Mode7EX sprite mapping of active objects help

[FungalGrowth]

Hello,

I am working on a fake-3D game at the moment (hi, dragonguy!) and I'm trying to adapt the Mode7 sprite mapping examples to work with active objects instead of active pictures.

The fact that active pictures and active objects have different functionality, combined with the fact I don't entirely understand the code means my current attempt has not worked so well...

I'm wondering if anyone has done this successfully, and possibly has an example file I could take a look at.

I'm happy to provide what I've got so far when I'm back from work.

Thanks for any and all help!

-FungalGrowth

[dragonguy]

So what exactly is the problem?

[FungalGrowth]

Ok, well basically the problem seems to be with the scaling. I used the spritemapping example and ported the code from the active picture object to an active object I have. The problem is that they don't have the same functions.

For example, the active picture object can scale the X and Y dimensions independently, actives only have one (whole image) scale. Also the active picture object has an "Original Width" and "Original Height" option, which the active doesn't. I tried to work around these by storing the original dimensions and only using one value to scale, but obviously I've screwed something up.

What has resulted is fascinating, and difficult to describe, but ultimately not what I want. :P As you walk towards a sprite, it shrinks smoothly, and gets larger in "jumps"! When the sprite is off screen sometimes it scales to such a huge extent that a HUUUGE black bar of death (A massively scaled one-pixel black line) descends from the top of the screen and crashes my project! Fun

It's something that needs to be seen to be enjoyed This is definately not the kind of issue that can be resolved without me posting what I have, so I'll try and do that tonight. I just thought maybe someone had already got Mode7 sprite mapping with active and could post an example.

[xyzzy]

something like this should work:

GetMapWidth( "Mode 7 ex", X( "2Dobject" ), Y( "2Dobject" ), 32, 32) / ((X Right( "3Dobject" ) - X Left( "3Dobject" )) * 1.0)

GetMapHeight( "Mode 7 ex", X( "2Dobject" ), Y( "2Dobject" ), 32, 32) / ((Y Bottom( "3Dobject" ) - Y Top( "3Dobject" )) * 1.0)

the 32s obviously represent the original pixel dimensions of 3Dobject

[FungalGrowth]

Hi xyzzy,

Thanks for the reply! I have tried implementing your method. The results are ...uh... interesting again

The sprite gets angry as you get closer, then gets calmer and... deflates as you get closer... then BAM! It gets an epileptic fit of some sort... I sure hope the poor thing is not in pain... It then occassionaly dissapears, or continues to seize uncontrollably...

You can have a look at my file here:

fungalgrowth.net/SpriteMappingActives.mfa

Just look for the group Sprite Placement 2, and thanks again, hope you enjoy my mad experiment gone wrong!

[xyzzy]

Hi xyzzy,

Thanks for the reply! I have tried implementing your method. The results are ...uh... interesting again

The sprite gets angry as you get closer, then gets calmer and... deflates as you get closer... then BAM! It gets an epileptic fit of some sort... I sure hope the poor thing is not in pain... It then occassionaly dissapears, or continues to seize uncontrollably...

You can have a look at my file here:

fungalgrowth.net/SpriteMappingActives.mfa

Just look for the group Sprite Placement 2, and thanks again, hope you enjoy my mad experiment gone wrong!

it looks like the animation is doing it, for some reason; it works fine as long as it isn't animated

not sure why it's doing that, since both animation frames are the same size

[FungalGrowth]

Hey, you're right...

Gah!! Thats infuriating! Having animations is the whole point of using actives!

Do you have any ideas of what to do?

[xyzzy]

you may have to go back to active pictures and make up a custom animation engine which loads the current frame into the AP... i did something like that a few years ago and it worked fine

since mode7ex was originally released for MMF1.5, it wasn't designed to scale active objects (since MMF1.5 didn't have that capability anyway), so it's probably tripping up over the animations somewhere; MMF2 itself doesn't seem to reset or otherwise screw up the scale factors for the objects when they're animated, so i'm going to say it's more than likely a bug in mode7

[FungalGrowth]

That sounds like the most likely cause. I might try to contact Marcello from cellosoft. Hopefully he's still willing to work on this extenstion.

The custom animation engine sounds like it'd work, but not really the ideal solution. Another benefit of actives is that I can use the 32 directions for rotation of the object (like if I render a 3D object in 32 directions).

Also I was intending to write this engine so that it can be applied to a large amount of objects using fastloops. I havn't looked into the custom animation yet, but it sounds like it would make this project even more complicated than is manageable for me.

Potentially, if I needed even more fastloops to apply the custom animation to each sprite.. it'll be even more strain on an engine I'm already struggling to keep as efficient as possible and running relatively smooth...

[xyzzy]

That sounds like the most likely cause. I might try to contact Marcello from cellosoft. Hopefully he's still willing to work on this extenstion.

The custom animation engine sounds like it'd work, but not really the ideal solution. Another benefit of actives is that I can use the 32 directions for rotation of the object (like if I render a 3D object in 32 directions).

Also I was intending to write this engine so that it can be applied to a large amount of objects using fastloops. I havn't looked into the custom animation yet, but it sounds like it would make this project even more complicated than is manageable for me.

Potentially, if I needed even more fastloops to apply the custom animation to each sprite.. it'll be even more strain on an engine I'm already struggling to keep as efficient as possible and running relatively smooth...

the custom animation engine would just use objects' alterable values, so each object could have its own animation going and you shouldn't have to do anything weird with loops to make it work. you could even have directions implemented somewhat easily... all of your images might have filenames like:

dir_animation_frame.bmp

so '5_stopped_0.bmp' would be direction 5 and frame 0 of the Stopped animation

so each object would have one AV for which direction it's facing, another AV for the current frame that animation's on, and an AS for the animation name

EDIT: here is an example i made a while ago for someone else, which uses a similar concept