like the thunderforge
Well you know how the thunderforge has the three wheels things on it, well I'm using mechanisto and I'm tring to do something like that. So how do you make something spin or move at the same time as the ship is moving. If you guys don't uderstand what I mean then just say so.
You need to make seperate animations for the different parts of the ship. The Thunderforge has 2 I believe, not including the engine glow, lights etc... Take a look at the sprites in ResEdit to see what they look like.
There are two ways you can do this.
1- Alt sprite frames like the Thunderforge- spin your sprite as normal, but black mask out where you want the spinning object (this means substitute a black, nonspinning placeholder in your model where the rotating part will be). Spin it to rle- this is your base sprite. Then, make another rle where the base sprite is the black mask and the rotating part is visible. Spin one revolution of the sprite, index your rotating part, spin again. Repeat this process as often as you need to get a smooth rotation. The black masks here make it so the part that is rotating is neither covering up nor being covered up by another part of the ship.
2- The Leviathan simply a basesetcount of 3, where each set had the cargo pods rotating slightly. It took 3 seperate spins of the sprite to make a smooth animation. This process is much like setting up a sprite to bank..
I should add that the first method is advisable when the animating spart can fit in a smaller size than the ship, so as to save space (these ships are already big, now you have to multiply the number of frames they have, therefore their size, by the number of animation frames!). The second method is simpler and is better when the whole ship animates (or most of the ship). That's indeed what's done for the Thunderforge and Leviathan.
Can these methods be combined?
Nr 2 is much more powerful. The effects you can do are many.
This post has been edited by modesty_blaise_us : 19 April 2005 - 06:11 PM
Yes they can, but the animdelay is used for both
