Dungeon Master Forum

Still messing about with stuff, I'm making some animations and RTC generates critical errors if you use images of different sizes for each frame, or specify different positions for each frame. This doesn't seem to warrant a critical error; after all the engine is just swapping images right? If it knows how big each one is and where to place it, it's not really a problem is it?

On the same lines, RTC generates critical errors is you specify the wrong size parameters for a bitmap and tells you what the actual size should be. Question: If RTC knows how big each bitmap is, why do we even need a SIZE parameter? Can't the engine just read the size dynamically and use that? It would make things that bit simpler!

Please see this thread about critical errors with wall sizes: http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=20990

For the bitmap sizes - I agree it does seem a bit silly. The reason it's in their is as a conformation that you've got the right bitmap. Whilst I was writing the graphics code I regularly made mistakes in specifying the bitmaps and by getting it to throw the error is sped up getting all the graphics right. As I said I found it helpful, however if the general opinion is that it's a pain then it can be removed!

There is a good reason for the animation frames all requiring to be the same size as it substantially improves the performance of the engine (to the point that there's no drop in performance at all compared with static images). For that particular one I would suggest padding the smaller bitmaps out with the pink transparency.

Aha, that's a fair point. Anything that can improve performance is always a good thing so I'll try your suggestion. In fact, thinking about it, it's probably better that way as it means I can get all the relative frame positions correct in Photoshop first, then I only need to work out one position for RTC. Cheers!