Rotate under key control?

[IPete2]

Hi,

Is it possible to rotate an actor? If so, please let me in on the secret. I have designed a top down character and it would be splendid if I didn't need to export lots of other images in different positions to make the character go left or right or down the screen

LATER that day...

Okay so I have seen this is not possible yet. From the rotate a car post it seems I do have to make different versions of the same animation. This should be possible to do under a function me thinks, so Im going to put it on the Feature Request section of the forum.


Many thanks,

IPete2.

[brutalDeluxe]

Rotating an image in real time uses much processing power.

Switching between frames of an animation uses very little.

[IPete2]

Brutal,

Yeah I know. I wasn't sure how many images I would need and how much memory I would therefore need. I read up on the forum about regions so I guess that could help to keep memory use down.

Witht eh rotate images thing, I was kinda hoping we are working with a lite version of an engine like DirectX or similar, which would have those abilities built-in them, but a function would need to be written to access them, that's all. That's how I would see Game-Editor becoming more and more powerful, adding calls to existing capability of the host.

As I mentioned transparency also requires power, unless you have acess to a system call which handles that for you, which is where I thought we were with the Game-Editor.

I have had a quick look around the website and there does not seem to be any mention of what it is based upon, so I guess unless more information is forthcoming, we'll never know.

IPete2.

[brutalDeluxe]

Witht eh rotate images thing, I was kinda hoping we are working with a lite version of an engine like DirectX or similar, which would have those abilities built-in them, but a function would need to be written to access them, that's all. That's how I would see Game-Editor becoming more and more powerful, adding calls to existing capability of the host.

I can dig it. I HATE doing rotations. But does pocket pc / linux support dx?

Perhaps the user could choose to use DX calls or not. That would be cool.

Or perhaps you could specify how many "frames" you would like to allow for rotation and GE could automatically render the appropriate frames.

GE stays multiplatform!

[IPete2]

Absolutely,

That is the only reason I am here - multiplatform. I use a number of other languages including Blitz, Blitz3D, Virtools, Director, and Flash.

None of those currently have the cross platform capability which GE does, that also focuses on games (perhaps Flash is a close run second). Even Flash requires a license to develop mobile games, something in the order of £500 per year! - A year! What's that about!?!?!?!?!

GE has loads of cool in built features along with the cross platform capability. Lovely - just lovely.

IPete2.

[makslane]

I wasn't sure how many images I would need and how much memory I would therefore need. I read up on the forum about regions so I guess that could help to keep memory use down.

By using Activation Regions only the actors that intersec the current region in the view will be loaded. So You can make big levels and make the memory and low.

More, for big animations Game Editor don't load all frames, just the current frame. I have tested a 240x320 900 frame animation in a 200MHZ/64MB Pocket PC and works fine

[IPete2]

Makslane,

Wow! That is quite impressive! I managed to get activation regions working last night. I had a problem to begin with but found that by moving the region next to the original region (making them almost touch) worked. It is stuff like that which we need documented somewhere to make it easy for us to get started with GE.

Thanks for the information, that is very useful.

IPete2.