Animate background images one time

[Ghostlady]

I have four background images that I would like to animate just once.  It does it repeatedly.  How can I do this?

[CaptainD]

You could create a View with the 4 fullscreen sprites, create an object and set it to that view, then animate it once.

ie

Code: ags

object[1].SetView(14);
object[1].Animate(0, 3, eOnce, eBlock, eForwards);

I assume you mean you want to animate the entire background. You can set it to either blocking or non-blocking, depending on the effect you want.

Manual link for more info:

https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Object.html

[Ghostlady]

I want to animate the backgrounds not an image, but only for one cycle.

[Crimson Wizard]

I want to animate the backgrounds not an image, but only for one cycle.

There's a command that allows to switch frames or start/stop animation by hand:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Globalfunctions_Room.html#setbackgroundframe

With this you could wait until last frame is reached, and stop it on the current frame.

Do you want to animate this in a blocking manner, where it pauses everything else, or keep the game running?
Do you want to repeat this process periodically at some points, or only once after a room is entered? Or once at some point?
The final code would depend on answers to these questions

For example, if you want this to be a non-blocking animation, then you may do this in room's Repeatedly Execute function:

Code: ags

if (GetBackgroundFrame() == LAST_FRAME_NUMBER)
{
    SetBackgroundFrame(LAST_FRAME_NUMBER); // this fixes it on the last frame
}

[Ghostlady]

Yes, this is what I was looking for.
So I set it up like this: 

Code: ags

function room_RepExec()
{
  if (GetBackgroundFrame() == 2)
{
    SetBackgroundFrame(2); // this fixes it on the last frame  }
}
}

Here's the scenario.  There is an alligator on the background screen with his mouth closed. The second background his mouth is halfway open, on the third background it is open all the way.  There are two sounds playing, the alligator making his noises and background swamp noises like birds.  I would like to check for the alligator sound (aSound31) to see if it has ended.  If it has, I would then like to close the gator's mouth so I would use another SetBackgroundFrame(0) when this happens.  I can't figure out to how to check for when the sound ends.

Also, the second player will need to pass this way also. I am assuming it should react the same way for the second player.

[Crimson Wizard]

How big is the alligator compared to the room? Room background animations are usually meant for changing WHOLE room looks, like day-night cycles, or complex animations which affect whole background (example: it's raining with water drops and streams everywhere).

If alligator is just a piece in the room, then it's better to use Room Object for that. Room objects have Animate command that can run back and forth, once or repeated, or get locked on particular image.

[Khris]

To find out when a sound has ended, store its channel when playing the sound, the repeatedly check if the channel is still playing.
Or you can simply set a timer to a number corresponding to the sound effect's length and use IsTimerExpired()

[Ghostlady]

CW - Here is the alligator, it is part of the background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtSvp3PuPdc

Thanks for your ideas Kris!

[Crimson Wizard]

CW - Here is the alligator, it is part of the background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtSvp3PuPdc

This alligator is less than 1/10 of the game screen! it's not optimal to use full background frames to animate that. I would advise redoing it as a room object.
You may achieve that by simply cutting out identical pieces of background frames and reimporting these as sprites.

[Rik_Vargard]

This alligator is less than 1/10 of the game screen! it's not optimal to use full background frames to animate that. I would advise redoing it as a room object.
You may achieve that by simply cutting out identical pieces of background frames and reimporting these as sprites.

I agree with this. Not only could you make it just an animated object, but objects can have so many more frames, so you can have a smoother animation.
And also, when you animate an object "eOnce", the last frame will be that object's image after the animation. 

[Crimson Wizard]

I agree with this. Not only could you make it just an animated object, but objects can have so many more frames, so you can have a smoother animation.
And also, when you animate an object "eOnce", the last frame will be that object's image after the animation. 

Yes, and furthermore, with Object animations you may link sounds to the frames. Which means you don't have to play sounds by separate commands and script waiting for them to complete. If linked to frames they will play automatically. You may configure animation frames to have necessary delay before playing next frame, which will also solve the "waiting for sound to complete" problem.

[Ghostlady]

Ok, thanks for all this. I'll do some switching things around.