The FLIC
file formats most known in the extension .FLI and .FLC, used to store animation files. It is similar to animated
GIF. The FLIC animation format was originally developed by
Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartere ...
for use with
Autodesk Animator (FLI) and
Autodesk Animator Pro (FLC). In 1993
Jim Kent
William James Kent (born February 10, 1960) is an American research scientist and computer programmer. He has been a contributor to genome database projects and the 2003 winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award.
Early life
Kent was born in Hawa ...
had a
Dr. Dobbs article with a
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...
listing, introducing the FLIC format to the public.
The format uses pixel-wise
differential encoding In digital communications, differential coding is a technique used to provide ''unambiguous'' signal reception when using some types of modulation. It makes data to be transmitted to depend not only on the current signal state (or symbol), but also ...
between frames (like GIF) to reduce file size.
In the 1990s
video game developers used the format for intros and other animated sequences in their games, for instance
UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994) by
MicroProse.
Autodesk released a
Freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...
software called ''AAPlay'' to play FLI/FLC files on the PC. After the
end of development and support by Autodesk, the community wrote substitutes themselves, for instance
free and open source
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
libraries for writing and reading FLI/FLC.
References
Graphics file formats
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