How to animate custom elements?

[SLAPPYHAPPY2000]

Alright, time to get some things cleared up:

I am not a very experienced guy when it comes to custom graphics.
All I do is take the spritesheet of what's in the existing game and edit it to my liking, which limits me greatly because I cannot make any animated custom elements.
I've heard of a program called ConfEdit, but I have no idea how to use it and it does not exactly work. When I try to open it, it just loads up with an error. Can someone help me find a better way to make custom graphics for my levelsets?

Thanks.

[Holger]

For getting ConfEdit to work on recent Windows versions, look here: https://www.artsoft.org/rocksndiamonds/tools/

But you can also simply use just any graphics program and any ordinary text editor to create graphics and animations for your custom elements, plus the definitions for the configuration file "graphicsinfo.conf". Same is true for sounds and music.

For some inspirations, just take some existing level sets with custom graphics, and look at their "graphicsinfo.conf" files (and best start with the definitions for only a few elements). Creating the first simple definitions for one or two custom elements is really easy, and once you're familiar with it, you can add more trickery.

As always, you can find many good stuff in "BD2K3" (which is even documented quite well!), while you can find many newer possibilities in those many level sets by Eizzoux in this forum!

[SLAPPYHAPPY2000]

For getting ConfEdit to work on recent Windows versions, look here: https://www.artsoft.org/rocksndiamonds/tools/

But you can also simply use just any graphics program and any ordinary text editor to create graphics and animations for your custom elements, plus the definitions for the configuration file "graphicsinfo.conf". Same is true for sounds and music.

For some inspirations, just take some existing level sets with custom graphics, and look at their "graphicsinfo.conf" files (and best start with the definitions for only a few elements). Creating the first simple definitions for one or two custom elements is really easy, and once you're familiar with it, you can add more trickery.

As always, you can find many good stuff in "BD2K3" (which is even documented quite well!), while you can find many newer possibilities in those many level sets by Eizzoux in this forum!

Thanks so much! This will help me a bunch in making great levelsets for the community.
Speaking of levelsets... would you mind checking your gmail? I asked you an important question (to me) from there , and I really want to know what you will say...

[Holger]

Speaking of levelsets... would you mind checking your gmail? I asked you an important question (to me) from there , and I really want to know what you will say...

Check your mail -- I already answered it half a day ago.

[SLAPPYHAPPY2000]

Check your mail -- I already answered it half a day ago.

Thanks for the response! I understand everything.
BD2K3 has 3D elements as opposed to 2D animated ones. Plus, BD2K3 uses the .pcx extension. Is there anyway to do this with PNGs, and if so, how?
Thanks.

[Holger]

What exactly do you want to do?

There should be nothing that you can do with PCX files that you cannot do with PNG files -- one reason that older level sets (and older versions of R'n'D itself) did not use PNG files is that the PNG file format did not exist when R'n'D was released first...

[SLAPPYHAPPY2000]

What exactly do you want to do?

There should be nothing that you can do with PCX files that you cannot do with PNG files -- one reason that older level sets (and older versions of R'n'D itself) did not use PNG files is that the PNG file format did not exist when R'n'D was released first...

Well, for starters, I have no way of opening the .pcx files on my PC in levelsets like BD2K3 or EMC or Snake Bite, so let's start simple!
The picture attached is a spritesheet. Each block is 32x32 pixels, and I want the block to be animated by cycling through all 3 blocks.
If you could help, that would be pretty epic of you .

SlappyHappy2000

[filbo]

Try all paint programs you have, one will probably be able to load .pcx; then save as .png

If that fails, get some new ones :)

Three sets of open source utilities which can do it are: graphicsmagick, imagemagick, netpbm -- all are available for Windows, should be readily available in your Linux distro repository, and can probably be bludgeoned into submission on a Mac...

[Holger]

I want the block to be animated by cycling through all 3 blocks.

This can be done using a "graphicsinfo.conf" like this:

Code: Select all

custom_1:                       PNG_27.png
custom_1.frames:                4
custom_1.delay:                 10

[SLAPPYHAPPY2000]

I want the block to be animated by cycling through all 3 blocks.

This can be done using a "graphicsinfo.conf" like this:

Code: Select all

custom_1:                       PNG_27.png
custom_1.frames:                4
custom_1.delay:                 10

THANK YOU! For the longest time, I have been trying to figure this out, and I just couldn't do anything with custom graphics... but now, I can start making things!
While looking at BD2K3 and EMC levelsets again, I think I now know how to make animations for turning and stuff like that for NPCs!
I'll update you on that...