This is what I'm using:

You create an image (no M)- this is the 'base' state for when the icon is not doing anything.
Then create an M state and use the movie camera to create the movement animations you want for that image. (so you only have one M state when you open up the dmi.
When the icon moves it should now play the frames for the M state (and show the base state when movement stops).

I've noticed that it works much better with a movement delayer, say sleep(5) in Move(). If you don't delay movement it doesn't give it time to sort things out and sometimes the animation doesn't play or 'stutters'.

I bet the others are glad it's you doing the save tutorial now! - sorry about the cryptic explanation.

On 8/14/00 2:01 am Tom H. wrote:

I'm wondering if Deadron simply wasn't seeing the movements because our default ticker is too fast or something.

No I couldn't figure out how to create movement states for an icon at all, much less get them to play.

I finally got movement states, but it was confusing.

I wanted to have movement states for my pixmap -- just a different pixmap for each direction. I still don't know if I can do that.

I ended up noticing that if you create a movie and set it to be a movement state, you can find a little Dir popup that lets you specify the number of directions.

This Dir popup is completely hidden functionality the first time through. And the terminology of "movement states" and "icon states" is confusing, because you're never sure which state is meant, or whether they mean the same thing.

The biggest help would probably be to default to four movement states if the user clicks the movement state checkbox. That way when you edit the movie, you immediately see that the movement states are available.

If you can provide movement states for a pixmap, I'd recommend the same thing.

I know when I was getting into movement states I thought you had to have more than one .dmi file if you wanted to have an object be still when it was standing and move when it was walking. But I know I only have one icon (with an M) for my Sheep I person, and it works fine.

I could never figure out how to use named icon states. I wasn't sure if the documentation was confusing or I was just dense.

Z

On 8/14/00 10:25 am Deadron wrote:

Could I request a general UI/terminology review here?

Sure. I'll try to address both your and Zilal's comments here.

When you open up the icon-editor, you have basically two options: clicking on the "paint-palette" or clicking on the "movie camera". Each of these actions will do the same general thing: create a new "icon-state" for your file, eg:
[click on paint-palette] -> [editing] -> [new icon-state]
[click on movie-camera] -> [editing] -> [new icon-state]
We'll worry about the [editing] part in a second. I'm just presenting things this way to make it clear that the paint-palette and movie-editors create entities that are essentially the same.

The point of icon-states is to allow multiple apparent positions/variations of a single object, without having to deal with many files. For instance, suppose you want to make your player appear differently when he is standing or sitting. One way to do this is to make a bunch of different icon files and switch between them. The cleaner way is to make a single icon file that contains two icon-states. Within the editor, you can label the icon-states as "standing" and "sitting". Within your DM code, you can change the icon by just changing the usr.icon_state parameter to either "standing" or "sitting". If one of these states is going to be the default, you can instead name it to the empty string: "". The icons in the old "night-soil" game, for instance, all had a default "" state, a "fighting" state, and a "corpse" state. So if you opened up, say 'warrior.dmi', you would see these three icon-states in the main panel.

Most of the time the designer of the world can control when the different icon-states will become activated. For instance, in night-soil the "fighting" state became active in combat, the "corpse" state in death, etc. There is one exception, though: movement. Some games will want to display critters that perform, say, a "walking sequence" when moving between two adjacent tiles. This is effectively an icon-state that goes into effect at the beginning of movement and halts at the end of it. You can make a state a movement-state by clicking the appropriate check-box when editing it.

Movement states will generally have the default "" state name. If you have an icon with two "" states, one a movement state and one a regular state, the movement state will become visible only during motion. Going back to our first example, we might make our "standing" state just be the default "", and then add an additional "walking" state with a label of "" (movement selected). This approach generalizes to named icon-states. For instance, if you have an icon file with two states named "fighting", one as a regular state and one as a movement state, the movement state will go into effect when the object is in "fighting" state and happens to be moving. I doubt many people will make this many states, though!

Now, what about that [editing] phase? The two different kinds of icon-states are "pixmaps" (paint-palette) and "movies" (movie-camera) A movie is just a grid of pixmaps, with frames on the horizontal axis and directions on the vertical one. Movies may have one, four, or eight directions and any number of frames. You can even make a movie with one direction and one frame. It is just a single pixmap, and that's how the game will treat it. It's probably easier to think of the converse: a pixmap is really just the special case of a unidirectional, uniframe movie.

A simple example of a movie might be a picture of an arrow pointing in the four cardinal directions. It would have four directions and one frame. If you assign this to a player, the different arrows will be displayed dependent on the direction he is facing. The directionality has nothing to do with movement; it's just an unfortunate coincidence that the most common way to switch directions happens to be by moving (hence the confusion with movement-states).

Now suppose you want the arrows to blink in different colors. You can do this by adding a few frames to your movie. So now your arrow icon-state will have, say, four directions and three frames. By default, the player will animate through the frame in the SOUTH direction. As he changes direction, he'll animate through the frames corresponding to the current direction.

Finally, suppose you want the player to only blink when he is actively moving. You can do this by just making the previous state a movement-state. In the main panel, you would have a single state labeled "" (M). On the screen, the player will just see the pixmap correspoding to the first frame of his current direction. As he moves around, he'll see a blinking effect as the movement animation plays. When he stops, the animation will halt and he'll see the first frame of the new direction.

This example addresses Zilal's query: your icon file can consist of a single icon-state with the movement flag checked. The first frame of this icon-state will be displayed normally, while the remaining frames will be played during movement between adjacent tiles. If you were to add another, normal, icon-state to the file, this would take precedence when the object wasn't moving. In general, the server will just fallback on the closest state that it can find.

Terminology review:

Icon: An icon file, eg 'warrior.dmi'.

Icon-state: A single pixmap or movie within the icon file. Icons will consist of one or more icon-states. In the game, a single icon-state is active at any one time, as regulated in the code.

Movement-state: A special icon-state that automatically goes into effect during the "smooth-movement" between adjacent tiles.

Pixmap: An icon state created with the paint-palette editor.

Movie: An icon state created with the movie-camera editor; essentially a collection of pixmaps. The game decides which pixmap to display based on the direction of the corresponding object and the internal world-ticker.

Whew! I hope I covered the big concerns. Tell me if you have any questions.

On 8/14/00 5:19 pm Deadron wrote:

- Consider separating the movement flag from the "Edit state" command. There's no reason to think that the way to set the movement flag is to choose "Edit state". And consider changing the name of either "Edit..." or "Edit state..." to avoid confusion. Possibly do away with the "Edit state" command and integrate the functionality into the icon/movie editing panes.

The problem is that I don't know a better place to put the movement information. It really is a type of icon-state. Most icon-states go into effect when the corresponding name is explicitely set in the code. Those with the movement flag go into effect automatically when movement is done on a particular icon state. I'm pretty confident that the interface is okay, if I can just find the right way to explain it.

- If the movement flag is set for an icon state, automatically set it to have 4 directions (or popup a question asking how many directions they want). One of the most confusing initial things is setting the movement flag, opening the movie and not seeing the directions represented. And the Dir popup is way too invisible to be noticed by the beginner.

I'm a little confused by this comment. I cannot overstress the fact that the movement flag has nothing to do with directionality. You can even use pixmaps (created with the paint-palette) for icons designated for movement. This just means that those pixmaps will blink into existence whenever the corresponding object moves.

That said, we should just have movies default to 4-directional (I believe they currently default to 1-directional). This should make the directionality quite evident.

- Think about the terminology and see if you can eliminate the word "state" from one or more things. Also consider never saying "icon" and always saying "icon file". I'd find it less confusing to see the terms like so:

icon file
movie
pixmap
movement flag
direction

Good point. I wish that the notation was a bit clearer too. The term "icon" is so ambiguous, since it could refer to a a file, an image, a state, etc.

"If the movement flag is set for the movie, you can provide a pixmap or movie for each possible direction.

This is misleading. Remember, the movement flag doesn't have anything do with whether you can set directions or not. That facillity is just a part of the movie editor whenever you create a new movie. I'm pretty sure this is what is throwing you off. For your purposes, it doesn't sound like you want to set the movement flag at all: you just want a directional movie, right? So just go into the movie editor, select 1-frame, 4-directions, and do that. Then you wont be haunted by this state business!

If you provide a pixmap for a direction, then that is what shows whenever the character is facing in that direction. If you provide a movie for a direction, then that movie plays when the character moves in that direction..."

Yes. And if you don't have the movement flag set for the same (directional) movie, it will just play constantly. In other words, the movement flag doesn't effect what the movie may contain (ie- directions, frames), only when it plays.

Hope this seems more helpful than pushy...

All comments are helpful. Thanks.

On 8/14/00 7:41 pm Deadron wrote:

Perhaps if the checkbox were called "Play movie once on movement"?

And if this were done, perhaps change the icon indicating a movement state to a "1"? If I'm understanding the purpose of a movement state now (which I certainly might not be), then a 1 would remind me that this is something that plays once...

I'm replying here because I don't want to get into the suburbs of the post and have the reply lost in obscurity.

Quite basically, I can explain it best with an example:

Download example icon containing movement states, pixmaps, and movies

This (outdated) icon was used in CATs to represent different weapons the player would carry. The blank icon state was used because icon states didn't show up in the old mapper. It was a simple pixmap used to represent the marine. Then, the first state, "Unarmed", was shown whenever the player had no weapon. Whenever the player moved, the movement state with the same name was displayed, meaning the "Unarmed" movement state displayed. Then, when I wanted to change the icons for the player, I would simply modify their icon state, and then they would appear to be carrying a knife, a pistol, etc., which would also show when they were moving.

(I think Saige would recognize this icon too; I sent it to him to clear things up as well.)