I have some questions about animations

I'm looking at the following video: 




I think I know how they did the animation.  It's just a static background with a foreground sprite that does the animation.  Presumably they're pulling it off of a spritesheet somewhere.

My question is, what if I wanted to animate the entire background image instead?  Is there documentation for loading animations into Sprite objects in the scripting?  And/or, how does one get a sprite object from an existing animation in the database?

The current animation stuff in the database seems like it's really geared towards animating things like character attacks, etc, but maybe a lot more trouble doing an entire image for a title screen.

Also, Is there any existing documentation on how to create the spritesheets?  requires sizes, etc.  I'm finding it difficult to find good documentation on some of these things.

also, what does Graphics.freeze do?  I see call in the scripts, but I don't see the implementation, and couldn't seem to find any documentation on it.  My best guess is that it writes the vid card for writing to memory, but that's just a guess.

Sorry if this seems noobish, I'm a noob :)

PS

Is there a way to edit these scripts outside of the RPGMaker software itself?  I'm finding the editor is terrible and destroying any productivity I hope to have.

1) to animate the titlescreen, you'll need a script - there are several different scripts available that allow different effects on the titlescreen - if nothing else works, there is one that replaces the background with a map and then you can use any map event command to display pictures or other things.


Spritesheets are described in the help file. they have no specific size but can be any size, you just need to follow the structure - and if you make a larger spritesheet, then the resulting sprite will be larger than the grid (see the default monster sprites as an example).


The only thing that new users find difficult on sprite creation is the use of formatting symbols in the name of the spritesheet - follow the link in my signature, down at the tips and tricks there is an explanation about $ and ! in filenames.


Scripts are just text files - you can write them in notepad, or any other text editor and then copy them into the script editor. This is how most of the scripts are stored on the internet anyway. Testing the scripts however requires the editor.

Sorry, didn't think to look for a scripting forum, just went straight to the vx ace board.

I didn't think to look in the help files for the API info, as someone with over 15 years of software dev experience, I've gotten used to having documentation online (as silly as that sounds).  I see it now, I'll look through it, thanks for the heads up.

The reason I asked about saving the scripts is because from a productivity standpoint, there are several things that are really annoying.

- the editor itself is very basic, and can only have a single file open at a time.

- the editor has alt-a to apply, but no alt-o/alt-c for ok/cancel, so you have to manually close the editor, this is exacerbated by the next point

- you can't execute the game with the script editor open.  You have to grab the mouse and close the window directly, even though editing implies both hands on the keyboard, and you can launch the game via keyboard (as long as the script editor isn't open).

The solution of copying the file into the script editor isn't really a solution because it still implies you having to do more work than simply saving/launching the game.  I'm not sure why this hasn't come up before, but your solution is probably slower than what happens currently, and is more error prone.

I'm ok with writing a few small Powershell scripts to automate pushing the rggs scripts into/out of the rpg maker environment (if it isn't saved as simply as text).  Ideally having the PS scripts launch the rpg maker game as well, so that when I'm editing scripts, I can use something like vim to just edit and launch repeatedly, making my debug/fix/test loop much faster.

How *are* the scripts saved on the HD?  I've popped open the files and it's definitely not just straight up text.  Is there any documentation on this?

alright, I've skimmed through the help files.  It's helped clarify a few things, but leaves a few things unanswered.

In particular, I'm still not sure how to *script* animations.  It explicitly states the following: "A file containing images for animations to display mainly as effects on the battle screen."

So it sounds like the animation subsystem is not designed/useful for animating the titlescreen (something I had concluded myself, but this clarifies it).

what animation specific things are there in RGSS 3.x?  Nothing is jumping out at me, so it feels like I'm going to have to roll my own or use someone elses implementation.

mreiland, please avoid double posting, as it is against the forum rules. You can review our forum rules here. Thank you.

Animations in Ace are either in the battle screen (the ones you refer to above), or on events when they walk or you turn on stepping animation (by simply changing frames).

You MAY be able to create an animation and use the existing animation system - or more likely you could see how it works and then write something else based on it. 

But there are a number of title screen animation scripts out there that probably already do this - I suspect you'd be better off taking a look at some of them and tweaking to meet your requirements.

When I have a moderator come and tell me I can be moderated for clarifying my question for no reason other than someone else hasn't responded, it's time to find somewhere else to pick up this system.

There's the letter and then the spirit, at no point was my posting disruptive.

These are not the boards for me.  

Rules are rules, leave this board if you dont accept them.

Watch this if you want an idea on animating things with rgss3:

wow, way to overreact.  I pointed you to the forum rules.  You didn't get a warning or a ban. 

Every other moderator would have done the same thing.  I just happened to read the thread first.

And I DID answer your question as far as I could - in a helpful and polite manner. 

Stop looking for things to be offended about.