I've only just gotten used to making beatmaps, and I wanna try my hand at storyboarding now. Of course, this is me, and I always have issues with technical stuff.

I've read through the FAQ and stuff and also searched the forum a tiny bit for tutorials, but some things remain unclear.

Checklist:
- I put all my elements into a folder called SB in the songs folder. That seems to help a bit.
- I understand how to use the commands, create keyframes, etc. Pretty simple stuff for me.
- I have, of course, already searched out the interwebz for a solution to my problem, but I'm never that lucky. X'D

Problems:
Everything would be just peachy for my SB if not for a few things I don't seem to be understanding.
- When I go into the sprite database and select an image, only SOMETIMES does it appear on-screen. Most of the time it just puts a bit of text with the image's filename. If I try to click it, it gets unselected. I can re-select it by clicking on its name in the Layers area. I never actually SEE the image, but on those rare occasions when it decides it wants me to see it, I can manipulate it just the way one would expect.
- I want the screen to start off totally black. Do I have to have a large image that is just black, or can I manipulate this some other way?
For instance, I currently have a 800x600 (or whatever the limit was) image file that is nothing but black. I have that cover the background image before the song starts. However, it disappears once the keyframe ends. Do I have to make the keyframe extend ALLLL the way to where I want the blackness to fade into the background image, or is there a way to keep it there and then assign a command later? (Sorry if that entire description was unclear; I wasn't sure how to describe it)
-Can I assign more than one command to a keyframe (ie: Making it fade ina and move downwards at the same pace)? I've seen this done before in other beatmaps, and I think it should be a simple process...

So, yeah. The biggest problem is that my resources simply aren't appearing. I can't manipulate what isn't there. Could this be a bug that I'm having? Or did I miss something?

Sorry about my bad descriptions during this whole thing. I'm kind of being rushed. Thanks in advance! ^_^

P.S.: If you need me to, I can try to attach the beatmap to this post, but I'm not sure how exactly I would do that. None of it is really done yet, all you would get are the resources. So... There's that.

Firstly make sure you read this and understand it

BusterBlazeFox wrote:

I've only just gotten used to making beatmaps, and I wanna try my hand at storyboarding now. Of course, this is me, and I always have issues with technical stuff.

I've read through the FAQ and stuff and also searched the forum a tiny bit for tutorials, but some things remain unclear.

Checklist:
- I put all my elements into a folder called SB in the songs folder. That seems to help a bit.
- I understand how to use the commands, create keyframes, etc. Pretty simple stuff for me.
- I have, of course, already searched out the interwebz for a solution to my problem, but I'm never that lucky. X'D

Problems:
Everything would be just peachy for my SB if not for a few things I don't seem to be understanding.
- When I go into the sprite database and select an image, only SOMETIMES does it appear on-screen. Most of the time it just puts a bit of text with the image's filename. If I try to click it, it gets unselected. I can re-select it by clicking on its name in the Layers area. I never actually SEE the image, but on those rare occasions when it decides it wants me to see it, I can manipulate it just the way one would expect. I don't know why, but sometimes SB spirits are not shown when you're in the editor, but it should work well when you test it or play it. If they don't work while playing or testing, there must be something wrong with you SB elements
- I want the screen to start off totally black. Do I have to have a large image that is just black, or can I manipulate this some other way? Use a 640x480 black png pic. is fine IMO, it's the default size of SBE
For instance, I currently have a 800x600 (or whatever the limit was) image file that is nothing but black. I have that cover the background image before the song starts. However, it disappears once the keyframe ends. Do I have to make the keyframe extend ALLLL the way to where I want the blackness to fade into the background image, or is there a way to keep it there and then assign a command later? (Sorry if that entire description was unclear; I wasn't sure how to describe it) you need to set at least 2 key frame to make your spirit work at this period of time
-Can I assign more than one command to a keyframe (ie: Making it fade ina and move downwards at the same pace)? I've seen this done before in other beatmaps, and I think it should be a simple process... of course you can, just set different keyframe (Move, fade, scale and rotate) to this spirit

So, yeah. The biggest problem is that my resources simply aren't appearing. I can't manipulate what isn't there. Could this be a bug that I'm having? Or did I miss something?

Sorry about my bad descriptions during this whole thing. I'm kind of being rushed. Thanks in advance! ^_^

P.S.: If you need me to, I can try to attach the beatmap to this post, but I'm not sure how exactly I would do that. None of it is really done yet, all you would get are the resources. So... There's that.

And there is another method to do with SB, it's Storyboarding by Scripting, sometimes it's more easy to handle :/
I wish this could help you

Moved to storyboard forum since this is a storyboard related question

There's a Storyboard section?? O_o Sorry, I don't frequent the forums a lot. I honestly had no idea! X'D But yeah, it appears I have a pretty specific problem here.

I managed to get the storyboarding to work right, but if I get rid of any element by clicking it and then hitting the Delete key, I'll never be able to recover said resource. I've since learned that what I need to do is simply not delete it at all since it doesn't appear on-screen until I command it to do so.
Check out this beatmap for what I've done so far; I should probably submit a bug report or something, because this is a... kind of bad problem, I guess:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=66493

Also, thanks for the link, even though the whole thing is users repeating each other over the features. XD Somebody really needs to make a more complete guide for storyboarding techniques...

BusterBlazeFox wrote:

Also, thanks for the link, even though the whole thing is users repeating each other over the features. XD Somebody really needs to make a more complete guide for storyboarding techniques...

It's hard to make a guide for such things, and easy to figure out how to do it yourself. (or at least it was for me, probably because I'm older than most people on osu)

Personally I watched this video:
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=39457
and everything was made perfectly clear. The design tab is incredibly tedious and bug ridden, resulting in random changes in the code, and doesn't allow you to use colorization or loops (I didn't get animation to work either). Once you understand what all the numbers in the code mean, it's a fairly simple process to apply that to different commands. The best learning material is already ranked maps with storyboards.

A few pointers:
Use animations when possible to save a LOT of code.
Use the layers! You have 4 layers to use so that you can turn off things. Just because you put things in pass/fail while you're making it doesn't mean they have to stay there (and it's a simple find -> replace to get them into foreground or background).
Fullscreen stuff is usually best put in the background. To save on space, use jpg whenever possible, and remember that the SB window size is 640x480. Larger images do offer better quality, but you have to scale them down.
If you want examples of storyboards I can point you out some of the more impressive ones.