Animations: Who do I talk to

[TurkeyXIII]

...is that a flamethrower!?

[HSharp]

yes

EDIT:

Also from Adaven

[ThePhantom032]

Don't cross the streams!

That flamethrower really looks awesome

[TurkeyXIII]

I'd seen the helix before, but not the flamethrower.

[SP4WN]

Faction X Ships were equipped with flamethrowers, if you $#@!ers ever bothered to play it

[Bunnywabbit]

QUOTE (Adaven @ Nov 30 2010, 01:35 AM) Are you sure? My experiments a few years ago using the explosion graphics as sprites seemed to play the frames in order.

Or, at least the same random seed is being used for each sprite.

interesting. Could you elaborate?
Also: wow!


QUOTE (Sp4wn)The door animation is done via the mouseover effect which we discussed in PM. The sprite animation is executed via a keypress. If you could figure out a way to define the animation to start on a keypress and then not repeat or hold on the last frame of the image you idea could work. I think il look into this, Im not sure if I am explaining my though process correctly.[/quote]

I think so. I'm not sure this isn't turning out to be more hassle than it's worth, but it would be good to know how these things work, if only because maybe someone else might think of something really awesome to do with it.

[madpeople]

QUOTE (Adaven @ Nov 30 2010, 12:35 AM) Are you sure? My experiments a few years ago using the explosion graphics as sprites seemed to play the frames in order.



Or, at least the same random seed is being used for each sprite.

Well, when I tried it I tried it with a different number in each frame (ascending). I had hoped to see it count up as it got further away, instead the value of the number just kept jumping everywhere. It might have been an aliasing issue the frames of the animation being played really quickly as compared to the monitor refresh rate?
I think I did the number test because I tried to do a particle that had animation that depended on the frames being in the right order (smooth movement, not like spazmatic lightning) and it didn't work right so I investigated the order frames played in.

QUOTE (Bunnywabbit @ Nov 30 2010, 04:13 PM) interesting. Could you elaborate?

QUOTE (madpeople @ Nov 29 2010, 08:24 PM) Exception being particles fired from guns - you can add extra frames (like the explosions)

[Adaven]

QUOTE (madpeople @ Nov 30 2010, 12:08 PM) Well, when I tried it I tried it with a different number in each frame (ascending). I had hoped to see it count up as it got further away, instead the value of the number just kept jumping everywhere. It might have been an aliasing issue the frames of the animation being played really quickly as compared to the monitor refresh rate?

Hmmmm..... interesting. I know you can get issues with particle speed / fire rate and monitor refresh that can cause particles to appear to move backwards and such. Definitely needs more investigation either way. I'm trying to remember what all was involved, but it's been probably 4+ years now since I took those screen shots. I know I assigned the explosion texture to the particle and fiddled with speed/lifespan/fire rate etc.

One thing I do remember: If the particle lifespan was too long, the animation would repeat. I'm not sure if that is controlled by a fixed duration (1 second?), the # of frames in the animation and/or the framerate.

I did this back before all the graphics improvements in R5, so my framerates were consistently 50-60. Nowadays if you have vertical sync off it's not uncommon for ppl to have 100+ fps, but a lot of monitors don't go that high, so I'm not sure how that interaction will affect things.

If I remember correctly, EMP Cannon is a 3-4 frame animated sprite. Might see how it performs in game.

<EDIT> Nevermind, EMP Cannon uses fx90, which isn't animated, but f35 is an animated version of the same graphic.

[DonKarnage]

Would this be the code related to multiframed images?- http://faz.codeplex.com/SourceControl/chan...ew/50100#668134 (Do a text search for AnimatedImage)
Tried to make sense of it, but I don't see where many of these variables are declared or modified, so I don't know what they even do. There's nothing I see that can search the whole source code for key words, I wanted to try "ptime =" to see what assigns a value to it.

[madpeople]

quick scan through:

AnimatedImage::AnimatedImage(Number* ptime, Surface* psurfaceSource, int nRows, int nCols)
makes a new animated image out of the source image - i.e. it splits the single big image with lots of frames into individual frames and stores them in an animatedimage object.

void AnimatedImage::Evaluate()
Selects which image of the animation to display. If GetTime()->GetValue() returns something like wall time in milliseconds, or frame number (which isn't v-synched) then that would explain why I was getting random play order for my bullets, but wouldn't explain why explosions work fine.