Massive GIF Troubles

[DKNiGHTX]

I'm working on my end-of-the-year project for Grade 10, a game where you hunt birds. I'm to use sprites, seeing as they would work best in this situation, but the problem I am running into is that the animation works on only 1 bird GIF I've found (which happens to be very ugly;go figure). All the other GIF animations I try to use, Turing decides to fail and output static and noisy images. The first frame displays OK, but the others do not. This is the code that I'm using to play them:

code:

process menuEffects ()     loop         var delayTime : int         var randY := Rand.Int (0, maxy)         var randX := Rand.Int (-maxx, 0)         var Frames := Pic.Frames (MENU_BIRD)         var Pics : array 1 .. Frames of int         Pic.FileNewFrames (MENU_BIRD, Pics, delayTime)         var ID := Sprite.New (Pics (1))         Sprite.SetPosition (ID, randX, randY, true)         Sprite.Show (ID)         for i : 8 .. maxx - randX + Pic.Width (Pic.FileNew (MENU_BIRD)) by 8             if (menuProcess) then                 Sprite.Hide (ID)                 exit when (menuProcess)             else                 Sprite.Animate (ID, Pics ((i div 8) mod Frames + 1), randX + i, randY, true)                 delay (50)             end if         end for         for i : 1 .. Frames             Pic.Free (Pics (i))         end for         Sprite.Free (ID)         exit when (menuProcess)     end loop end menuEffects

Called by:

code:

proc menu_Start ()     for i : 1 .. 5         fork menuEffects ()     end for     menuProcess := false     var leaveMenu := false     loop         var x, y, b := 0         Mouse.Where (x, y, b)         %Mouse over button effects         box_MouseOverEffect (PLAY_BOX, 29, white)         box_MouseOverEffect (SCORE_BOX, 29, white)         %Click event handlers         if (b = 1) then             if (box_MouseOver (PLAY_BOX)) then %Clicked Play!                 %Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I'll get to it ;)             elsif (box_MouseOver (SCORE_BOX)) then     %Clicked High Scores                 highscore_DrawForm ()                 menu_Draw ()             end if         end if         %Leave menu         if (leaveMenu) then             Input.Flush ()         end if         exit when (leaveMenu)         Time.DelaySinceLast (20)     end loop end menu_Start

The problem:

[Clayton]

Well seeing as 4.0.5 doesn't support GIFs, I'm going to have to assume that the problem lies within your use of processes. Really, get rid of them, find some other way to incorporate your "menuBird" code into your menu procedure.

[DKNiGHTX]

I'm using 4.1 and the process seems to work fine with my other bird (Which is a flamingo, so I can't use it )

[Clayton]

well then, there must be something wrong with the pictures when they get read into your animation.

On the note of processes, WHY? You don't need them in this case, and will only serve to screw you up in some other point in time. Think about using procedures integrated into your mainline to avoid trouble with processes.

[DKNiGHTX]

Ok, barely any GIFs work (Encoding parameter?) so I've decided not to use them. Oh well. As for the process, I prefer it; it allows me to update two things at the same time .

[Clayton]

Actually, it doesn't, unless you have more than one CPU, which i doubt. Processes, or "threading" in Turing is horribly implemented, and you are better off just spacing your actions throughout a mainline than running multiple things "concurrently".

NOTE: This will explain better than I can.

[ericfourfour]

Here is an example of how it would look.

code:

main loop     think (update variables)     render (draw)

[DKNiGHTX]

Oh I see. Well, I implemented that in my main game, and it works flawlessly I'm still using processes for sound however (Unless there is a way to do that as well, then [Looping by the way])

[ericfourfour]

DKNiGHTX wrote:

I'm still using processes for sound however

You are right. There is no other way if you are doing sounds. If you are doing music however, I think there is a procedure that plays the music continuously so you do not have write a process.

[[Gandalf]]

Freakman wrote:

Actually, it doesn't, unless you have more than one CPU, which i doubt. Processes, or "threading" in Turing is horribly implemented, and you are better off just spacing your actions throughout a mainline than running multiple things "concurrently".

Somehow I doubt Turing's processes are made in such a way as to take advantage of multi core CPUs.

[Clayton]

DKNiGHTX wrote:

Oh I see. Well, I implemented that in my main game, and it works flawlessly I'm still using processes for sound however (Unless there is a way to do that as well, then [Looping by the way])

take a look at Music.PlayFileReturn, and Music.PlayFileLoop, after that, take a gander at the Turing Walkthrough.

[Gandalf] wrote:

Somehow I doubt Turing's processes are made in such a way as to take advantage of multi core CPUs.

Well I ran a test on my friends dual-core desktop and it seemed that the processes ran more in line with each other, although still not the greatest. Perhaps I was just getting lucky however....