Animations: Who do I talk to

Bunnywabbit · Post by **Bunnywabbit** » Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:07 pm

see topic.

Does anybody know somebody?

note: I just want to know how it's done, or where to look for an example. Who can teach me?

SP4WN · Post by **SP4WN** » Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:10 pm

What sort of animated art?

Bunnywabbit · Post by **Bunnywabbit** » Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:11 pm

Hud elements changing color, sliding in, smooth transitions from one state to another. That sort of thing.

We're not talking Toy Story here.

parcival · Post by **parcival** » Fri Nov 26, 2010 11:28 pm

I do not know how to include animation into in game content, if that's what you are asking.
But if you ask how to create animations from my little experience creating animated sigs I can tell you that I just use GIMP animated package (GAP). It's a GIMP plugin. Get it from here.

Some tutorials about it:
Tutorial 1
Tutorial 2

It's a little hard to understand it but it does the job well (look at Idan's Avatar

).

Bunnywabbit · Post by **Bunnywabbit** » Fri Nov 26, 2010 11:32 pm

I already tried doing that, Parci

Figured that if alleg supported animated png's or gifs i'd be home free, and I do love me an easy route. Unfortunately this is not the case, and i have created a feature ticket on trac requesting as much.

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Sun Nov 28, 2010 2:30 pm

Find the source image file for the thing you want to change, make your changes, generate bmp.mdl with mdlc.

Animated elements are just one image, with each frame next to each other (for explosions) or in a grid (for the door). Gauges just have separate images for full gauge and empty gauge (parci has done fancy things with software hud I think).

See: http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...showtopic=27787 I link to some images - the launch door and explosions
Also for gauges you can examine the end products http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...showtopic=23439 - I can't find my original gauge mod thread, must have been on the old forums.

Bunnywabbit · Post by **Bunnywabbit** » Mon Nov 29, 2010 7:48 pm

but what if I want to make and play a new animation from scratch?

Say I want the cloak icon to fade in, rather than pop up?

SP4WN · Post by **SP4WN** » Mon Nov 29, 2010 8:14 pm

Heres something I was just thinking about.

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.

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Mon Nov 29, 2010 8:24 pm

Bunnywabbit wrote:QUOTE (Bunnywabbit @ Nov 29 2010, 07:48 PM) but what if I want to make and play a new animation from scratch?

Say I want the cloak icon to fade in, rather than pop up?

If it's not already animated, then it's likely a code change to animate it.
Exception being particles fired from guns - you can add extra frames (like the explosions) and then frames are chosen at random (not played in order unfortunately).
You could try putting in a version of things you want to animate with multiple frames (like the explosions), but I would imagine it wouldn't work and allegiance would crash.

Probably need someone to examine the code.

Adaven · Post by **Adaven** » Tue Nov 30, 2010 12:35 am

madpeople wrote:QUOTE (madpeople @ Nov 29 2010, 04:24 PM) you can add extra frames (like the explosions) and then frames are chosen at random (not played in order unfortunately).

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.