How exactly does this work...

I'm messing with an attempt to modify the cargo drone, but my first attempt was to just modify the first 36 frames so that it turns, but the solar pannels don't spin. This looked ok, but I decided I wanted the modified drone to look exactly the same as the origonal until it uses the "unfolds to fire" animation.

Sooo, what I'm trying to ask is, If I wanted to give the cargo drone an additional weapons fire animation, would I just tack the additional frames onto the end of the stock pict? Because the drone already has 5 extra frames using the "Extra Frames in Sequence" flag, and I'm not sure if I can use the "Extra Frames = Animation" flag at the same time.

Those two flags are mutually exclusive (you can't use them at the same time).

The only way to have a bit rotate and then another bit unfold to fire is to put the rotating be in the Alt Frames sprite layer (The Auroran Cruiser and Thunderforge are good examples - now that I think about it, I'm not sure about the cruiser. The Thunderforge for sure uses alt frames) and the unfolding bits in as extra base frames.

Matrix

This post has been edited by what_is_the_matrix : 17 September 2004 - 12:43 AM

what_is_the_matrix, on Sep 17 2004, 05:42 AM, said:

Those two flags are mutually exclusive (you can't use them at the same time).

The only way to have a bit rotate and then another bit unfold to fire is to put the rotating be in the Alt Frames sprite layer (The Auroran Cruiser and Thunderforge are good examples - now that I think about it, I'm not sure about the cruiser. The Thunderforge for sure uses alt frames) and the unfolding bits in as extra base frames.

Matrix
View Post

So if I duplicated the Cargo Drone's sprite and put it the Alt frames(Or would I merely have to move the last 5?), then cut the last 5 frames from the base sprite and substituted them with the weapon animation frames, it should work? Because the drone rotates constantly anyway, just moving the rotation to the Alt frame would be fine right?

Now I'm getting confused. What are you trying to do again?

What I thought you wanted to do was have the solar panels rotate, and when you fire, something unfolds from the drone. This really isn't anything that you can do in Photoshop. Well, I suppose you could, but it'd be really time consuming. It'd probably be easier to just make a new Cargo Drone model in a 3D program (assuming you didn't have to learn how to use one first) that's designed with your specific desires in mind.

To do this, you need to render the drone without solar panels, and tack the unfolding frames to your base sprite layer and check the "unfolds to fire." Either that, your you'd have to delete the solar panels from the first 36 base frames (one full rotation) and make it look as if it were just the drone with no panels (meaning you'd have to fill in the bits that were covered by the panels). Those are your base frames. You'd then have to render the panels rotating with the drone body textured black so when the panels go below the drone, they're masked out (I'm pretty sure that the alt frames are on a higher layer than the base frames, so if you didn't do this, it'd look as if the lower panel were traveling above the drone instead of going below. Since EVN doesn't take into account overlapping animated components for alt frames, you have do that yourself. If you're doing this in Photoshop, you have to erase the drone body from all of the frames (the time it takes for the panels to make a full rotation).

Matrix

This post has been edited by what_is_the_matrix : 17 September 2004 - 10:07 AM

what_is_the_matrix, on Sep 17 2004, 03:06 PM, said:

Now I'm getting confused. What are you trying to do again?

What I thought you wanted to do was have the solar panels rotate, and when you fire, something unfolds from the drone. This really isn't anything that you can do in Photoshop. Well, I suppose you could, but it'd be really time consuming. It'd probably be easier to just make a new Cargo Drone model in a 3D program (assuming you didn't have to learn how to use one first) that's designed with your specific desires in mind.

To do this, you need to render the drone without solar panels, and tack the unfolding frames to your base sprite layer and check the "unfolds to fire." Either that, your you'd have to delete the solar panels from the first 36 base frames (one full rotation) and make it look as if it were just the drone with no panels (meaning you'd have to fill in the bits that were covered by the panels). Those are your base frames. You'd then have to render the panels rotating with the drone body textured black so when the panels go below the drone, they're masked out (I'm pretty sure that the alt frames are on a higher layer than the base frames, so if you didn't do this, it'd look as if the lower panel were traveling above the drone instead of going below. Since EVN doesn't take into account overlapping animated components for alt frames, you have do that yourself. If you're doing this in Photoshop, you have to erase the drone body from all of the frames (the time it takes for the panels to make a full rotation).

Matrix
View Post

Well, lets see if I can be clearer. What I would like to do, is take the Cargo Drone, which already has the solar panels rotating the body continously, and introduce a weapon fire animation as well. So that the modified drone would look exactly the same as the origonal, but the panels would sort of fold back (while rotating) when it fires a weapon.

Also, seeing as the weapon fire animation would be the panels sort of folding back AND rotating, would it turn off the alt animation, or would they simply overlap? Becaus it seems like the alt animation is ALWAYS on unless disabled, in which case what I want to do would never work.

Alternately, if I had the base animation be the drone body sans panels, with the ALT animation as the panels rotating, and have the panels rotating AND unfolding as the ALT Weapon animation, are the ALT frames overlaping each other, or are they rendered as the same layer above the base?

And yes, unfortunately I am forced to use Photoshop because I have no experience in using 3D programs, and I want the drone to look EXACTLY like the one in Nova untill it fires its weapon. As for being time consuming I can vouch for that. I started out photoshoping a simpler animation where the panels don't rotate, but the weapon fire animation worked fine. It worked, but I realy wanted it to be indistinguishable from the regular drone, so I would have to have the panels rotating as well.

I hope this clarifys things a bit more.

That might be too complicated for Nova's simple sprite based graphics engine. It's probably too complicated to just do in Photoshop. Check the FAQs sticky. I've posted a pretty comprehensive list of both free and non-free 3D programs. It might be worth your time - especially if you want to do complicated graphics in the future.

Matrix

Yes, the alt sprites layer is always shown (unless the ship is disabled and you've set that bit). And yes, it will overlap the main animation, whatever that may be.

Also note that the alt sprites layer is additive - just like the various glow layers.

So any animation using the alt sprites layer must either

1. be entirely contained within the mask of the main sprite (typically in an area where the sprite itself has been blanked to black), or
2. be transparent relative to things behind the ship.

So you'd have problems using alt sprites for the rotation of the cargo drone anyway, even if you weren't trying to combine that with a weapon animation.

Of all the things I know about making graphics for EVN, I know the least about how the Alt sprite works...since I've never used. it. :unsure:

I'm pretty darn sure, however, that whether or not it is possible to have both an unfolds-to-fire animation and an animated portion of a ship (using the Alt sprite), it's quite impossible to have an animated ship which unfolds to fire, where the parts that unfold also animate and keep animating while unfolded.

Sorry, you can't make a spinning cargo drone, where the spinning parts move to fire, and keep spinning. Nova doesn't support it.

(Of course, knowing how much funny stuff people have been able to pull off in EVN - don't even ask me what can be done with NCBs and cröns and whatever - someone will come back with a twisted way to create just that effect. :rolleyes: I really doubt it's possible, though.)

Actually, Weepul's parenthetical comment made me think of something that almost does what you want: Use standard cargo drone graphics for ship one. Give it a really long range turreted invisible zero damage weapon with ammotype -999, and a bay that allows it to launch a modified cargo drone that doesn't rotate, but does unfold. Set this second ship to be usable as an escape ship, and make the first ship have no sound or graphic when it blows up.

End result: Things that look exactly like normal cargo drones until they go hostile to something, and then stop rotating and start attacking.

Effect details: Upon going hostile, the drone might choose to fire the blow itself up weapon first - in which case it blows up and launches the escape ship, which then goes on to attack. Or it could launch the second ship first, in which case you might have two drones momentarily when there ought to be one.

Problems: The second drone will start with random damage, and any target locks and incoming homing weapon fire against the first drone will be lost.
Also, the features used in this method are not used in the standard EVN scenario, and may thus be somewhat flaky - some experimentation will probably be neccessary to make it actually work as presented above.

This post has been edited by Wyvern : 17 September 2004 - 09:15 PM

Wyvern, on Sep 18 2004, 02:12 AM, said:

Actually, Weepul's parenthetical comment made me think of something that almost does what you want: Use standard cargo drone graphics for ship one. Give it a really long range turreted invisible zero damage weapon with ammotype -999, and a bay that allows it to launch a modified cargo drone that doesn't rotate, but does unfold. Set this second ship to be usable as an escape ship, and make the first ship have no sound or graphic when it blows up.

End result: Things that look exactly like normal cargo drones until they go hostile to something, and then stop rotating and start attacking.

Effect details: Upon going hostile, the drone might choose to fire the blow itself up weapon first - in which case it blows up and launches the escape ship, which then goes on to attack. Or it could launch the second ship first, in which case you might have two drones momentarily when there ought to be one.

Problems: The second drone will start with random damage, and any target locks and incoming homing weapon fire against the first drone will be lost.
Also, the features used in this method are not used in the standard EVN scenario, and may thus be somewhat flaky - some experimentation will probably be neccessary to make it actually work as presented above.
View Post

Well, seeing as I can't do what I origonaly intended, I'm just going to have to change my design. Instead of the panels unfolding, I'm just going to have to animate the body somehow. I guess any part of the sprite not overlapped by the ALT frames can be changes using the "extra frames = animation" flag, so it should work ok...

Note my post above the one you're quoting. Re-creating the cargo drone animation in the alt-sprites layer will lead to one of two undesirable conditions: either the solar panels will be transparent, or the ship will generate opaque black spots at all locations where the solar panels could be displayed.

Guest, on Sep 18 2004, 05:10 AM, said:

Note my post above the one you're quoting. Re-creating the cargo drone animation in the alt-sprites layer will lead to one of two undesirable conditions: either the solar panels will be transparent, or the ship will generate opaque black spots at all locations where the solar panels could be displayed.
View Post

Well, it works for the Thunderforge, so I don't see why it wouldn't work with the Cargo Drone.

It works for the thunderforge becuase that animation does not change the outline of the ship - thus, a single mask works correctly for all frames of the alt sprite animation. This is not the case for the cargo drone.

Wyvern, on Sep 18 2004, 06:59 AM, said:

It works for the thunderforge becuase that animation does not change the outline of the ship - thus, a single mask works correctly for all frames of the alt sprite animation. This is not the case for the cargo drone.
View Post

The Thunderfoge base sprite/mask is basicaly missing the middle section where the ALT frames sit. And the ALT sprite/mask sits just exactly where the hole is in the base sprite. So it would seem that as long as the 2 sprites dont overlap, they should be fine.

It seems that the ALT sprite of the Thunderforge doesn't change the outline because it can't, but because thats how the the Thunderforge animates. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I cant see how it wouldn't work with the Cargo Drone. We shall see...

Why don't you just leave the base and alt frames alone and add a weapon glow which shows the panels folded back? The panels would still rotate while they're folded back. There wouldn't be any intermediate frames between the folded and unfolded versions but I think the drone is small enough that you wouldn't notice.

Picquilarius, on Sep 18 2004, 07:59 AM, said:

The Thunderfoge base sprite/mask is basicaly missing the middle section where the ALT frames sit. And the ALT sprite/mask sits just exactly where the hole is in the base sprite. So it would seem that as long as the 2 sprites dont overlap, they should be fine.
View Post

Take a closer look. The thunderforge sprite has a hole in the middle - the mask for that base sprite does not. And the mask for the alt sprite is mostly irrelevant - you could set it to all white and the thunderforge would work just the same (maybe a little more computational overhead, but graphically identical).

But go ahead and try it yourself. I learned this the hard way through experimentation, and if you want to do the same, well, who am I to try to stop you?

Wyvern, on Sep 18 2004, 05:01 PM, said:

Take a closer look. The thunderforge sprite has a hole in the middle - the mask for that base sprite does not. And the mask for the alt sprite is mostly irrelevant - you could set it to all white and the thunderforge would work just the same (maybe a little more computational overhead, but graphically identical).

But go ahead and try it yourself. I learned this the hard way through experimentation, and if you want to do the same, well, who am I to try to stop you?
View Post

The mask for the base sprite is exactly the same as the base sprite itself, it has to be. The same is true for the ALT sprite and its mask. (See attatchment)

I'm sure you know more about this than I do, but I'm still going to have to try it, if only to prove myself wrong.

Attached File(s)

• ForgeLayers.jpg (50.41K)
  Number of downloads: 17

ponders

Well, my experiments were several engine versions ago, so it might have been changed... And I suppose it's possible that I'm misremembering exactly what my experiments showed... Go ahead and try, then, and let the rest of us know how it turns out.

Wyvern, on Sep 19 2004, 01:47 AM, said:

ponders

Well, my experiments were several engine versions ago, so it might have been changed... And I suppose it's possible that I'm misremembering exactly what my experiments showed... Go ahead and try, then, and let the rest of us know how it turns out.
View Post

Well, damn. I managed to move the panel rotation onto the ALT frame PICT without any trouble, but I forgot that the Cargo Drone already uses the "extra frames in sequence" flag. Which means I have no way of adding any more frames onto the end, without them being interpreted as the base sprite.

So it is possible to animate the body and panels seperately, but because the Drone uses 5 extra frames just for the basic 360ş rotation, you can't have a weapon fire animation. Unless you want to use the WeapImage feild, but that's just a single image a la Thunderforge, so its rather limited in its uses.

(I attached an example of the PICTs)

Attached File(s)

• DroneMod.jpg (3.78K)
  Number of downloads: 14

Picquilarius, on Sep 18 2004, 11:18 PM, said:

Unless you want to use the WeapImage feild, but that's just a single image a la Thunderforge, so its rather limited in its uses.
View Post

It doesn't have to be a single image. The Thunderforge may use only one, but you can add mulitple sets to any of the different sprites and they'll behave the same way the extra base sets do.