Animated Sprites - GameCreators Forum

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PST

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Posted: 12th Apr 2004 19:10

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I tried to make an animated sprite of an explosion...

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load image "Explosion.bmp",4
create animated sprite 5,"Explosion.bmp",48,42,4
play sprite 5,1,2,5

But it won't play, neither give an error message...
Need some help please...

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Code Stealer

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Posted: 13th Apr 2004 14:27

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I had animated sprite problems too. Ive abandoned them, and prefer to just have a variable called frame or something, that way you can feed your sprite any image, so its easier to have, for example, one explosion animation that is used by all the enemy spaceships. You would have to then write some arays or data statements to hold the anim frame numbers. Incidentally, this gives you more contrl over the timing of your anims, because you can replay frames in any order...

GIve me more power!

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Scouseknight

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Posted: 13th Apr 2004 14:30

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I also abandoned automatic animated sprites I just couldn't get them to work - I'm with Code Stealer on this one and manually handle the frames.

I just load the bitmap with the animation, use a for..next loop with Get Image to extract the frames, and then manually assign them to the sprite as the game runs.

http://www.scouseknight.com

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PST

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Posted: 13th Apr 2004 18:30

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Hum... anyone else knows something?
Thanks for the help anyway =)

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PST

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Posted: 13th Apr 2004 19:02

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Seems strange, but seems to work...

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create animated sprite 1,"Explosion.bmp",2,1,1
sprite 1,50,50,sprite image(1)
do
play sprite 1,1,2,1000
loop

Might help...

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PST

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Posted: 13th Apr 2004 19:16

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OOOk animated sprites suck, wen inside a if condition just play the first frame....bah....

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Code Stealer

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Posted: 13th Apr 2004 22:31

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Hmm, I wonder as well if there are any good tricks for holding lists of frame numbers, and cycling through them easily.

Im making a top down turn based stratergy game, so I might have flags, fire and charachter animations running all at the same time. I wonder if anyone hads a good stratergy for dealing with anim lists all starting t different time...

GIve me more power!

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LordoFire

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 04:26

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Animating sprites is actually quite easy, i just helped a person on this a while ago. You need to place all your frames on one sheet at equal distances from each other. Then load it on and do the following code...

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seq1 = 1 
load bitmap "Your Image here!",1

for y = 0 to 'the height here' - 'However high you want the box to be here' step 'however much of the height you want to show at a time here!'
for x = 0 to 'the width here' - 'however wide you want the box to be here' step 75
get image seq1, x, y, x + 30, y + 64, 1
inc seq1
next x
next y
delete bitmap 1


ani = 1
do 
paste image ani, x, y, 1
ani = ani + 1
sleep 400 
if ani>'how many frames in it here' then ani=1
loop

hope that helps!

When it comes to programing, I'm on fire!

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Scouseknight

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 08:31

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That's the method I currrently use - it was the "Play Sprite" I was personally having problems with which I could never get to work properly.

http://www.scouseknight.com

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Code Stealer

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 11:25

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Thats helpfull, but I wanted to try to get some help with understanding how DB reads numbers out of a list.

Lets use this example:

My wizard is in the center of the screen surrounded some goblins and undead. He cast the spell destroy undead. So I need to play the casting animation for the wizard, the spell effect anim, the death anims for the undead and a hit reaction anim for the goblins. The spell radiates out from the wizard in a wave, so his anim starts, then the spell effect, then the enemy anims start all at different times, as the wave reaches them. So , for instance the undead, they all play the same list of image numbers as their anim, but they need to be fed to the correct sprite at the correct time.

I was thinking it would be good to maybe link each anim to a centralised timer, or something like that. Im sure I can work somthing out, but I just wanted to glean some tips on the best way to proceed before I start...

GIve me more power!

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Scouseknight

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 12:51 Edited at: 14th Apr 2004 14:24

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I tend to use typed arrays for my sprites - one of the array elements is a timer for the animation - and the current frame - and then a seperate array holding frames or ranges of frames for each "type" of character the sprites represent - for example, I could have 10 monsters but they all use the same animation frames, but one player - so I would have two sets of animation in this case.

Example would be :

+ Code Snippet

Type Monsters
   X As Integer
   Y As Integer
   Action As Integer
   Frame As Integer
   SpriteNumber As Integer
   AnimateTimer As Integer
EndType

Dim Monsters(number of monsters) As Monsters

<program loop here>

For Monster = 1 To number of monsters
   Sprite Monsters(Monster).SpriteNumber, Monsters(Monster).X, Monsters(Monster),Y, Monsters(Monster).Frame

   If Timer() > Monsters(Monster).AnimateTimer
      If Monster(Monster).Action = 1
         Rem
         Rem Running
         Rem
         Monsters(Monster).Frame = <new frame>
         Monsters(Monster).AnimateTimer = Timer() + 200
      Endif
   Endif
Next Monster

You could extend this further and have either a typed array for animation frames, or use #CONSTANTS to put labels on the frames or frame ranges :

+ Code Snippet

#CONSTANT Run_Left_Start = 100
#CONSTANT Run_Left_End = 110
#CONSTANT Run_Right_Start = 111
#CONSTANT Run_Right_End = 120

e.t.c.

In the case of several sprites which have their own animation frames typed arrays could be useful :

Type AnimationFrames
   Run_Left_Start As Integer
   Run_Left_End As Integer
   Run_Right_Start As Integer
   Run_Right_End As Integer
EndType

Dim AnimationFrames(10) As AnimationFrames

AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_Start = 101
AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_End = 110
AnimationFrames(1).Run_Right_Start = 111
AnimationFrames(1).Run_Right_End = 120
AnimationFrames(2).Run_Left_Start = 121
AnimationFrames(2).Run_Left_End = 130
AnimationFrames(2).Run_Right_Start = 131
AnimationFrames(2).Run_Right_End = 140

For Monster = 1 To number of monsters
   Sprite Monsters(Monster).SpriteNumber, Monsters(Monster).X, Monsters(Monster),Y, Monsters(Monster).Frame

If Timer() > Monsters(Monster).AnimateTimer
      If Monsters(Monster).Action = 1
         Rem
         Rem Running
         Rem
         If Monsters(Monster).Frame < AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_Start
            Monsters(Monster).Frame = AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_End + 1
         Endif
         If Monsters(Monster).Frame > AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_End
            Monsters(Monster).Frame = AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_Start
         Endif
         Monsters(Monster).Frame = Monsters(Monster).Frame + 1          
         If Monsters(Monster).Frame > AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_End
            Monsters(Monster).Frame = AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_Start
         Endif
      Endif

Monsters(Monster).AnimateTimer = Timer() + 200
   Endif
Next Monster

+ Code Snippet

Type AnimationFrames
   Run_Left_Start As Integer
   Run_Left_End As Integer
   Run_Right_Start As Integer
   Run_Right_End As Integer
EndType

Dim AnimationFrames(10) As AnimationFrames

AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_Start = 101
AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_End = 110
AnimationFrames(1).Run_Right_Start = 111
AnimationFrames(1).Run_Right_End = 120
AnimationFrames(2).Run_Left_Start = 121
AnimationFrames(2).Run_Left_End = 130
AnimationFrames(2).Run_Right_Start = 131
AnimationFrames(2).Run_Right_End = 140


For Monster = 1 To number of monsters
   Sprite Monsters(Monster).SpriteNumber, Monsters(Monster).X, Monsters(Monster),Y, Monsters(Monster).Frame

   If Timer() > Monsters(Monster).AnimateTimer
      If Monsters(Monster).Action = 1
         Rem
         Rem Running
         Rem
         If Monsters(Monster).Frame < AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_Start
            Monsters(Monster).Frame = AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_End + 1
         Endif
         If Monsters(Monster).Frame > AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_End
            Monsters(Monster).Frame = AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_Start
         Endif
         Monsters(Monster).Frame = Monsters(Monster).Frame + 1          
         If Monsters(Monster).Frame > AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_End
            Monsters(Monster).Frame = AnimationFrames(1).Run_Left_Start
         Endif
      Endif

      Monsters(Monster).AnimateTimer = Timer() + 200
   Endif
Next Monster

I have used this technique in a game I am developing at the moment - basically I name all my animation frames and reference them by label name instead of having to remember numbers - the numbers are of course assigned to the frame names in a routine called early on in the game - it's no faster than knowing frames but it makes your programs a lot easier to maintain and if an animation sequence changes in number of frames you only need to change them once in the program instead of going through the program looking for the places where the frame numbers are used.

I am not sure whether this helps you or not - we all have our own way of writing programs.

http://www.scouseknight.com

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Pincho Paxton

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 15:00

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Quote: "My wizard is in the center of the screen surrounded some goblins and undead. He cast the spell destroy undead. So I need to play the casting animation for the wizard, the spell effect anim, the death anims for the undead and a hit reaction anim for the goblins. The spell radiates out from the wizard in a wave, so his anim starts, then the spell effect, then the enemy anims start all at different times, as the wave reaches them. So , for instance the undead, they all play the same list of image numbers as their anim, but they need to be fed to the correct sprite at the correct time.
"

The spell radiates out? There are two ways that you can interpret this. Either the spell animation actually travels accross the screen. Then you could use a distance formula to start the second animation. Or the spell animation stands still, in which case you could use one of its frame numbers to start the next animation.

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Code Stealer

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 16:18

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Yes, I was more asking about a good way to feed the same list of frame numbers into the correct sprites, all starting at different times.

Lets say my zombie death anim is images 1,2,3,4,5. Now, zombie 1 is closest to the wizard, so the spell starts to effect him first. He plays frame 1. Then the next pass of the cycle, zombie2 is hit, so he plays frame 1, while zombie1 is on frame 2. Then 2 frames later zombie3 is hit, so plays frame 1, while zombie 2 is on frame 4 and zombie 1 is on frame 5. I want some help with methods for tracking which frame should be playing for each sprite. Should I use arrays, data statements or what?

for n=1 to amount of sprites

sprite n,x,y,frame(correctframe)

next n

GIve me more power!

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Pincho Paxton

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 16:24

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Different staggered stages of animation can be handled with a DIM EnemyFrame(10).

EnemyFrame(1) = 5
EnemyFrame(2) = 2
Enemyframe(3) = 7

So Enemy 1 is on frame 5 of his animation.
Enemy 2 is on frame 2 of his animation
Enemy 3 is on frame 7 of his animation.

EnemyFrame(1) = EnemyFrame(1) + 1

Now enemy 1 is on frame 6 of his animation

If EnemyFrame(1) = 6 then EnemyFrame(1) = 1

Now enemy 1 has looped back to the beginning of his animation.

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Morloc

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 17:33

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to just back pincho up as this is the way he explained to me. This Dim method works very well.

You can have as many enemies on screen at different points in their animation as you like.

you must put the code in a for next loop though and replace the eg dim(2) with say dim(n).

The good thing is that you have just one bit of code that handles any enemy. you do other dims though like enemy alive = (dead,alive, dying)

heres my enemy code if it helps.

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 enemy1:
for b = 1 to 10
Numberofframes(1) = 6 : EnemyPos(1,1) = 700 : EnemyPos(1,2) = 500 : Framestart(1) = 10 : Enemyscale(1) = 100
Numberofframes(2) = 6 : EnemyPos(2,1) = 200 : EnemyPos(2,2) = 300 : Framestart(2) = 10 : Enemyscale(2) = 80
Numberofframes(3) = 6 : EnemyPos(3,1) = 632 : EnemyPos(3,2) = 400 : Framestart(3) = 10 : Enemyscale(3) = 50
Numberofframes(4) = 6 : EnemyPos(4,1) = 400 : EnemyPos(4,2) = 500 : Framestart(4) = 10 : Enemyscale(4) = 250
   if enemyalive(b) = alive
      if enemyframe(b) = 0 and forward(b) = No then enemyalive(b) = dead : enemy = 0 : EnemyPos(b,1) = -700 : EnemyPos(b,2) = -500: EnemyFrame(b) = 0
      if enemyframe(b) = 0 then forward(b) = yes
      if enemyframe(b) = Numberofframes(b) then forward(b) = no
    scale Sprite 10+b,Enemyscale(b)
    sprite 10+b,EnemyPos(b,1),EnemyPos(b,2),(Framestart(b) + EnemyFrame(b))
   endif
next b
return

hope that helps

Morloc

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Code Stealer

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 17:55

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Yes thanks that was very help full.

Ok I understood that little piece of code, but what can I do if I want to have frames that are not in sequence? For example, if I have a man with a hammer, and I want the extremes of the anim to hold for longer than the tweens, I might play the anim like this, where each number is an image number:

1,2,3,4,5,5,5,5,5,3,1,1,1,1

What is a good way to hold this sequence of numbers? Dimention an array to hold my frames? I suppose as they are being read in sequence then a data statent might work. The only trouble is, Im going to have about 400 possible deaths, hit reacts and attack anims( each charachter in game can do these actions, plus wizards casting spells and special anims). I guess if I make all the deaths the same number of frames I could use a 2d array?

dim deathanim(400,10)

then make sure all my death anims have 10 frames....

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Pincho Paxton

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Posted: 14th Apr 2004 18:43 Edited at: 14th Apr 2004 18:45

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1,2,3,4,5,5,5,5,5,3,1,1,1,1

or

1,100
2,100
3,100
4,100
5,500
3,100
1,400

Where the second version is used in DIM again.

Dim EnemyAnim(7,2)

enemyAnim(1,1) = 1
enemyAnim(1,2) = 100
enemyAnim(2,1) = 2
enemyAnim(2,2) = 100......etc

You could even make an animation editor, or converter to convert your first method into the second method.

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Zone Chicken

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Posted: 18th Apr 2004 07:59 Edited at: 18th Apr 2004 08:01

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Just started fooling around with animated sprites, and am loading a avi then playing it to a image, looping the animation, then making the image a sprite. but when i set the the sprite to 1,0,1 the sprite will not become transparent anyone know why this is?

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Rem ***** Main Source File *****
load animation "rain.avi",1
play animation to image 1,1,0,0,480,640
loop animation 1
sprite 1,0,0,1
set sprite 1,0,1
make object sphere 1,10
position object 1,0,0,0



do

if upkey()
   move object up 1,.1
   endif
   if downkey()
      move object down 1,.1
      endif
      if rightkey()
         move object right 1,.1
         endif
         if leftkey()
            move object left 1,.1
            endif


loop

Need it transparent if its going to overlap other object such as a explosion effect over a moutain terrain in a overhead view.

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Triple Ha

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Posted: 18th Apr 2004 08:53 Edited at: 10th May 2004 05:33

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If interested in making games go to http://www.freewebs.com/abutton/...NOW!

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2D All the way! / Animated Sprites