Can inventory items be animated? I remember the motion sensor and the plastic explosives (don't know what else) were animated (blinking light) on the interface when they were toggled on... where they also animated in the inventory when toggled on? and, can inventory items be animated if they don't have an 'on/off' switch?
The activated dynamite work with color palette swapping, if I remember correct. So far I didn't saw any *real* animated inventory item and as long as nobody tests it for real, I say it doesn't work. :>
As far as I know it's not possible display several frames out of the blue. The only animation is through the animated colour indexes in the palette. That also seems hardcoded. I think, however, that if it's done right it could add a little cool effect to a retro-futuristic weapon, for example. More info here and there.
Ok, bear with me here, this is what i've gathered; there's five animated inventory items, and they all have two versions; a normal "off" one, and the "on" one which is the animated one. This version has the animated areas in a specific color which i suppose is the one that is hardcoded to change to the desired one out of the range of available animated colors... --- --- --- According to the articles you linked (and from what little i understood of it ), the animated property of it (and also to what color to change it too? not clear on that one) is set on the mapper. From this it seems that in-game each time one of these items is turned 'on' the frm used changes from 'static' to animated, now, if a normal animated FRM art is made, and assuming that this on/off switch does not pertain only to a specific item type, could this 'click to switch on' be set to always on? (don't want to fiddle around with the mapper ) Yes, that is precisely what i was thinking.
It is? I thought the engine would animate the colours automatically without any other steps. Just by having the right colour index in the frame the game would play the colour range animation. Those special items (dynamite, stealthboy, ...) consist of two different frames. The engine switches between these two frames (one of them includes the animation colours) whenever they go on/off. At least that's my understanding.
There is some sort of automatic limited animation with the hydroelectric magnetosphere regulator. I'm guessing that's what's elaborated on in the second link pelicano posted, though it's somewhat out of my league.
I'm referring to the fact that the hydroelectric magnetosphere regulator is an animated inventory object, yo.
For a bit of fun I did a little messing around with the plasma pistol (glock.frm) and a hex editor. Plasma Pistol Blue Ani I switched the colours of the plasma chamber area with the blue animated colours. I tried green but there wasn't enough variation in the slime colours for a good effect.
^How does it work? you put it in-game and it looks animated without any clicking (like on/off switch)? (can't test it myself...)
Yep it's just a modified frm. Just drop it in the "data\art\inven" folder to replace the original glock.frm. The animated colours in the fallout palette are always oscillating, any frm using them will be animated.
Cool, shame i can't see it at the moment... is there any way to see it?, the animation, i mean, or would it amount to making in-game gif's or videos? Nice! this answers my questions about it, thanks.
All right, but now i have more questions ; was this screenshot taken when the light was on? what happens on the interval when the light blinks off (what color is used)? Also, does it look animated too while on the inventory or only on the "hand" interface?
I don't think the inventory or iface bar are affected by map lighting. I tried it in the mapper at midnight with no change. They don't blink on and off but shift to the next colour in the cycle. For example each palette position for the blue animations, cycles through all the blue colours listed on the wiki page pelicano referenced above. While one palette position holds one colour the next positions holds the following colour and so on. It's animated in both the inventory and the interface bar.
That pistol looks bloody awesome. That's what I was saying, a small little detail and you get a very cool effect. It is best not to overdo it because we inherently want to see static images in the inventory screens and too much animations would provoke the feeling that the image is broken or messed up.
