Idle Animations

[stankarp]

Quick question.

While looking at the sprite animations with the sprite tool recently I noticed that some of the goods (the animals) have idle animations but I have never seen them use them in the game.

I checked but could not find an option to turn them on/off.

Anyone encountered this and can give some advice please?

[Maquiladora]

I think you have to change GoodAnim=No in userprofile.txt.

[stankarp]

Thanks, never thought to look there :-))))))))))

[stankarp]

Bit Curious, I changed the line and some of the animations now work, eg elephant, beaver, crab, tobacco. But some still dont, eg whale, elk, squid, bear.

These all have idle animations.

Wonder why they dont work, anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

[The Big Mc]

should work I have had them working before

[stankarp]

Further update on this issue.

Am I right in saying that not all idle animations work all the time, it seems the game randomly selects so many to use. I have now seen more working (but still not the whale and squid), but never seen all the idle animations for goods working at once. Crab and elephant seem to nearly always work but the rest are intermittant.

[Maquiladora]

Looking at the goods sprites in sprite edit theres some that dont animate. Coffee, Cotton, Emerald, Glass, Grapes, Hardwood, Jade, Herbs, Pearls, Tea, Poppies, Sugar, all dont animate in any way. Theres probably more.

[stankarp]

I Know that some dont animate, what I was curious about is that I have repeatedly checked them and found that not ALL the GOODS that HAVE ANIMATIONS, WORK in the ONE TURN. Eg elephant, crab, elk and beaver work when going round the map but oil, whale, squid do not. Next time oil may work but something else does not.

Thats what I was wondering about.

[Maquiladora]

Oh... right. Well i guess its random then. Does it matter?

[stankarp]

I was just looking at the possibility of a bit more life in the map, thats all, by animating the goods. But if they only randomly move, it reduces the overall effect.

[J Bytheway]

It's probably a CPU-saving feature, or just a silly mistake. Or, it could be related to the infamous, and mysterious "animation queue"...

[The Big Mc]

Originally posted by stankarp
I was just looking at the possibility of a bit more life in the map,

There was talk of creating effects on the map to simulate movement . However without enough artist on board it was postponed.

[Ekmek]

Originally posted by The Big Mc


There was talk of creating effects on the map to simulate movement . However without enough artist on board it was postponed.

I'm interested in doing it, but I first I got to finish my new tilefile (Sea-ocean stuff about half done).

It would be cool to have clouds flying over the land or waves or wind blowing on grassland. But I think I'd need OnePresents help on that.

The other problem is that I havent made a sprite yet. My next aim is try to convert some (fanbased) Civ3Flcs to sprites as my next art project.

[stankarp]

"Or, it could be related to the infamous, and mysterious "animation queue"..."(J Blytheway).

Pls tell us more.

I notice Unit idle animations seem to work more frequently.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by stankarp
"Or, it could be related to the infamous, and mysterious "animation queue"..."(J Blytheway).

Pls tell us more.

I notice Unit idle animations seem to work more frequently.

One of the fixes listed in the official patch was (something along the lines of) "Increased Animation Queue to 12, making unit-in-wrong-place bug less likely". formafar has been trying to find out what this means, but there's nothing in the sourcecode which is obviously the thing they were taking about...

(Also, there's no 'l' in my name )