Basic animation help requested.

robertstacey@btinternet.com

Hi,
I've just recently started using Gamesalad and i'm in the process of learning and setting up the basics of a short game I want to make. As a temporary measure I planned on making a very basic 2 frame walk animation for my main character just so I have that working. I made up 2 frames facing right and mirrored them for left.
I just need some help with the animation if anyone would be so kind. I have my movement down and simply added in an animate behavior in the "Do" section in my movement rules. I put the two frames in the window and ticked loop and reset actor image.

Right now I get blank frames (which I havent put in) appearing at the end of the cycle so I see the first then second frame, then it goes blank for a bit then cycles it again. It is the same no matter what the FPS and I tried putting the images in twice (2 cycles) but it just goes through all 4 frames then blanks out for a bit at the end. Is there something im doing incorrectly? I also wasnt sure whether I needed a "Change Image" rule in, as I had that in before i put in the animation so that the actor was facing in the right direction depending on which way he was moving.

Any help with this would be appreciated!

Thanks

Bob

jamie_c

Hi Robertstacey,

Here is a tutorial I posted about basic graphics and animation you might find helpful.

http://www.jamie-cross.net/?p=549

Jamie

robertstacey@btinternet.com

Hi, that looks like a really good tutorial, thanks for that. Apart from my animation being 2 frame right now, and Im working on Windows not Mac, my animation setup is essentially the same, so im still not sure why the actor is flickering out of existence temporarily at the end of the cycle :S

jamie_c

Can you post images of your behaviors? I would help to see how you have things set up.

Jamie

robertstacey@btinternet.com

Sure. I'll point out that i think my move coding is relatively weird, I was following one of the vids on the gamesalad tutorial page.

Screenshot: http://s813.photobucket.com/albums/zz56/Nanostronghold/?action=view&current=Untitled.jpg

Video of the issue in action:


Thanks for your quick responses btw

famekrafts

maybe because you are animating at 5 frames per second. try making it 4 fps per second. Try to always make the frames divisible by the fps, so if its 6 frames, you should make it 6, if you want it to slow down make it 3 or if you want to make it fast make it 12 fps.

Also disable restore actor image when done, as you want it to loop.

Try this.

jamie_c

Hi Robertstacey,

I think it might be what wickedsunny mentions above, try disabling the restore actor image option and see if that does it for you.

Jamie

robertstacey@btinternet.com

Hmmm, ive just tried that, disabled restore actor image and, with having 4 frames (2 twice) I tried it out at 4 and 8 fps, but I still get the same flicker. It's like it's added extra made up frames at the end that have nothing in them. Could anything i've done cause that?
I dont have a very friendly image size, i didnt know what I was doing so I just made the image sizes 100. Would changing it to 64x64 or 128x128 help? Or is that unlikely?

Thanks for these responses guys

xforce

first thing that came to mind when i watched your video is that its a loading problem. try changing the size as you've suggested.

if that fails just for the hell of it try adding in more frames. just to go by process of elimination you need to check if the animate behaviour will fail regardless. so add in some images to your animate behaviour. of anything. just something to fill in the animation sequence more. then see what happens. if the same result increase the fps.

the only time ive seen gs do this is either a) restore actor image is reverting back to a transparent image you have or b) the creator is just being glitchy

robertstacey@btinternet.com

I'll look into it, thanks for all your suggestions. As this is my first attempt ever at GS i'm probably gonna rework this project from scratch to clean it up. A lot of it has been done in the first war I thought might work. I'll clean up the movement controls and see if i run into it again.

Thanks very much everyone for the suggestions.