoshop uses. Blech.

Topkasa wrote:

For graphic design, it makes sense since it's rather intuitive. In games, 0-255 makes more sense as that matches the numeric range it spans.

Why is it intuitive to use the exact color range and obfuscate alpha levels? I can understand using it for opacity, but to never let you directly set the alpha level in a program as powerful as Photoshop is incredibly unintuitive.

But that's what is used for all three of the other channels.

Ter13 wrote:

0.0 to 1.0 is the only other valid option. 0 to 100 is... a needless abstraction.

I figured either 0 to 255 or 0 to 1 made the most sense, which is why I sought opinions on which would be better. 255 seemed like a natural choice given that so many BYOND games already work with this scale for colors when handling icons. Asking for feedback confirmed that more developers found the 0 to 255 scale natural. On top of that, the 0 to 1 scale would introduce rounding errors, as people might try things like setting alpha=0.5 and wondering why it's actually fractionally higher (since internally, it'd become 128).

Technically of course, any scale is an abstraction, the raw value just as much as going with 0 to 1 or 0 to 100.

Ter13 wrote:

Both are clearly abstractions, yes, I agree, but the 0 to 100 is just a little bit less sensible as it's just a little bit harder to work with. Not... much, but still. Sensibility came to bear, and the right choice was made, despite my initial support of 0.0 to 1.0, which I later withdrew and supported 0 to 255 range.

Obviously, I'm happy with the 0-255 (for reasons I stated in Lummox's original discussion thread on this aspect), but between the other two options, here is how I see it (just for the sake of conversation):

To me, 0-100 makes much more sense than 0.0-1.0. But that's because my brain has never made the full switch into "programmer". I still retain a great deal of "layman" thought processes.

And in that mindset, it's much more intuitive to me to think of it in terms of 0-100 percentages, rather than a sort of "shades between fully Off (0) and fully On (1)" That sort of thinking is just not "normal" outside of the world of programming/computing.

It's much simpler to think "I want a slightly more than half-opaque icon." and decide on 60% rather than 0.6.

Obviously, they are completely equivalent scales, just shifted a couple of decimal places. But my brain is trained to think in terms of percentages.

But again, 0-255 is better than both, so I think we ended up with the right one!

[Edit:] Which is a seemingly contradictory thing for me to say, I know...lol To say on one hand that 0-100 is better because it makes more sense based on outside-of-programming usage/experience, but then to say that 0-255 scale (which is even more programming/computer-land specific) is better than that... I can't really explain that contradiction, other than to offer up that 0-255 is how the other three channels are usually handled (not just BYOND, but elsewhere where RGB comes into play), so in this specific use, it is something I'm now used to working with.

Warlord Fred wrote:

So what's new with the visuals? How are the new transformations an improvement over the old icon procs like Scale(), Turn(), Blend(), and rgb()?

http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=1376026

Yeah, it's a big improvement in that you're no longer required to generate huge icon files (or many small ones, which is way worse) to show rotations, and animation can be done on the fly by the cilent, which can take a crapload of work off the server when it comes to special effects.

ZephyreSyx wrote:

meh..

It's alright. You can still generate huge icon files for rotations if you really want to.

It's fine; either he doesn't see the significance of the update or doesn't think it's relevant to his games or the games he plays. I would beg to disagree, but he's entitled to his opinion.

Myself, I can't wait to see what games make of these new features. The "Breaking in animate()" thread is like a candy kitchen right now, showcasing all kinds of goodies.

ABOUT TIME.!