WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

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melelisun
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WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by melelisun »

Hi all! I've been absolutely loving the AAO engine! I can't believe the amount of work that has gone into making such a stellar product. Big thank you to the developers for making this tool accessible and free.

I've been trying to add custom sprites to make a fangame, but I ran into a strange issue. The startup animations sometimes begin and end in weird places, and it's pretty inconsistent.

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Given that the startup animation is consistent, I was wondering if there might be code engine-side that doesn't refresh WebP pictures from the beginning whenever they're cued. Or maybe there's some other issue I'm not familiar with.

Things I've already tried:
  • Tweaking the startup animation length. However, the animation was made with ezgif.com and lasts for 100 centiseconds, so altering the AAO-side animation length just seems to make it more wonky.
  • Frame jumping with the debugger. I've tried replaying the animation multiple times by jumping to a few frames before the animation. Most times, the startup animation starts playing in a different spot, which is why I'm thinking it doesn't refresh WebP images.
Worse comes to worst, I'll just accept it -- I've tried using GIF before but I largely prefer the image quality offered by WebP.

Thank you again for this insanely cool tool and all the hard work put into it!
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Enthalpy
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by Enthalpy »

I can take a look at this sometime this week. I'm not sure why AAO would cause a problem like this.
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melelisun
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by melelisun »

Thank you so much for the quick response!
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Nicky Boy
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by Nicky Boy »

I'd also like to add(/remind?) it's not just WebP. Start-up animations in general seem to act a bit wonky, in my experience.

EDIT: The easiest way to see this is just try it out in the editor. Once you've set up a frame with a start-up animation, just run your mouse over it then move it away. You'll see how it acts weird most of the time.
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123fendas
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by 123fendas »

Nicky Boy wrote:Start-up animations in general seem to act a bit wonky, in my experience.
Yes, that's right
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¿Acid Rain?
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by ¿Acid Rain? »

Nicky Boy wrote:Start-up animations in general seem to act a bit wonky, in my experience.
In my experience, there are two ways to improve animation performance in AAO. The first is to just pre-load it. Stick some sort of "Loading..." pop-up (a black screen works fine) at the start of the game and have the animation run fully underneath it. The second is to make sure the animation is set to only play once i.e. not on a loop. This stops the animation from starting on a frame that isn't Frame 1. Usually. You can easily change how a .gif file (dunno about WebP) loops using ezgif.com.

These two things help, but aren't guaranteed to fix the problem 100% of the time.
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melelisun
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by melelisun »

¿Acid Rain? wrote: In my experience, there are two ways to improve animation performance in AAO. The first is to just pre-load it. Stick some sort of "Loading..." pop-up (a black screen works fine) at the start of the game and have the animation run fully underneath it. The second is to make sure the animation is set to only play once i.e. not on a loop. This stops the animation from starting on a frame that isn't Frame 1. Usually. You can easily change how a .gif file (dunno about WebP) loops using ezgif.com.

These two things help, but aren't guaranteed to fix the problem 100% of the time.
Ahh yeah, that's a great idea! It was initially something I tried, but I found that sticking the WebP to play only once means the startup animation never plays again. I thought that might indicate the image wasn't replaying from frame 1.

On a side note though, I'm not sure if anyone pushed an update but this particular startup animation seems to be working well now! :shock: I'll test it with some others, but either way, big thanks to the devs!
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Enthalpy
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by Enthalpy »

I haven't even started looking at this one yet. (I've been out of the country until Saturday.) I can guarantee there have been no updates.

This is still on my to-investigate list, but there's a bit of a queue now...
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Enthalpy
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by Enthalpy »

Can you give me an example of a sprite where there is clearly a problem? I tried running tests with Mia's hair flip, and I can reproduce some problems but have not found a way to reproduce them consistently. I wonder if the effect would be clearer with a different sprite?
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melelisun
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by melelisun »

Enthalpy wrote:Can you give me an example of a sprite where there is clearly a problem? I tried running tests with Mia's hair flip, and I can reproduce some problems but have not found a way to reproduce them consistently. I wonder if the effect would be clearer with a different sprite?
I've been testing out the startup with a few other startup sprites, I found that my original startups work properly when I cut down the animation by 100 ms from the length of time specified on ezgif.com, so I suspect that this issue just has to do with some difference with how ezgif calculates time? I'm not quite sure ><

But here's a link to the sprite if you'd like to check!

It works fine as long as I cut off 100 ms, so I'm perfectly happy with the feature now either way :D

Thank you for your hard work and sorry for the semi-bogus report!
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Enthalpy
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Re: WebP startup sprites begin in weird places

Post by Enthalpy »

Okay, current investigation report: I had the idea of creating a timer startup animation. The animation displays every number from 1 to 20 for half a second and lasts 10 seconds. The simple test of seeing what happens on mouseout of the frame screen in the editor yields bizarre results. I expect it to play the startup animation and then the talking animation. It does not play the startup animation correctly. There are some cases where it skips frame 1, some where it skips from 1 to some other number, but most commonly is it not even hitting 20. I'll start by trying to figure out why it isn't getting to 20, since I can reproduce that most consistently.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
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