Barrel rolls

Is there a way to get a ship to perform an animation at random intervals? Currently, I've set up the frames to look as if it's doing a barrel roll while banking (doesn't really look that great), but it would be nice if it could do it randomly during travel.

Could you set it to an invisible weapon?

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Possible yes.. though not completely random rolls...and not on command. Unless performed when jumping/or banking.
It would require an obsene amount of frames if i´m not mistaken..

create loads of frames doing nothing.. then a roll...more frames of nothing....new roll etc..

It´s the only way i can come up with.

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And then there were silence.................

Setting it as a ships weapon sprite animation could work (like in the Asteroid miner), the problem is that then the ship will roll whenever you fire a weapon.

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Would it be possible to make it linked to only one weapon? I remember pipeline talking about this in one of the What Changes Would You Want to See in the Engine threads.

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Quote

Originally posted by bmac:
**Setting it as a ships weapon sprite animation could work (like in the Asteroid miner), the problem is that then the ship will roll whenever you fire a weapon.

**

Can a weapon sprite be more then one frame for each direction..?
If so how do you accomplish that.

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And then there were silence.................

How about setting the barrel roll as extra sprites, and having it display the extra sprites as "unfolding" sprites, and set it to display them them when you fire a weapon?

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Quote

Originally posted by modesty_blaise_us:
**Can a weapon sprite be more then one frame for each direction..?
If so how do you accomplish that.
**

You can add mutiple sets to the weapon/engine/light/shield glows. Then if you check the 0x0008 flag (Extra frames in base image are shown in sequence) then all the effects will be shown in sequence too. They may require the same number of base sets, but I'm not sure.

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For the sprite in my "True Abomination" Silly Plug Contest entry I faked randomness by having the sprite change appearance only when the ship was facing in certain directions (watch the mouth). The effect worked pretty well. I think I could have made the changes seem even more random if I had used an additional frame set and monkeyed with different frames in each set.

(This trick would work best if you were trying to create an "animation" that required only the standard-appearance frame plus one alternate frame (or two?); in other words, it would be hard to do a smooth barrel roll.)

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Quote

Originally posted by Guy:
**

Quote

Originally posted by modesty_blaise_us:
**Can a weapon sprite be more then one frame for each direction..?
If so how do you accomplish that.
**

You can add mutiple sets to the weapon/engine/light/shield glows. Then if you check the 0x0008 flag (Extra frames in base image are shown in sequence) then all the effects will be shown in sequence too. They may require the same number of base sets, but I'm not sure.

**

Sure... but it can´t be more then one weapon frame pr base frame... Say your ship is facing downwards... When you fire a weapon and the weapon sprite is triggered, it´ll only show one frame.. Not an entire animation.

Can you trigger the Extra frames by firing a weapon... Or only by hyper jumping..

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And then there were silence.................

Quote

Originally posted by modesty_blaise_us:
**Sure... but it can´t be more then one weapon frame pr base frame... Say your ship is facing downwards... When you fire a weapon and the weapon sprite is triggered, it´ll only show one frame.. Not an entire animation.

Can you trigger the Extra frames by firing a weapon... Or only by hyper jumping..

**

Okay, so just make sure you have the same number of base sets. They can all be identical if necessary. Then as it cycles through the base sets it'll cycle through the weapon sets as well. Won't it? I haven't actually tried it, but I know it works for running lights.

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Quote

Originally posted by Guy:
**

Quote

Originally posted by modesty_blaise_us:
**Sure... but it can´t be more then one weapon frame pr base frame... Say your ship is facing downwards... When you fire a weapon and the weapon sprite is triggered, it´ll only show one frame.. Not an entire animation.

Can you trigger the Extra frames by firing a weapon... Or only by hyper jumping..

**

Okay, so just make sure you have the same number of base sets. They can all be identical if necessary. Then as it cycles through the base sets it'll cycle through the weapon sets as well. Won't it? I haven't actually tried it, but I know it works for running lights.

**

Yes you will be able to fire in the middle of a roll, and it will look good.. but you can´t fire a weapon, and let that trigger a roll or any other animation containing more then one frame, which is what we really want..
Or something that triggers the roll at random... I can create a ship that seems to roll at random.. But it´ll probably be 10mb plus with glows... Won´t really be worth it in my opinion, and isn´t there a max frame limit of soem sort..

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And then there were silence.................

Quote

Originally posted by modesty_blaise_us:
**Yes you will be able to fire in the middle of a roll, and it will look good.. but you can´t fire a weapon, and let that trigger a roll or any other animation containing more then one frame, which is what we really want..
Or something that triggers the roll at random... I can create a ship that seems to roll at random.. But it´ll probably be 10mb plus with glows... Won´t really be worth it in my opinion, and isn´t there a max frame limit of soem sort..
**

Oh, I see now. I was thinking it would trigger the whole animation but now I see why it wouldn't work like that.
I had some great ideas for animated weapon glows, but oh well...

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Quote

Originally posted by bmac:
**Setting it as a ships weapon sprite animation could work (like in the Asteroid miner), the problem is that then the ship will roll whenever you fire a weapon.

**

Kind of like the Acolyte from Homeworld: Cataclysm? I kind of thought that was cool, though it might loose a lot of its effect from being in a 2d world. Can running lights be delayed? If so, it may work as a replacement for those...

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Quote

Yes you will be able to fire in the middle of a roll, and it will look good..

Hmm...this could be useful for simulating the behavior of the Multi-Beam Frigates from the original Homeworld. I'll be saving this for future reference, somewhere....

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It would be darn cool to have a ship perform continuous rolls thourgh.. like if its creating soem kind of gravity.. And maybe a little of centre so that it seems to rotate around a point. Maybe creating some effect in the middle...

goes of to tinker with cinema 4D

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And then there were silence.................

Quote

like if its creating soem kind of gravity

The stock Auroran Cruiser does exactly that. Hmm...an idea?

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Quote

Originally posted by UE_Research & Development:
**The stock Auroran Cruiser does exactly that. Hmm...an idea?

**

Not like that.. The auroran cruiser has a part of it self rotating around it´s own center... What i want is the ship to rotate around a "non ship point" The ship i of centre..

Not really sure how to achieve this yet though..

You´ll se when i finish it..if i do..

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And then there were silence.................

(This message has been edited by modesty_blaise_us (edited 08-31-2004).)

After extensive exploration and reading of the NOVA Bible for Aftermath, I can reaveal the following:

  • the 'unfolds when firing' flag is activated when any weapon is fired, you can not tie it to a specific weapon

  • the weapon-glow feature can be tied to a specific weapon, but it's an additive effects layer rather than a full base-sprite animation

  • the 'shown in sequence' flag displays the extra frames in sequence on a continuous loop. This means you can make a "ship rotate around a 'non ship point'", or simply animate a part of it, like the Auroran vessel in question

  • the 'hyper-animation' flag is triggered on landing, taking off, and entering/exiting hyper-space (why oh why oh why...)

Fact.

Hudson, on Sep 7 2004, 08:33 AM, said:

(*) the 'shown in sequence' flag displays the extra frames in sequence on a continuous loop. This means you can make a "ship rotate around a 'non ship point'", or simply animate a part of it, like the Auroran vessel in question

I guess you could potentially make a sprite that does a roll at random intervals, but if you tried turning during said roll, I expect that the game would immediately switch to the banking frame, which would look strange. It would also requre a LOT of frames to do, if you succeded in the first place...

~Dimpfinator

Dimpfinator, on Sep 7 2004, 05:42 PM, said:

I guess you could potentially make a sprite that does a roll at random intervals, but if you tried turning during said roll, I expect that the game would immediately switch to the banking frame, which would look strange. It would also requre a LOT of frames to do, if you succeded in the first place...View Post

I've not sean anything that suggests that this is possible. There simply isn't any in-game feature that can trigger an alt-frame animation randomly.