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Okay, I will give it a try, this pre-loading technique might actually work.
When I restart the game and play the animation again after having played part of the animation before, that part of the animation is fluid (so apparently even when you close the game, the sprite cache is still saved with the loaded sprite files). But I also have too many sprites in my animation to save them all at the same time in the sprite cache. (That's why when I restart and play the animation again after having played the WHOLE animation, it does not work anymore, because the first sprites have already been deleted and so continue to get replaced before being displayed)

Do you know if the sprite cache limit is based on the number of sprites, or by the overall file size/used space of the sprites?  (I assume file size because higher resolution animations lag more, but I'd like to know for sure)
And if I pre-load the frames of a certain loop in this way and then I animate two objects with the same loop (that I just pre-loaded), the sprites are pre-loaded for both objects at the same time, and don't take double the sprite cache size, right? (Because you mentioned the texturing on the other hand is being done separately every single time). Knowing this could help me to re-structure my animation properly.  Maybe I can work around having to pause in the middle of the animated story just to load the new upcoming frames into the cache.

And I assume there is no way to increase the sprite cache limit, right? (The sprite cache in Default Settings seems to have no effect on this)

A "Loading..." symbol is a nice idea.

Thank you for your answers!


Jack

Turning the compressing off actually helps, thanks! (And yes my game is 3 GB bigger now  )
But it's quite irregular, sometimes the animations are more smoothly and sometimes more laggy!
Yes, I assume I will probably use an .ogv video for the animation, that will be some work to turn it into an actual video, but it might be the only option.
For the background (or rather foreground)  in-game animation of the grass, I found out that it actually helps to reduce the number of sprites in the animation loop to speed up the game and animation.
I know that there is decent compressing software for free online, but do you have a program that you prefer for compressing your game?




Cassiebsg

From what I read in the AGS index I believe that playing videos (both .ogv or other standard formats as .mpg or .avi) are supported with plugins that are built in the engine and that function on both windows and mac computers (only not on Linux), so I believe it will be fine.
I am mainly animating a cut scene, only the grass animation is in the play world.
About the full size animation, that's actually where the problem comes up, full sized animated frames are not animated fastly and smoothly, the game begins to lag and freeze or at least slow down, when you have enough frames in the animation. Even if it is only one full sized animated frame. But I'll look into the option to play it as a video. That will hopefully work.




Crimson Wizard

I'm not sure if I understood how exactly you want me to use the "Mouse.ChangeModeGraphic" function.
I tried putting "Mouse.ChangeModeGraphic" in Repeatedly execute triggered by a bool to keep it in a loop while the animation runs, but that seemed to only slow it down.
Now I placed a "Mouse.ChangeModeGraphic" function in front of each scene.
Do I need to load each sprite of the animation as the mouse graphic in order to preload it? Or do I simply run the "Mouse.ChangeModeGraphic" command no matter what sprite I use as the mouse graphic, and all the sprites automatically preload? (I used a random sprite.)
How exactly does it work with the engine code?

There definitely seems to be a problem on how sprites are saved. When I have several longer animations with more sprites, it becomes worse. But I set the sprite cache to 50GB and it still lags.
Sometimes I just turned animated objects or characters transparent and let them keep animating while the next scene starts. Since you said the sprite cache is limited I made sure to not let anything animate in the background transparently in a loop.

It still lags. The weird thing is that sometimes it lags more, sometimes less for no obvious reason, when I test run it several times. But it does not display the animation as it should.

So, it seems that I will turn the intro story into a video and play it that way.

(If I get to it, I'll make sure to drop a few lines in the engine development)

Hi everyone!

I have been working on a game for the previous months. Now in the last steps of the process I want to see if I can improve the animated intro story, which is lagging a lot.
Because I use very high resolution animations (the game is in 1600x900, sometimes I have animations with 1600x900 sized sprites and additional animations on top of that), the animation becomes really slow and starts lagging, so that even the background music lags and cracks and pauses. And that is even before I added sound effects and voice over.
That's why I come back here again to seek help from creative, competent and inspired minds!

So far I tried changing the graphics driver to Direct3D 9, and turning "Limit display-mode to 16bit" as well as "Render sprites to screen resolution" to 'true'. I feel as if it improved the lagging a little bit, but the lagging still exists, especially during the higher resolution animations. Also, during the gameplay after the intro, I would like to animate the grass in the foreground, but doing so slows the game down. It creates lagging and the character does not move fluently anymore. (The grass covers a big area (1600x500). Also the animated grass is in the foreground so I cannot turn it into a background animation, in case you're thinking about it ) Increasing the sprite cache size does not work.

Are there any ways and tricks to reduce the lag or even eliminate it?

I'm aware most people don't create adventure games with those size dimensions and might not encounter this problem too often, so I'm really thankful for anyone who can help!

The feathering option is not the main part of my idea. It's just to exemplify how it can be implemented. The main value of my idea is to use transitioning borders for the halo light spot, which creates an alluringly realistic effect. It's small details like that that turn a game from good or ok to awesome!

Thanks I downloaded the new version.

Quick tip:

Instead of using an eraser to "carve out" the hole in the black graphic that creates the shadow effect (or the black gui), when using gimp, you could do this:

Select the Circle area with the Circle tool, while having the "Feather Edges" Option ticked and adjusted to your needs.
Then delete the selected area.
This will create a smooth transition between the dark and lit area, and will look way more realistic.
Save as png, done!

Radiation protection lmao

Seeing that it's trivial to add in the engine but requires much hassle in script, I am considering adding this ability to the engine, to AGS 3.5.0.

I don't really like doing this, since the version is almost out, but it appeared to be possible to complete in just couple of hours (spent 1 hour discussing how it should work).

You rock, Crimson Wizard!

That's dope eri0o!
Thanks for taking the time to write this.
I like the name coolanimate.
I let you know how it works after I experimented with it.

I don't know if there is a coding way to do this but, if not, the obvious solution would be to create a bunch of views, each starting the animation from a different frame and then change the sprite's view to the specific one when needed.

This won't work well with really long animations of course, but for 10 or so frames should be doable.

It's a great idea, but it's not really ideal for what I try to do. Thanks for sharing though!! 

Hello all!

What ideas do you guys have for starting an animation from a specific frame on, and not from the beginning?

I have some quirky or creative solutions, but if anyone else has their own way of doing it or any ideas, I'd be really curious to hear about it, if anyone ever came across that problem.

I would need to pause and play an animation very, very flexibly and very fast for what I'm trying to do, so the ideas I have so far are really sub-optimal.
So if you have any basic approaches  or ideas, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Lol, man n fist has a critical mind! I like it!

I have no idea why it is shaped and modeled like that.
It's a weird object, that's why I put it here.
But you can google it and do research on it and feel free to share in case you find interesting information on it.

It's used for the female species of a race called humans populating earth. ^^

Btw, what are the exact rules?

Obviously you are not allowed to use the image and do a graphic scan research.
But are you allowed to surf and research online and try to find the box object?

I mean you are allowed to guess the object if you already know it, so you should be allowed to research and surf and stumble across it as well, right??

Cassiebsg you're absolutely right. It's called "seeding finger" for artificial insemination!

Your turn!

Something comes out of the fat finger!

No shampoo or lotion!
That would be a hell of a shampoo bottle tho! 

no. keep guessing.

Well I warned you guys that it's a weird object! I guess nobody dares take a guess anymore lol!

Er...a dildo that someone's handless partner can strap on?

By the way, is this the first 'in the box' item that's actually used in a box?

(Sorry, I'll let myself out...) 

No worries man! 😄

Well I guess it depends how widely you define "box" lol.

That's creative lol. An amputee dildo lmao!!
Its primary use is not for pleasure, I give that much away.

Combine that with an actual utility and you got it!

Buttscratcher, get your buttscratcher here, Buttscratcheeeer. Sorry couldn't resist

No Peter, NO!