Creating a Animating Sprite-based Beam

Possible or not?

Is it possible to animate a sprite based beam? I want it so that when you fire it the beam animates. I want it to animate even when the ship isn't rotating and is at rest. (clarified)

If its not possible just say no, and I'll busy myself with other work.

This post has been edited by Nick Anderson : 20 June 2005 - 07:40 PM

Nick Anderson, on Jun 20 2005, 06:18 PM, said:

Is it possible to animate a sprite based beam? I want it so that when you fire it the beam animates. I want it to animate even when the ship isn't rotating and is at rest. (clarified)View Post

Yes, it is possible, although the only method I can think of (that won't look awful) will greatly increase the size of the ship's sprite. If you make a weapon firing sprite with multiple sets of frames, and set the "extra frames in sequence" flag, the weapon firing sprite will be animated.
Unfortunately, this only works if the main ship sprite has as many sets of frames as the weapon animation, and I think that you may need to increase the number of frame sets in every other section (engine glows, etc.), too, to prevent blank sections.

Another possibility is to create a series of weapons that look like beams, each lasting one frame, that fire in sequence. I am not sure if it is possible to do that, however.

Edwards

It depends what you mean animate. If animate means have a range of colors it slides between, then this is possible too. It involves exclusive firing weapons and burst reloads, but I need to think about this for a few days first and test some ideas.

Elaborate better on what you want.

@edwards: can you really make an animated weapons glow set? I thought each extra set was only there to line up with the banking. Ive not tested it too much.

Giant ship sprites are also a bad idea. (note, though, that only the weapons glow would have to be large. Im pretty sure that it will be overlayed properly if it is larger, as it does indeed work if alt frames (for example) are smaller than the base set (in pure dimension, not numbers.))

Hmm... folding occurs to me as an idea, but that more falls into the realm of chargin beams as opposed to animated while firing.

Also, innacuracy can produce something animating looking, like the alien beams in evc, or even the polaron cannon from EVN (though this is lightning, not innacuracy).

Elaborate more on what kind of animation you mean exactly, and I will try to work on a viable solution.

NebuchadnezzaR, on Jun 23 2005, 08:16 PM, said:

@edwards: can you really make an animated weapons glow set? I thought each extra set was only there to line up with the banking. Ive not tested it too much.View Post

The extra sets are there to line up with the banking- or the "extra base sets in sequence" animation.

NebuchadnezzaR, on Jun 23 2005, 08:16 PM, said:

Giant ship sprites are also a bad idea. (note, though, that only the weapons glow would have to be large. Im pretty sure that it will be overlayed properly if it is larger, as it does indeed work if alt frames (for example) are smaller than the base set (in pure dimension, not numbers.))View Post

Although only the weapon glow sprites would need to have larger dimensions, you would need to have an extra, identical set of base sprites for each frame of the animation. This inflation of frame sets would cause the byte-size of the ship's sprite to increase, which is what I was referring to by "increasing size".

And I like that idea about color-changing beams. With fading coronas added in, they would probably look very good. Just hope that the "exclusive firing" flag behaves correctly for this (unless you've come up with another method for sequential weapons).

Edwards

NebuchadnezzaR, on June 23 2005, 8:16 PM, said:

(note, though, that only the weapons glow would have to be large. Im pretty sure that it will be overlayed properly if it is larger, as it does indeed work if alt frames (for example) are smaller than the base set (in pure dimension, not numbers.))

Correct. Look a the Javelin's engine glow, for example. The glow's total dimensions are larger than the actual sprite's.

Tell us what you want to do. I think a very basic type of animation thing might work. Using an extremly high fire rate, animated weapon spins, some math and a little bit of not caring if it looks a little odd, we might be able to help you. Or I could be completly wrong about what you want.

Nick, see me after school (/teacherVoice)