How to add a new animation?

Shin

As the topic says, anyone with insight on this? My issue is that I've created a recoloured set of the BAMs for the air elemental. I don't just want to replace the regular air elemental BAMs with the recoloured ones as I don't want all air elementals to look that way - so I need to create a new animation "slot" that I can then use for a new creature.

Thoughts so far:

1. Animations seem to be listed in ANIMATE.IDS. The order seems somewhat arbitrary though - my last current entry is "0xE0D0". If I were to add a new entry, how do I know what 0x-designation it should have?

2. Even if I can properly add a new entry in ANIMATE.IDS, how do I attach the recoloured air elemental BAMs to it? I haven't managed to find a filetype yet that controls which BAMs are used by what animation slot.

Cuv

Yes, I worked on porting animations for a decade:D There is no simple way to add new slots. Infinity Animations can add new slots. http://www.shsforums.net/forum/594-infinity-animations/

There are some unused animation slots in the exe, so you would have to tailor your animation to work with those. But should warn you that some mods already make use of those slots, so if you plan to ship your mod with one of these, it may be incompatible with a few other mods.

Not sure which air elemental animation you altered... but there are only two: MAIR and MAIS prefixes. Either way. You can can try renaming them to use the MDK slots MKUR or MDOC. MMAX wont work for you. Rename all the file prefixes, drop in your override. Open your creature in NI and assign it the appropriate MDK slot to test if you animation works.

If it indeed works, then Infinity Animations will work for you and you can use it to create a new slot. That link has slot assignments though... the community tries to keep track of which mod uses which slots to avoid modding conflicts. If you animation works and is unique enough... it can be included in the official list. @Miloch can tell you more once you verify your animation works.

Shin

Thanks for the reply @Cuv, I can see why this proved tricky to figure out. Hm.. so if a BAM is named MAIRG1.BAM, I would rename it to e.g. MKUR1.BAM?

Cuv

@Shin No, change only the first four letters. So MAIRG1.bam becomes MKURG1.bam G2, G11, etc. The engine will look for those 'G''s. No problem:D hope it works for you. If not, be patient for BG:EE to be released. With the new engine we hope to have some new options.

Shin

@Cuv Hmm. It seems the animation itself works - when I override the files of the regular air elemental, it will display the recoloured BAMs. Trying to use MKUR and MDOC crashes the game however, so I suppose either another mod I am using already occupies them, or they're just not compatible with the air elemental BAM-set.

Cuv

@Shin Okay... then you have a confirmation it works! Yes, it might not be compatible with those MDK slots... but was worth a try. Cool, check out IA and see if you can add a slot with the coding contained in that. I am not that familiar with it as it was after I had retired from BG2 modding:D But I am back again now.

Shin

@Cuv Will try checking out infinity animations and see if there's anything to be done about it, yeah. Thanks a lot for the help. 8)

Edit: It seems I got it to work with IA now, great. 8)

Methuselas

Are they planning on removing that limitation any time soon? The limitation, being the number of animation slots.

Mornmagor

Yeah, so we can, like, import the ORIGINAL BG1 animations/sprites to the game, as they should have been :P

The animations slots have been externalized to a file.

I'm not sure if it's working as intended so far, or some more stuff needs to be added.

TvrtkoSvrdlar

@Cuv

Cuv, any chance you'll update the Infinity Animations mod for BG2EE? It's one of my favorites, and I can't put into words how much fun I had running around with a custom werebear companion. I friggin *LOOOOOOOOOOVED* that Diablo sprite!

Cuv, what do we have to do to get you to resurrect that mod? Shower you with gold? Sing your praises? Sacrifice a goat in your name?

And, uh... yeah, sorry for necroing an old thread! :P

Cuv

@TvrtkoSvrdlar To be perfectly honest, I think the IA mod is now irrelevant and dead with regards to the EE just like my PST conversion packs. We don't have to patch the exe any more for slots. However, the animations still work... so they just need to be incorporated into the EXTANIM.2da and repackaged specifically for the EE.

[spoiler=rant]
On a side rant, whomever says that the gog version with mods is still superior to the EE version hasn't got the slightest idea what they are talking about. So anyway, yeah. we have externalized animations slots so no need to hack the exe any more. FYI, that is what the widescreen mod does too for vanilla. Okay... that crap I just said was speaking as a modder and not as a developer heh.
[/spoiler]

@viader has already done some work on this with his Extended Animations. Perhaps he could add the rest and get in touch with the people who maintain IA for permission/coordination.

Erg

To @Cuv (the ranting modder, not the developer)

[Spoiler]
I'm one of those that say that today (November 29th, 2013) the GOG version with mods is still superior to the EE version . I assure you I understand what you are saying and I agree with you that the EE engine is superior, but that doesn't mean that the game is better too. After all how many mods are there today that use EXTANIM.2da and how many mods are there today that are compatible with the GOG version but not the EE ? Which group is larger today in particular for BG1?

So I agree with you that in, let's say, 2017 the EE will likely be the better version of the game, but we are not there yet.

[/Spoiler]

Cuv

@Erg Fair enough! Heh.