animation for standard terrain tiles

[bladum]

Simple thing I made.

I duplicate larger vegetation images and add simple effect of moving by wind. Similar to what was made in settlers 1. Effect is almost noticeable during battlescape but gives feeling that environment is more alive. Still different plant objects have its animation shifted so they are not moving at the same time.

What do you think about it ? hot or not ? Does anyone care about it ? Does any one want to improve tilesets to add animations properly ?

PS: just don't kill me for the "settlers 1" thing

Tin

[BlackLibrary]

+1 here.  When OpenTFTD is lifting off the ground, more undersea life that does just that and then some would be awesome.

[bladum]

actually it can be done even today. It is just a matter of small changes in current images via mcd editor. In vanilla ufo 1 only few items were animated. in vanilla tftd there was much more.

[volutar]

Problem is that every tile onscreen will be "synchronized", i.e. in one phase. It's only the smoke which has phase randomized. To make them look a bit diversed, you'll have to make extra MCDs with another "phases", but that will lead to altering maps too.
In UFOEU only arctic tileset has terrain animation (water). TFTD has more animated things, but sometimes it feels even overly.
But really, i would like to invent "random phased" bit in the MCD, to avoid map rebuilding, and in the same time provide visual "evenness" of terrain animation.
For example, byte38, is always 3. For no reason. Unused byte in the MCD. We can use it. If byte38==0 and MCD is animated - init tile with random phase (0..7).

[BlackLibrary]

Interesting. 

Sounds like you would need the following:
1.  Non animated
2.  Animated, sequential
3.  Animated, random

[volutar]

No.
Most of tiles have all 8 frames equal === they aren't animated
Some tiles are using different PCKs. But "vanillish" way to treat them - by starting from 0. And animating simultaneously, i.e. one phase for whole map.
We can add visual diversity for "animated" terrain tiles, by adding special flags to them - random starting phase.
And frankly, 2 frames is too few. At least there should be 3.
I think I am clear enough here.

[bladum]

not true. I can setup different phase for different pck. Tested on vanilla and works fine.

[volutar]

not true. I can setup different phase for different pck. Tested on vanilla and works fine.

There's single MCD for the wheat (CULTIVAT#4). And map is using single value for it. How are you gonna setup different phases across that map module with field of wheat?

[bladum]

as shown in first post. and its working fine. I never said that every tile will animate seperately. This is your assumption volutar Every tile animated separately would be very distracting.

[volutar]

It can't work fine. Where did you see field of wheat which is waving as one?
Did you see smoke with phase0 as initial? It looks awful. And any terrain animation "flashing" with same frames in same time, will look awful.

[bladum]

This is your opinion it will looks awful. Luckily there are players who has their own opinions I asked them and they agreed. Players, not moders or developers.

Btw I just shown simple way how game could be enhanced. If you like it, it is cool. if you don't then its ok. You don't have to add comments that brings no value especially when it comes to very subjective as visuals.

[volutar]

It's not serious to be "fine" with totally unison, synched "fullframe" terrain animation. It seems like you simply didn't see it looking better, and people you were asking didn't see either. Making terrain slightly more dynamic is great idea, and it should be carried out properly to look really worthy. And I can't admit this "synched" way is good. It can, and must be better.
My comment is simply about getting it better and worthy.
This idea deserves more polished and higher quality look.

[bladum]

done in my fork, can be merged with original one, no impact on standard tiles

[Yankes]

is hard to show animation using only one screenshoot YT video or gif would be better.

Another thing that I must agree with volutar, adding random seed to phase add lot more natural feel. In many games when you see big surfaces of repeating pattern, every thing look 10 time worse.

Good example is globe shading, without random part (poor man dithering) you will see multiple lines passing through ocean, that was very distracting.

[bladum]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgBrmUp3k9Y&feature=youtu.be