Graphics and Animation Question

OK this is a tech question for Francois or Andos....

I still dont understand loading... i think you must have told me about 20 times... (I must remember...lol)... but also i have some other questions on this.

How does MMF handle loading of a frame, does it do it at the start of the app or wait until it gets to the frame.

What happens if a frame has alot of graphics with lots of animations?

Is there a way to create a loading screen, that can be in place while the frame loads.

What is the best way to handle the following (as an example)..

I have an alien ship, this alien ship has a set of animations. BUT, I also want this ship to be customised by the player, and there could be lots of other animations that define the look of the ship, such as its colour. Is it better to handle this as separate active objects, with their animations, or a single active with many many different animations and ship designs.

Can MMF load graphics at runtime while in the frame?

I am making a game that will require lots of variation, and just trying to understand how MMF could handle this.

Sorry if some of these questions are stupid, but i think this kind of questioning on the usage of larger scale use/loading of files will be very important.. so the better i understand it the better for my games but also explaining it to others :D

Jason

- The frame is loaded before it begins, not at the start of the app.
- Lots of graphics -> longer loading time
- The previous frame should remain displayed until the new one has loaded : you can turn it into a loading screen.
- I think it would be simpler for you as multiple objects, and you access them with qualifiers
- MMF cannot load graphics in runtime (for v3)
Actually MMF is not very suitable to do what you want to do, as it does not allow the lading of skins for objects at runtime...

> The previous frame should remain displayed until the new one has loaded : you can turn it into a loading screen.

Say you convert the previous frame to a loading screen, the thing is, when you move/jump to the next frame, will animations in the previous frame play until the new one is loaded? Like a sort of "Async Jump to"?

Thanks Francois, Yeah certainly some of that is useful for MMF3, to start thinking about the whole data pipeline situation, and making it more powerful,

For the Loading screens(which would be really useful), perhaps there could be a checkbox for stating a frame is a loading frame? and a condition to check when the frame has loaded?

Or can that be done right now?

Jason

Correct ùme if I'wronng, but I think the display of the previous frame stay on screen until the next one is drawn. This could be a loading screen...

One question: are animations played in that frame while loading the next one? Or is it drawn as a still?

They will be paused. When you call a jump to the next frame it would be wrong to let any frame continue running anyway while the next loads.

We'll need an "async jump to" action in MMF3 ... :)

Speaking about pause ... is there a way to unpause an application with other events than keyboard input?

Say that I want to use the pause feature of MMF in my iphone game, but only unpause the game if the player touches an object, an area of the screen, or anywhere on the screen.

<i>Correct ùme if I'wronng, but I think the display of the previous frame stay on screen until the next one is drawn. This could be a loading screen...</i>

So i could just create a simple frame with the word "loading" on it, and then once the next frame has loaded it will jump straight to it.. cool :)

Would be nice if we could in the future (mmf3) get how much of the frame has loaded and put that into a loading type counter... or have animations on the loading screen... but the solution sounds fine for this version :D


Jason