Animation Object hiccups

[RayMarble]

I want an animation in the Animation Object to play in ping-pong (meaning when it reaches the last frame, it starts playing backwards till it reaches the first frame and then starts playing forward etc - think of pressing "6" in DeLuxe Paint). Since there's nothing like this in TGF2, I had to write my own system for this but hit a few walls.

[size:17pt]Take 001[/size]
In an empty frame with just an animation object, I put three events:

.Start of frame
=animtion stop

.Upon pressing "+"
=next frame

.Upon pressing "-"
=previous frame

The "+" works, the "-" doesn't. Also tried substituting the "=previous frame" in the last event with "go to frame: (current frame-1)", no luck. Why?

[size:17pt]Take 002[/size]
Same as before, only with the "stop animation" added after the next / previous frame:

.Start of frame
=animtion stop

.Upon pressing "+"
=next frame
=stop animation

.Upon pressing "-"
=previous frame
=stop animation

Now this sort of works (no clue why though). The problem is, one can keep hammering the +/- even when the animation is at the last / first frame and it'll keep skipping to the beginning / end, so in order to prevent it, I tried

[size:17pt]Take 003[/size]
.Start of frame
=animtion stop

.Upon pressing "+"
+current frame<total frames
=next frame
=stop animation

.Upon pressing "-"
+current frame>1 (tried 0 too, same result)
=previous frame
=stop animation

now this doesn't work again (as in, nothing happens if I press + or -). I obviously don't understand how the animation object works (or it's hopelessly broken), so does anybody have any idea of how this should be fixed in order to control the animation through keyboard - make it go previous / next frame without getting stuck at the beginning / end?

[RayMarble]

No wonder it doesn't work - as soon as the "Animation -> Stop" command is issued, TGF2 thinks that the total number of frames for any animation in the Animation Object became 0 (zero)! - according to the debugger.

Despite the animation consisting of 12 frames. whoops... let's hope this will get addressed in the next build.

Anyway, I tried using "Pause" instead of "Stop" just in case - still no luck.

[RayMarble]

Speaking of Animation Object... what's the difference between "Hide at start" and "Visible at start"? It behaves identically (and the Help file doesn't mention any differences either)?

[Aloan]

I know what you mean! This was an easy one for me!
Say you have:
frame 1-2-3-4 and you want it to ping pong.

Well all U gotta do is have the frames in this order:

frame 1-2-3-4-3-2

After this you check mark the loop! and it will do it for you. What you just did is trick the animator to ping pong the animation for you! hope this helped!

[RayMarble]

Yes I know how to do it manually all too well (setting it up in the animation itself) - which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid

One of the reasons is that there are some animations that have to be played forward (meaning the usual 1,2,3,4 order) under certain circumstances, but ping-pong (1,2,3,4,3,2,) under other circumstances in the same project, and it'd be much more practical to control it from the software than having duplicate files - not to mention switching files on the go etc.

In any case after experimenting some more I gave up, my conclusion is that the animation object doesn't work.

Hope this will get fixed in the next build.