[Freeciv-Dev] Re: unit animation

[Raimar Falke <i-freeciv-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Nov 02, 2003 at 06:07:04PM +0100, Arnstein Lindgard wrote:
> 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.

Won't the gif format achieve this?

> + 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.

Sounds good.

> > 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.

Google doesn't find something for "Panzer General C++". So can you
please more verbose?

> Nice work so far :)

I agree.

        Raimar

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