[Bobboau]

if someone hasn't done so alredy, someone make an ani that I can use to test with.

[Bobboau]

actualy, here someone else test it

that was just about as easy as I thought it would be

in you're stars table specify a new bitmap, it will try to load a PCX first and if that fails it will try to load an ANI
it should work on nebula bitmaps planet bitmaps and star bitmaps and glows, though I've only tested it on a nebula bitmap, becase makeing an ani takes forever when you're just doing it to test something

[Flipside]

Groovy!

Here's a simplistic Quasar, just off to test it now

Flipside

Quasar - It'll look square at the sides, I know

EDIT : Hmmmmm... I'm new to the Stars.tbl. I've added the ANI to the list as a $Bitmap thingy, but it refuses to show in Fred, not sure if Fred will acknowledge it, or whether I need to be using some other mission editor, of if theres another table I need to edit elsewhere

$Bitmap:  neb08
$Bitmap:  neb09
$Bitmap:  neb10
$Bitmap:  neb11
$Bitmap:  neb12
$Bitmap:  neb13
$Bitmap:  neb14
$Bitmap:  neb15
$Bitmap:  neb16
$Bitmap:  neb17
$Bitmap:  neb18
$Bitmap:  Quasar
$BitmapX: planeta1
$BitmapX: planetb
$BitmapX: planetc
$BitmapX: planetd
$BitmapX: planete
$BitmapX: planetf

(Section of Star.tbl) - I'll try replacing an old one instead of inserting it.

Flipside

[Bobboau]

it's not going to show up in FRED, if you want a place holder for fred then take one of the frames and save it as a pcx do you're fredding and then get rid of the place holder before you test it in game

[Flipside]

Ok, thanks, well, I guess that's the next step.... I'll let you know how it works.

Flipside

EDIT : Got it working and updated the Quasar file, it needed to be converted by bright really, since I have the colour layers from hell on it, but it serves the purpose

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Bobboau
it's not going to show up in FRED, if you want a place holder for fred then take one of the frames and save it as a pcx do you're fredding and then get rid of the place holder before you test it in game

wouldnt it be better if the game checked for an ".ani" file and if that fails, loaded the .pcx files? Like that, you could get rid of the FRED thing and the original files would still work

[Krackers87]

its better the way it is unless you want to make place holder .anis for all the original FS .pcx's

[Lightspeed]

uhm you got me wrong there.

in FS2, the game engine searches for a .ani file background -- if it finds one, it's used.

in FRED, there will be searched for a .pcx file! So every background will be displayed in FRED (if you have a placeholder for it), but you will NOT need to delete your .pcx file in order to use the animated thing in FS2. Clear now ?

[Flipside]

I see where you are getting at... That's a good idea

Any chance of it Bobb?

Flipside

[Bobboau]

I ment it's not going to show up in fred becase I havn't made a version of fred with this enabled, and in a version of fred that does suport this it probly won't be animated, or maybe it will, there is like diferent code for loading and rendering in fred, I have never been able to get FRED_Open to compile so were stuc for a while

[Goober5000]

Update with the latest CVS.  I had to fix a linker error, but now it compiles fine.

[Flipside]

I think that Lightspeed is suggesting is to alter FS2 so it looks for the ANI file first. That way, if there's no ANI file it looks for the PCX. It means people making their own animated backgrounds would have to include a PCX of the first frame for Fred, but it also means that you don't have to touch Fred at all anyway, because it will find a PCX no matter what, but FS2 will load the correct file, be it ANI or PCX

Flipside

[Alan Bolte]

well, not knowing anything about fs2 ani creation or how this is being implemented in the backgroung, I'm curious - how feasable would it be to create a background that makes it look like you're in the middle of a massive fleet engagement where in reality it's just several warships and a few dozen fighters?

[Flipside]

That would be very difficult to do indeed, the background is too far away, you could have things like a thick ring of gently spinning asteroids around the play area, and an asteroid field within, it would sort of work with enough asteroids. You could animate Quasars and Pulsars and other astronomical things, you could do lightning sparking through a distant nebula etc, but these are all things that can be 'looped' whereas a fleet battle would be far far more complex, you might get away with a fleet in silhouette, like the Sathanas in FS2, and just the occasional beam going between them, but quite frankly I suspect this would look pants.

Flipside

[Lightspeed]

nah, if you do it right it could look pretty cool

[Flipside]

LOL Well, suffice to say that if I tried to do it, it would look pants
Look forward to someone proving me wrong!

Flipside

[Lightspeed]

I can try to get something done, but i'll have to wait for my new comp since FS_open isn't working on this one anymore

[ZylonBane]

As far as background upgrades go, I'm still hoping for generalized skybox support, as described in the first page of this thread.

[Carl]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
nah, if you do it right it could look pretty cool

A fleet battle couldn't really loop, (Command! the Collosus is down! THE COLLOSUS IS DOWN! oh, wait, now it's back up.) so you'd need to make it all from beginning to end with no repeating frames, and since a battle usually lasts a good few minutes, you'd have a huge file on your hands. So any reasonably sized background battle animation would look totally pants.

[Bobboau]

you caould use it for like smaller ships and stuff only have like three or four big ships and hevily script there battle, while an animation of a bunch of fighters and crusers fight it out behind them