[Flaming_Sword]

Hi.

EFF support is now more or less complete, except for HUD and briefing icons (rendered using HUD animation code).

Get it here.

Notes:

• Based on Antipodes revision 5582 (Patch)
• Compiled with MSVC6
• Fixed limitation restricting ANI and EFF in-game to 256 frames (not that you should use that many for ship and weapon textures )
• Added support for EFF in techroom weapons and intelligence tabs
• Added support for EFF in command briefings
• Added support for EFF in ship select screen
• Added support for EFF in weapons loadout screen
• Added support for EFF in mainhall
• Added support for EFF in multiplayer screens
• Added support for keyframes in interface EFFs and ANIs (including techroom and command briefings)
• Added support for single image as command briefing animation (eg. TGA)

Things to test/confirm:

• DDS and other textures in EFF (different DDS compression types)
• EFF with different framerates
• Loading times (ANI vs EFF - ANI is known to be horrible with this build)
• Colour accuracy when using non-PCX interface background
• FRED (shouldn't be any different, but you never know)
• In-game testing

Known Issues:

• Long loading times for ANIs
• Higher memory use while in techroom

Future Plans:

• Command briefing EFF support - complete
• Mainhall EFF support - complete
• Briefing loadout EFF support (including adding keyframe support for EFF) - complete + bonus
• HUD EFF support (not sure about feasibility) - HUD to be rewritten - includes briefing icons
• Adding EFF support anywhere else that currently uses ANIs - complete

Please inform me of any errors, crashes, memory leaks, etc.

UPDATE: New build posted, command briefing support added. Single images can also be used in place of a 1 frame animation.

UPDATE: Replaced with build with crash fix.

UPDATE: New build - trunk sync, weapons loadout EFF support, keyframe support (including techroom and command briefings).

UPDATE: Added mainhall support.

UPDATE: Added support for other animations, except briefing icons and HUD - more or less complete.

[chief1983]

Is there any other difference between antipodes and trunk at this point we should know about?  I was under the impression not much had happened with it since safe strings was committed.

[Flaming_Sword]

Is there any other difference between antipodes and trunk at this point we should know about?  I was under the impression not much had happened with it since safe strings was committed.

Not much happened. However, if I do get permission to commit, I'd want to do it in Antipodes, given how much stuff I'm potentially breaking.

[chief1983]

Of course, but we wouldn't want to get too many features in there at once.  That's happened before and it can be a real mess, so I didn't know of portej was going to be trying something out with that branch soon or not.

[Flaming_Sword]

I'll check with him, but I don't think there was much, at least in the short term.

[Tolwyn]

Could this be extended to the main hall as well?

[Nuke]

i think effs should be able to replace all ani files. including hud icons and elements. hud things are somewhat limited to 15 shades of gray plus transparency (multiplied by some rgba value it seems). would be nice to have 32 bit color on hud elements and shield icons. would also be useful for loadout icons.

[Flaming_Sword]

The plan is to cover everything that uses ANIs right now.

I mostly want to see whether I'm on the right track or have broken something before I continue.

[Tolwyn]

Heck, that would be nice. I'd like to go away from monocolored HUD towards true color animations.

[portej05]

Of course, but we wouldn't want to get too many features in there at once.  That's happened before and it can be a real mess, so I didn't know of portej was going to be trying something out with that branch soon or not.

I'm happy to monitor development of features there, however I do want to limit it to one or two at a time (preferably in distinct areas of the engine), and I do want to ensure testing is thorough enough to pick up anything that appears to be out of the ordinary.

Is there any other difference between antipodes and trunk at this point we should know about?  I was under the impression not much had happened with it since safe strings was committed.

None at present - I haven't had a lot of time to work on it, and the safe_strings commit was a massive merge job (think on the order of 1000s of one line changes across 168 files)

On a related note: I nominate Flaming_Sword for commit access to antipodes - he's churned out a lot of good code recently, and has made a lot of valuable comments about suggestions and ideas for the branch (well, staging area).

[Nighteyes]

Sounds good, but there is the frame limit we need to think about... I'm not sure if the ANI frames also go towards it, but if no, then replacing all ANI's with EFF's can top us over the frame limit very fast...
This will also demand a new subfolder for the real effects... so it won't be too messy

[The E]

• Fixed limitation restricting ANI and EFF in-game to 256 frames (not that you should use that many for ship and weapon textures )

You read that, right? You know that by "fixed" he meant "for all intents and purposes removed"?

[Flaming_Sword]

If you mean the total number of frames from all animations loaded, yes, they count towards the limit. No, there should not be a problem because these ANIs/EFFs will be unloaded when you exit the respective screens anyway (only one at a time should be loaded anyhow, for this very reason). Just don't do something crazy like make something with 4000+ frames.

[Nighteyes]

Me??! doing crazy numbers effects?? where did you get that idea from?
Yeah I was talking about the total number of effects, great to know, you have my vote to get rid of those pesky ANI, a pain to convert, and a pain to edit...

[Tolwyn]

If you add support for EFF animations to the main hall, you'll be my personal hero of the month. I have main hall ready for Saga for five years now - I just never had the nerves to convert animations to ANI and then struggle with getting colors on the original image to fit ANIs.

[Flaming_Sword]

 

Updated first post/title.

[Colonol Dekker]

I must have missed this somehow. .
 
Am I right in thinking this will supercede the .ani files then?

[The E]

It should. And it does, for intel anis. CB anis still need some work, that part does not work correctly yet (Crashes with assertion). Bug report has been submitted already.

[Flaming_Sword]

Crash is now fixed, original error was a misnamed directory.

See first post.

[Flaming_Sword]

 

Bumpage for new functionality.