What is MNG?

[DannyH]

Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly is MNG?

[emphatic]

Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly is MNG?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's animated snapshots. Sort of like big gifs with matching .mp3 files for sound.

Emph

[Alpha17x]

It's animated snapshots. Sort of like big gifs with matching .mp3 files for sound.

Emph

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Where are the resources to make mng files, and can they be played on game ex in place of snapshots? that would be awesome.

[Tom Speirs]

Where are the resources to make mng files, and can they be played on game ex in place of snapshots? that would be awesome.

Yes they can be played in place of snapshots. With the very latest version intermediate versions of MAME you can create the them by pressing Left Shif F12 when in a game.

Although Crashtest has done all the work for you and already made 4GB worth.

See the Links/Extra page on the GameEx site for more info.

Cheers

[djrobx]

MNG is PNG's version of an animated GIF. It's lossless compression so there are no video distortions like those which are typical of mpeg or AVI.

Using a lossless codec with AVI would probably be a bit more elegant than a MNG plus an MP3, but MNG is more portable across operating systems. Windows doesn't include any lossless, compressed AVI codecs so there isn't a single AVI standard for people to use. They'd need to install a separate codec like huffyuv.

MNG has the potential to be *very* useful when it comes to making animated skins, because it supports PNG features like transparency. You can have objects that fade and blend into the background. A couple years ago we used it extensively for our touch-screen home control interfaces. Back then the only trouble was finding a good tool to actually export the MNG files in a way that fully utilized MNG features. I don't know what's out there now.

-- Rob