Adventure Game Studio

AGS Support => Advanced Technical Forum => Topic started by: Trisk on Wed 20/06/2007 20:24:44

Title: SUGGESTION - Increased frame limit for animation loops
Post by: Trisk on Wed 20/06/2007 20:24:44
I've run into the 19 frame limit for walk animations in an individual loop. Prodigal 2 is going to have live actors for its characters, and they have been filmed at the standard 24 frames per second. When I went to load the first animation into AGS, I ran out of frames about half way through the animation...MAJOR bummer!  :(  :(  :(

I can, of course, drop HALF the frames and make the cycle 12 frames per second, but this kills a TON of the smoothness on the loop, which I really, really don't want to do!

So...sound off- is there anybody else out there who would like to see CJ increase the archaic and outdated 20 frame loop limit in AGS? Please post a reply here!

Thanks a million,
Ben
Title: Re: SUGGESTION - Increased frame limit for animation loops
Post by: LGM on Wed 20/06/2007 20:54:16
As the provider of said animations... I would damn well like to see this increase happen. The world deserves silky-smooth animations!
Title: Re: SUGGESTION - Increased frame limit for animation loops
Post by: LGM on Thu 21/06/2007 20:31:05
Behold exhibit A: http://www.aedmark.com/prodigal/download/animation.exe

Observe, if you will, the animation on the left. This is a 24fps capture, animated in AGS to the limit of 20 frames of animation. You will notice how smooth it indeed is, but that it also does not completely loop. Sad :(

Observe next the animation on the right. While it could serve as an animation quite nicely, it is only 12 frames, effectively creating a choppy animation.

Which of these animations would you prefer?
Title: Re: SUGGESTION - Increased frame limit for animation loops
Post by: TerranRich on Thu 21/06/2007 20:53:49
I love how Roger is just standing behind them, in awe. :P

But honestly, I think the limit should definitely be increased. Why not? Is it that big of a drain on resources to increase the limit? 20 seems a big small.
Title: Re: SUGGESTION - Increased frame limit for animation loops
Post by: monkey0506 on Thu 21/06/2007 21:50:29
Quote from: TerranRich on Thu 21/06/2007 20:53:4920 seems a big small.

Big small indeed!

I'm all for increasing this limit. In fact, if this limit could be removed completely (i.e., if this is one of the limits that can be removed by AGS 2.8*) that would be even better!

*Speaking of this, any word (CJ) on which limits can possibly be removed? It was mentioned that most of the numeric limits could possibly be removed with the 2.8 edits. Just curious as to the status of that.
Title: Re: SUGGESTION - Increased frame limit for animation loops
Post by: LGM on Mon 25/06/2007 18:59:53
I too am curious as to why there are any limits. I'm sure it's a common question, but in this day and age it would seem that the common 1GB of RAM (or even still 512MB) should be able to handle more than 20 frames of animation.
Title: Re: SUGGESTION - Increased frame limit for animation loops
Post by: Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens on Sat 30/06/2007 17:07:31
This has been discussed many, many times, and the most efficient way of handling such limits is dynamic memory allocation.  Seriously, that takes care of all the bases since memory is only used when a new frame/character/object/etc is added (and freed when a frame/char/object/etc is delected) so there isn't any waste with large static limits and people who make tiny games will get smaller executables as a result.  Again, this has been discussed a lot and is a distant fix imo, though a welcome one!