Having Animations start/change randomly.

[Sonti]

Hey guys,

I have about 100 active objects cloned from 4 different human characters. These objects have a very simple animation that consist of 2 frames (just eyes blinking like in old sensible soccer games). The problem is that when the game starts, animation for all of them obviously starts too and they all blink at the same time.
What I want is to randomize these blinks a bit so that it looks more "natural" rather than having an insanely well synchronized blinking bunch of people .

[Zabooza]

are they cloned or duplicated?

[Sonti]

Cloned. I couldn't work with duplicating because when I rotate one of them they all rotate, etc.

[Zabooza]

duplicate them. it makes this a lot easier. when u are done, tell me.

i am gonna be gone for a few minutes so just wait for sec

[Sonti]

No, I can't duplicate them. I rather have them individually, as some of them are rotated, looking at different directions. If I duplicate them any change i make on one changes all of them. Some of them will also have different animations later on with path movement which is another reason for cloning rather than duplicating.

I'm willing to take the hard way and randomize them one by one. Either that or you're gonna have to explain how the stuff I mentioned above is possible with duplicates. Thanks.

[DavidN]

If you add them all to a qualifier (under the event-grid tab in the object properties), then you can set up a couple of events that affect them all. I'm not totally clear on how your animations are set up, but you could do it something like this:

Every [set amount of time, say, 1 second]
-> Set Alterable Value A of [qualifier with audience objects] to random(5)

If Alterable Value A of [qualifier with audience objects] = 1
-> Set animation of [qualifier] to Blinking

[Sonti]

Hmm turns out after moving around ingame they start blinking differently, not sure whether it is related to being far from the center of the screen or players character but at the moment looks like I don't have to change anything to get them to blink at different times. They just blink simultaneously until I start moving around, which is not a biggie.

Thanks for the help.