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Teilyr
12-01-2002, 10:02 PM
Could someone please tell me how combo cycling works? I'm completely clueless as to how it's setup, and what causes the combos to cycle.

Raichu86
12-01-2002, 11:26 PM
When the combo runs out of animation frames, it jumps to the combo that it is set to cycle to.

C-Dawg
12-02-2002, 11:31 AM
Aha, I'm begining to see how this works then.

So if we wanted a spike that would jut out of the floor, we would just make two animated combos- one with the spike receeded, which was walkable, and one with the spike sticking up, which was damage. Then just have each one switch the other when it's animation was complete.

And we could do moving floor tiles with this too... just set up a series of combos to look like a block floating back and forth, switching between walkable and pit...

Oh, and custom bosses can now use combo cycling rather than screens! Eeee! Just animate the boss flying around, changing the combos to damage link when he's too close to it... though... this would be so mind-boggingly complicated that we'd need some special program to make it work. (Heres an idea... since we have all of the functional data necessary to make this sort of thing work, perhaps a third party scripting program could be used to set all the multitude of little bits and peices? At least for bosses...)

We can use this sort of thing to make falling floors, as I think it was intended for, or animated pound combos, etc. In fact, with animated combos, it seems that the point of having bush slash animation is sort of defeated.

Lets see... what else... oh yea! Dual combos. Set two identical combos to animate at 0 time over 0 combos, then, for all intents and purposes, you have a dual combo. It could be a convayer/pit, or convayer/damage, or damage/slash, or whatever. In fact, you mght even be able to squeeze three or more combo types in if the computer is fast enough so the player doesnt notice...

Wow... the possibilities...

-C

bigjoe
12-02-2002, 11:35 AM
Originally posted by C-Dawg
oh yea! Dual combos. Set two identical combos to animate at 0 time over 0 combos, then, for all intents and purposes, you have a dual combo.

-C

I was thinking about this. Not so sure it'd work. but ill give it a whirl.

C-Dawg
12-02-2002, 11:46 AM
Yea, it'd work. This is really useful- slashable statue combos would be really nice ;)

-C

Teilyr
12-02-2002, 11:49 AM
Originally posted by C-Dawg
And we could do moving floor tiles with this too... just set up a series of combos to look like a block floating back and forth, switching between walkable and pit...
The problem with that is Link wouldn't move with the floating block. Thus, at points, if the player didn't scurry across the pit, they'd be standing on air.

bigjoe
12-02-2002, 11:52 AM
HOLY SHIT IT DOES WORK! I JUST MADE LAVA :D

Big problem with this though , you cant do this with animated* combos. Unless, of course, DN can improvise something?

*animated in the sense that the combo uses A.Frames/Speed

C-Dawg
12-02-2002, 11:56 AM
Teilyr - That wouldnt be totally without precedent... several games (Brainlord jumps to mind) require the player to keep up with the platform. And it's better than nothing.

BigJoe - Yes, you CAN do it with animated combos. Set up a bunch of combos, each with a different tile in the animation sequence, alternating by combo type, and string em all together.

Anyway... combo cycling is easily the biggest and most revolutionary boon added to this beta. (Second only to lock blocks) Good job, DN. It's time to make some more ZQ magic...

-C

EDIT : Ah, bigjoe, you already realized that.

bigjoe
12-02-2002, 12:00 PM
Edit-Sorry , didnt read your edit

can you demonstrate? If so , Ill shut up. :P

C-Dawg
12-02-2002, 11:27 PM
Some more tidbits about the combo animation... if you want to make a tile that is sometimes one thing and sometimes another (moving spikes spring to mind) make sure that the amount of time (number of tiles x animation time) of all combos involved in the animation is equal. Otherwise the animation gets out of synch and starts looking odd.

-C

Teilyr
12-03-2002, 12:31 AM
So, like.. if damage 1 spikes have 3 frames of animation, then the walkable cycle should also have 3 frames of animation?

C-Dawg
12-03-2002, 01:18 PM
Yes. Though in theory, you could get away with more or less as long as you adjusted the time. For instance, I made some spike that takes eight tiles to animate- and they animate at speed 4. To line it up correctly, I need to put the spike's "downtime", which consists of only one tile, at an animation time of 32. Or I could use another eight tiles with animation time 4.

The thing to bear in mind, generally, is that tile animation continues even if the combo isn't currently on the screen. All combos in the combo animation keep animating even if it currently isnt the selected combo.

So, in the above case, you could dispense with the timing issue entirely but just combo-animating twenty combos, each having it's own tile in the sequence. That would let you create pictures that animate at variable rates, to, though I dont know why you'd want to do this...

-C

Teilyr
12-03-2002, 01:21 PM
Ah.. Gotcha. All a nice chunk of math. Thanks for the insight.