Animating explosion without amal

[aszu]

Hi there,

does anyone has an idea how to animate something (bob), let's say an explosion (5-6 frames) without using amal?

initially wanted go go for sth like

for a=1 to 5
bob 1,50,50,a
next a
wait vbl

it does not work and it goes straight for the last frame. i mean goes so fast, you cannot see the animation...

sounds simple but i have no clue whatsoever...

[Lonewolf10]

You have the right kind of idea, but the Wait Vbl needs to be inside the loop:

for a=1 to 5
bob 1,50,50,a
wait vbl
next a

[aszu]

thanks, and how to slow the animation down? it is too fast using vbl and barely noticable?

[Samurai_Crow]

Add another Wait Vbl after the first one to cut the frame rate in half.

[aszu]

now then, what about more complicated example. i animate background and want to draw explosion on top of it. when i use wait vbl, everything gets choppy and does not work as it should, so is there any other way?

[Mrs Beanbag]

what do you mean by "choppy"? you should always "wait vbl" every frame. if bobs are flickering, consider using double buffer.

[aszu]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

what do you mean by "choppy"? you should always "wait vbl" every frame. if bobs are flickering, consider using double buffer.

i use vbl in the main routine. what i do is to scroll backgound and then and move bobs around so i cannot stick another wait vbl in the another subroutine as i already have one in main.

[Mrs Beanbag]

yes, never use two wait vbls or you'll just slow things down, but that's not what i said.

Double buffering creates two screen buffers, the bobs are drawn to the invisible buffer, and then the buffers are swapped, so you never see the screen half-way through the drawing. It prevents flickering of bobs and other animation.

If you are using "screen copy" to scroll the screen around, the bob drawing routine might get confused, because the stored background behind the bobs will be wrong, so you will need to turn "bob update off" and "autoback 0" and do manual "bob clear"/"bob draw" operations to make it work. Clear the bobs, then scroll, then draw the bobs. Then "screen swap" and "wait vbl".

[aszu]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

yes, never use two wait vbls or you'll just slow things down, but that's not what i said.

Double buffering creates two screen buffers, the bobs are drawn to the invisible buffer, and then the buffers are swapped, so you never see the screen half-way through the drawing. It prevents flickering of bobs and other animation.

If you are using "screen copy" to scroll the screen around, the bob drawing routine might get confused, because the stored background behind the bobs will be wrong, so you will need to turn "bob update off" and "autoback 0" and do manual "bob clear"/"bob draw" operations to make it work. Clear the bobs, then scroll, then draw the bobs. Then "screen swap" and "wait vbl".

i know u did not but what i meant was it gets choppy with the second wait vbl command, otherwise everything is smooth.i use double buffering and switch the screens after drawing the background, then draw bobs. turned "bob update off" and draw them after the scroll. everything is perfect as long as i use amal. actually i just got an idea. eureka! i ll try it when i have a chance!

[Mrs Beanbag]

i still don't know what you mean by "choppy". if you add another wait vbl of course you will not have smooth animation, because it will halve the frame rate. There should only be one "wait vbl" per frame. If you want your explosion animation to run more slowly, only update its image number every other frame. For instance:

If (Timer AND 1) Inc A

[Retro1234]

Do you amal? Amal or not to Amal that is the question.

[Predseda]

Somebody does something that has animated background and explosions... mmmm, MMMM!!!

[Mrs Beanbag]

i never found AMAL that useful, personally... at least not for animations... in Puzcat i used it for sound effects!

[volvo_0ne]

I thought the only sound related command in AMAL was VUmeter ?

Isn't that more "visual"?

Just curious