Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2011 4:04 am Post subject:
Normalized=yes (art.ini)
I noticed something weird about the Normalized key in art.ini. Westwood description for Normalized,
If its animation be regulated to appear constant speed (def=no)?
and according to ModEnc,
If set, this animation's speed will be modified depending on your Game Speed setting to make it play at the same perceived speed.
What does that really mean??? If I set Normalized=yes, is the animation supposed to be adjusted depending on game speed, so if I play on game speed 6 the animation plays extremely fast? And if I set Normalized=no, the animation should always play at the same speed, regardless of game speed?
Either the key is broken or I simply don't understand what it's supposed to do, because with both yes and no the animation speed will be adjusted to match the current game speed. With Normalized=no this works perfectly fine, I can keep changing game speed and the animation will always play at the correct speed. Normalized=yes on the other hand causes some weird problems. If I keep switching game speed, the animation speed goes out of sync. You can try this by building multiple radars on different game speeds. If you build a radar on game speed 6 and another in game speed 0, the radar dishes will be rotating at different speeds. I tried the same thing with Normalized=no and there were no problems, all the animations played at the correct speed, even when I kept changing the game speed.
Does anyone have more accurate information about the key? I read the ModEnc description but I can't really make much out of it. Should it be left to yes? Westwood used it on alot of animations, but from my experience all the key does is screw up the animation speeds. Is there any special case where it should be left to yes, eg. an animation that deals damage? _________________ QUICK_EDIT
I noticed this issue when I added rain to the game, if I start the game on speed 6, then go to speed 4, the animation plays wrong. I'll test this myself now.
EDIT: Yep, the weird out of sync error was gone which is actually very helpful for me in this case, perhaps there is an actual reason the tag is needed (sync for online or something?). _________________ QUICK_EDIT
In my experience everybody should set it to no in everything to avoid lag, this has been tested quite conclusively on ra2 atleast and it isn't needed for syncing online either as whole mods without it tested fully online and actually performance was likely consistent with it off.
I understand it calculates additional delay to the already specified animation Rate= as per game speed setting and thus in most cases slow down the game and likely this check/calculation is only done once when said thing is created explaining the different speeds remaining when changing game speed or that once it has reduced the amount with first check, it won't of course increase it enough considering the first reduction if it works off the reduced amount... whatever the case its plain crap! QUICK_EDIT
Yep, i always set it to "no" too, due to the mentioned out-of-sync problem and also never experienced any problem.
The only place where this might be of interest is, if you create/spawn ingame some kind of text message via an animation and want it to be visible for the same amount of time in every speed setting, so it doesn't vanishes that quick on fast gamespeed giving the user enough time to read it.
Epic huge explosions might also be a candidate for this, so they play slower on fast gamespeed setting, which will make them stand out more against all the other fast playing anims. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
I noticed that when you set Normalized=no to an animation it plays a bit faster than before on the "default" game speed, which I consider to be 4. If you want to disable the Normalized key and at the same time keep the animation speed as it was with Normalized=yes, lower the Rate of the animation by 50 (eg. Rate=350 -> 300). I tested this value with 3 different building active animations on a side-by-side comparison, with Normalized=yes and Normalized=no, and the speeds were the same. Though I think this is only true for game speed 4, with higher speeds the Normalized=no animation would play faster, so if you preferred game speed 5 you would probably have to lower the rate even more.
Also one more question, what does Normalized=yes do on a building? Does it affect the Buildup animation speed or what? It shouldn't affect active animations since Normalized is defined in the animations themselves. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Also one more question, what does Normalized=yes do on a building?
Nothing. Simply bad WW coding imo. Maybe a leftover from times when the buildings themselves had all anims using AnimIdle, AnimActive etc like in TD and RA1. But after they separated the anims from the building, they simply forgot/ignored that key. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Rate=900 means 900 frames per minute (900 is max)
Rate=0 means the frame never changes (only used on turrets and silofillanim) _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
I further tested the animation rates with Normalized yes and no, and noticed that lowering the animation rate by 50 does not always result in the correct speed. I went over the painstaking task of testing different anim rates with both Normalized values in a side by side comparison. So, if you disable Normalized for all animations, but want their rate to remain the same as it used to be with Normalized=yes on game speed 4, change the animation rate values as follows (list contains all anim rates used by original TS/FS):
Code:
Left side: Normalized=yes Rate
Right side: Normalized=no Rate
The values can look confusing (eg. 450 -> 300, but 500 -> 500), but I tested these values side by side with 2 different animations with different amount of frames (NARADR_A, 24 frames, GACTWR_B, 32 frames), and it worked for both of them. But remember these values correct the rate for game speed 4! If you consider game speed 3 or 5 to be the "normal" speed, you shouldn't use these values. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
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Normalized=yes (art.ini)
