Speed 0 and real world fps question

[robotMonkey]

So I might be blind but I checked the faq's and the stickies and searched the forum but I couldn't find the answer to this question:

I know Speed is a relative scale with the default at 0 but what exactly does Speed 0 translate into reguarding frames per second of character sprite animation? Is it 12fps? 30? 8?

thanks for helping the noob

Dave
the robotMonkey

[Gilbert]

There're lots of speed parameters in AGS, which one was you actually refering to? Is it character moving speed, animation speed or something else.

But anyway, it's not that directly related to frame rates like you mentioned.
AGS games by default run at 40FPS (unless you change it in your script), and for example, the character moving speed is *roughly* some sort of measurement of how he moves in a frame, eg, a speed of 1 means he'll move *roughly* 1 pixel per frame, etc.

[robotMonkey]

Thanks for the reply. In the character editor there is Speed which as you pointed out is the rate of sprite movement across the screen but what I'm interested in is the "Animation speed" setting which controls how rapidly the individual frames are displayed.

I understand that the Game Speed(default 40) is probably the max but I need to know the framerate so that I can create my character sprites so that the animation plays correctly. I would like to animate(draw) the sprites at 12fps but I need to know if I can reliably play them back at 12fps in the game (and what setting that would be).

I can probably just go ahead on trial and error until I get something close but there has to be a numeric or algorythmic relationship between the Game Speed and the character "Animation Speed" that could give me the information I need but I can't find any reference to it. And I find that odd

Any help would be greatly apreciated.

dave

[Gilbert]

For animations, what was meant by speed was actually  "delay". In a frame of a loop in a view, there is a parameter called "SPD" and when you animates a loop, there's a parameter called "delay", actually it works like this:

Suppose in a partically loop of a view, SPD of a frame was set to 4.
And you animate it with delay=7.
Then, in the animation so played, that particular frame will stay on screen for SPD+delay=11 game loops.
If your game is running at default 40FPS, that means that frame will stay for 11/40 seconds.

More info can be found from the AGS manual, eg (from "Tutorial->Setting up the game->Animations"):

Below each frame you will see "SPD:0". This is the frame's *relative* speed, which you can change by clicking on the word "SPD:". The larger the number, the longer the frame stays (ie. the slower it is). When the animation is run, an overall animation speed will be set, so the actual speed of the frame will be: overall_speed + frame_speed . Note that you can use negative numbers for the frame speed to make it particularly fast, for example setting it to -3 means that the frame will stay for hardly any time at all.

etc.

[robotMonkey]

I think we are talking about 2 related but different things. SPD  seems to control the timing of frames on an individual level in the view editor. In the AGS help file under Animations it says "the actual speed of the frame will be: overall_speed + frame_speed" with frame_speed referring to the SPD setting. I'm trying to get information on the rate of the "overall_speed" of the character which seems to be set in the Character Editor using the "Animation Speed" setting. I've tried setting the animation speed to 0 and it does create a very fast animation but it does not seem to get close to the 40FPS of the game engine and I'm running a 1.4 P4. Increasing the Animation Speed does slow the animation rate down but without a means of accurately timing it all I can tell is "yep, its slower". This makes it difficult to create complex animations without a lot of trial and error.

Increasing the Animation Speed number also seems to affect the rate by a factor of the original but I'd like to get an accurate idea of this relationship. If anyone has knowledge of basis of the timing loop for character animations and how accurate character animation framerates can be calculated I'd really apreciate it.

Thanks for the prompt responses,

dave

[Gilbert]

Did you set SPD to 0 or 1 to each frames of that character's view?

Character animation speed was based on the same formula.

[robotMonkey]

I think I have confused myself in the process here

I've been changing all of hte settings trying to figure it out and forgot where I changed them.

So it does look like a gamespeed of 40 and a combination of Anmiation Speed + SPD of

0: gives 1/40 of a second 40FPS
1: gives 2/40, 20FPS
2: 3/40, 13+-FPS
3: 4/40, 10FPS
etc.

Does this sound right?

thanks again,

dave

[Gilbert]

yes, something like that. provided the animation speed was set to 1.

[robotMonkey]

Thanks for helping the noob.

dave