[Freeciv-Dev] Re: unit animation

[Arnstein Lindgard <a-l@xxxxxxx>]

Lukas Tönne <lukas.toenne@xxxxxx> wrote:

> I have uploaded a (more or less) completed animation file of the warrior unit 
> to the ftp server ( 
> ftp://ftp.freeciv.org/freeciv/incoming/warrior_animation.tar.bz2 ) for 
> testing purposes. I think this is useful for developers, who like to work on 
> unit animation code. The details about the file geometry are described in the 
> readme. I have not written any .spec file yet, but i can do it if necessary.

Indeed that file is useful! Since no code is written, we can have as
much discussion about format as we want.

I think that throwing in a little (simulated) randomness can make the
game seem more lively. In Civ III, a unit will sometimes scratch his
head or stretch his body after idling for awhile.

Suppose each unit has a .png file like yours, and a spec file with:

+ The number of frames for each action. So you don't feel compelled to
  create a specific number of frames to achieve what you want to do.

+ An optional number that specifies a pause (in frames, or ticks,
  where one tick will probably be 1/60 second). So that you don't need
  many redundant frames when little motion actually happens. Can save
  disk space and memory.

+ Maybe a flag that triggers random actions, if you felt like creating
  head-scratching for that unit.

There could also be random animations for selected terrain tiles;
Occasional fireworks over a celebrating city, a small shining glimmer
on the gold in gold-mountains. Whales and Fish. If you want to animate
some of that, I think the code could be easily added after unit
animation is set up.

> Apart from that i more and more like the idea of writing an OpenGL client for 
> freeciv. I personally prefer C++ instead of C, so maybe this would be a good 
> point to write an OOP client ? Yes, i know there are lots of good reasons to 
> use the existing freeciv code, but i think that this is already quite complex 
> and difficult especially for newbies and will get even more confusing as more 
> features, options, etc. are implemented. Going over to object oriented code 
> could solve this problem, and since much of the code used in "2D" clients 
> might be useless when using 3D graphics this could be the moment to do this.
> I already started some (very basic) coding in C++ using ClanLib ( 
> http://clanlib.org ). Please tell me if this the right way or not ...  :)

Before you put too much work in it, be sure to read reviews for Panzer
General II and Panzer General III, and compare them.

Nice work so far :)


Arnstein