Dungeon Master Forum

I've discovered 2 limitations with animations; not sure if anything can be done about them:

I'm using the images of the wraith from DM2 to clone a ghost. I use single bitmaps for the side, back and front views, but I'm trying to use an animation for the attack sequence. In DM2, when the wraith attacks it kind of leans back then leaps forward at you--this takes five frames.

I've made the anim which works OK and I put a high delay on the loop so that it won't repeat for a long time; this is necessary so that the player sees the last frame remain on screen while the creature is attacking. I expected that each time the wraith attacks, the animation would be started again from the beginning; however, it seems to 'remember' where it was and carry on from there, so if the loop delay has not yet elapsed, the animation won't be played the next time the creature attacks.

Is there anyway you can add a parameter such as LOOP:NONE to animations to overcome this?

The second limitation (and I guess you can't change this as I assume it's tied in to the game clock) is that the fastest an animation can play is at 6fps. This is OK for things like a fountain, but it's a bit too slow for my attack frames. Is it possible to speed this up at all? I'll understand if you can't.

Actually, this is worse than I thought. It appears that RTC is permanently processing the animation 'behind the scenes' so it's effectively playing whether it's displayed or not. When my wraith attacks RTC just shows whatever frame of the animation it's currently 'on'; if the animation is currently in it's idle state, i.e. within its LOOP delay, then nothing is displayed!

Well, it's working as designed; that's not to say it's a good design though ;-)

I'll have a look at sorting out the loop:none thing (or something equivalent) but the animations are definitely tied to the system clock so going faster than 6fps would be tricky...