Animatics and you - Subject9x/battleMETAL GitHub Wiki

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Animatics are scripted sequences that play a short series of images in the client. They're like short slideshows, displaying static pictures.

In original battleMETAL they are used for Sector title cards, the intro, and the outro / credits.

They can be used for character-transmissions during a mission as well.

Animatic File Schema

Files are loaded by CSQC in the /data/anim/ folder and must have .anim as the extension.

Files themselves are actually just plaintext and can be edited in notepad.

Images

Now that you have your animatic file kitted out, you need to make sure the image files are in place too.

battleMETAL scans the /gfx/anim/ folder for images when playing back an animatic, make sure your images go there. It can detect sub folders too, so best practice is to put all the images for each animatic into their own folder.

The setup

Just about ready to go, now we need to call the animatic in some fashion. This is accomplished by placing a map_animatic entity into your map. Configure your entity like so:

  • targetname - required only way to activate the entity unless you set ON_TOUCH spawnflag.

  • missionFile - required path to your animatic, remember the root path is /data/anim/

  • faction - required animatics only play for players whose .faction == its own.

  • count1 - optional sets the amount of game seconds to freeze players if FREEZE_PLAYER spawnflag is set.

  • count2 - optional seconds to delay before firing the animatic.

  • target - optional calls an entities whose matching targetname is this after playing the animatic.

  • wait - optional wait this many game seconds before restarting the animatic. This is important if you want animatic to be replayable via something like a trigger_multi or trigger_count.

  • note map_animatic entities are SOLID_NOT unless you set the ON_TOUCH spawnflag, and the touching entity's .faction must match.

There is only one way to call these entities and that's via their targetname.

Fill out all this data, link the entity to some other trigger and you're ready to rock!

note map_animatic cannot send its total runtime back to the server! ie: the server has no idea how long any-given animatic will be. It is up to the mapper to make sure the timing around the animatic is correct in the map file. Sorry.