Dungeon Master Forum

Speaks for itself really - something similar to the simple multi-graphic approach used in DM2 or Duke Nukem. Simply swap the wall textures from a pre-defined bank of images, and also change the rate of animation.

There's planned (limited) support for this already within the RTC code. Any item (including walls) can have a sequence of graphics defined which will play in an endless loop with a delay between each of a multiple of 0.2secs

Wow, nice... water fountains with moving water...characters in mirros that breath...lots of possibilities.

I was just bringing this back up the list. It's a posting from January would you believe!

Is this animation support still in the latest version of RTC?

If not, how much of a drain are constantly active game mechanics to memory/frame rate (like a wall switch toggling graphics around)?
While it wouldn't help inventory graphics or monsters, you coul still get moving water fountains, the breathing mirror, etc.

There would be no drain on frame rate at all. Memory would scale linearly with the number of graphics.

The only problem is working out how to specify the animation in a nice neat way, both in terms of a text format and in-game structures. There's no technical issue with animation - it just requires a bit of thought to do it efficiently!

just simple flags like you normally have.. just more of them?

location of file and name
x and y dimentions
x and y locations
first and last frames
if they are looped or single play
and if they are activated or constant

a torch would be a looped activated animation
a door would be a single play activated

where it gets really complex is probably when you want a ping pong sort of activation.. like the door opens and then reverse the animation when it closes.

why animation on a door? well, magic doors if you wanted them to disintergrate, or special mechanical locked doors the have something that turns and then it opens.. or a rockslide that is a door that can close by trigger but is never opened..

I suppose items would need to have an animation txt file (I think I mentioned this before) you set up the item as animated by putting an a flag in the main file then RTC looks for it in the animation txt file. there it can find the animation details.

George, is animation still planned for a future release? I have some ideas how you could implement it in a simple fashion (in the text files).

This feature is present since v0.21 onwards.