Per angle in a (weapons) rleD.

Is it possible, without resorting to bugs / "features" / hacks to accomplish multiple images per angle on a weapons sprite? What I am trying to do is recreate a rocket from a game called N, it is a unique side-veiw puzzle platformer for both macs and pcs, I believe there is a version for linux, there probably is sence it is a flash game. If anyone can give me a hint or say outright that it can't be done, that would be apriciated.

Thanks,
~WonderBoy

It might help if you explained how this rocket behaves.

I downloaded the game and watched the demo do its thing. The only rocket I saw didn't have anything that animated. BUT it had an animated engine exhust. Is this the rocket you meant?

There was some topic once way back when someone (Eugene Chin or Weepul, I think) described some method of doing this using recursive subs and negative sub-theta but after much searching I just cannot find it. I had kept a note of it too but lost it during an unpleasant encounter with an uninstaller earlier this year.

(edit) This was before Nova did submunition range calculations so if the method used cyclic recursion it would crash Nova now due to infinite range. If only Nova was smart enough to always use the SubLimit of the initial weapon regardless of what it subs into...

This post has been edited by Guy : 26 September 2006 - 02:27 AM

@wonderboy, on Sep 25 2006, 06:03 PM, said in Multiple Images:

Is it possible, without resorting to bugs / "features" / hacks to accomplish multiple images per angle on a weapons sprite?

Not that I can think of. It might be possible to use an exploding or suicidal fighter, but that could easily malfunction.

@guy, on Sep 25 2006, 11:10 PM, said in Multiple Images:

There was some topic once way back when someone (Eugene Chin) described some method of doing this using recursive subs and negative sub-theta but after much searching I just cannot find it.

I can't see any good way to use submunitions for this without using insane numbers of weapons, as recursive loops of weapons don't work (Edit: Anymore? Interesting...). Perhaps a cunningly-designed sprite could look animated if it wobbled by a couple degrees in flight, but that would have a chance of failure if it was fired near the edge of a direction bracket.

(What I'm think of is a 360-frame sprite, with only 36 different rotations. Each group of ten frames will alternate between two animation frames, and the weapon will wobble by one degree every few frames, switching between the two animation frames. On average, it should follow a mostly straight line, but it still shouldn't be used for a weapon that needs to fly straight. Also, there may be problems if a SubTheta of 1 only means "straight or one degree clockwise", as I'm pretty sure an Inaccuracy of 1 means.)

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 26 September 2006 - 02:36 AM

Hm, I had a similar idea for an explosion where lots of subs are released and fly outwards from the center as debris/fire/something-like-that. I had two different sprites and merged them together to give a varied appearance of the individual shots that would be created. Sort of a work around for not being able to have two different sub types.

@edwards, on Sep 26 2006, 07:36 PM, said in Multiple Images:

Not that I can think of. It might be possible to use an exploding or suicidal fighter, but that could easily malfunction.

Ooh, that reminds me of another idea I once I had. I forget what the purpose was (if there was any) but basically you have a fighter carrying another ship armed with some other kamikaze type weapon. The bay for the second ship is a self-destructing weapon so when you order the fighter to attack it launches it's own fighter to attack but then dies itself. So once you've ordered the attack you can't abort it.

(edit) Found this post which is one of the ones I was thinking of. I can't find the topic orca mentions he made but Eugene's discovery probably refers to this topic.

This post has been edited by Guy : 26 September 2006 - 07:20 PM

Totally not what you're looking for, but I once made a weapon (back in Override) that had as its graphic a 2x2 colored square. The color changed with direction like a color wheel, so 12 o'clock was red, 2 o'clock was yellow, 4 o'clock was green, 6 o'clock was cyan, and so forth. I think I had 36 frames, so I just used a color picker and rotate the color by 10 degrees between frames. I set it to fire simultaneously and every frame, then put 10 of them on my ship or something like that. 180 degree inaccuracy, cycles sprite continuously, and starts of first frame. Kind of a neat spirally color effect in the space around the firing ship.

Don't forget that rapidly subbing weapons don't have time for guidance to kick in.

@desprez, on Sep 26 2006, 12:34 AM, said in Multiple Images:

It might help if you explained how this rocket behaves.

I downloaded the game and watched the demo do its thing. The only rocket I saw didn't have anything that animated. BUT it had an animated engine exhust. Is this the rocket you meant?

Yes, that is the rocket I was talking about. It is a homing weapon, so it will not follow a straight path. I was wanting to recreate the animated exaust.

@desprez, on Sep 26 2006, 02:45 PM, said in Multiple Images:

Don't forget that rapidly subbing weapons don't have time for guidance to kick in.

Yes, I know that. I have done that on accident more than once, it is also a massively limiting factor for this kinda weapon(as far as I know).

Thanks for all the feedback, unfortunatley, it is the kind of answers I was afraid of. I had thought of the cicn and smoke for doing this, it woulent look as clean, but I though that it might work. Well, I thought it would work untill I rememberd that there is a significant gap inbetween one icon and the next, not to mention that it has a very limited number of cicns for one smoke set. But keep pondering! One of you people that know all about the game and its engine might think of something!

The best you're going to get for animated exhaust is fooling around with particle effects, I think.

@guy, on Sep 26 2006, 05:18 AM, said in Multiple Images:

(edit) Found this post which is one of the ones I was thinking of. I can't find the topic orca mentions he made but Eugene's discovery probably refers to this topic.

That would be my topic on having multiple types of special ships where more than one had a goal...and yes, that topic was what I meant by Eugene's discovery. Incidentally, do you have any idea what I was thinking when I wrote that post? I think I was suggesting using two sub types, which is impossible. Anyway, negative SubThetas cause the shots to be seperated by abs(SubTheta) degrees, relative to straight ahead (so odd numbers would cause one shot to be straight ahead, while even numbers would cause the first two to be abs(SubTheta/2) degrees away).

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 02 October 2006 - 11:54 AM