Sadh's guide to deranged GIF-making.

[Sadhorizon]

Hello! Ever wanted to add some pretty GIFs to our wiki? But are the unknown random tools scary? With this guide, you will learn how to create a GIF without installing anything except for stuff you already should have - BYOND and MS paint.

I will immediately answer this question - yes, this method is dumb... but it works... so it's probably fine!

 

For purposes of this guide, I will try making a GIF that is swapping between those two mining gas masks.

1. First thing to do, let's double click the one on the left. This should open the file.

2. Once that is done, click the selection tool (top left) and select whole 32x32 sprite offers.

3. Copy it, and let's move to a real professional program - MS Paint!
4. Downsize the canvas as much as you can, then paste the file you just copied.

5. Now try changing it's size. Change to pixel tab, swap values to 64s, and confirm. This is because 64x64 images are our wiki's standard.

6. It should now be pretty and 64x64! Copy it all again.

7. Now, go to some folder, or your desktop, and make a new .txt file. This can be done by right clicking.

8. Change it's file type to .dmi. Make sure in your folder settings you have ticked the option to see those!

9. Open the .dmi file and change it's size to 64x64. This is in top right of the window.

10. With that done, create a new icon.

11. Paste our gas mask here.

12. Select the fill tool, and right click the grey area around the gas mask (you should have blank pixels selected as secondary color by default, if not, you can change it in bottom right). This should get rid of those pesky backgrounds!

13. At the bottom of the window, click in this spot to add a new frame.

14. Repeat steps 1-6 and 11-12 for second icon of our gas mask. This shouldn't take THAT long.

At this point, your editor should look something like this:

15. Now, let's adjust the GIF's speed. The underlined values represent just that. It is worth noting, they are shown in ticks.

1 tick = 0.1 seconds, in this case.

Let's change the value! I'll go with 10 ticks for every frame - this results in one second between each frame.

16. Now return to the main file by pressing the back arrow in bottom right.

17. Right click the icon you just made and press "export".

18. Save it as whatever you want, just make sure to select .GIF as the extension (at the bottom of the file browser)!

19. File is now ready to be uploaded to the wiki! You do it like with every other image.

 

Thank you for reading this extremely useful guide, and happy editing!

 

Edited November 23, 2023 by Sadhorizon

[Contra]

personally, I recommend https://www.piskelapp.com/, its a great open-source software that you can use in browser to edit gifs (even with transparency)