Version 3: Trying out SPINE / More frames for hi-res biocritters

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The biocritter animations can really have as many .pngs as we want to! (Well, 
at least up to 256, I guess...)
If you have the time, it would be cool to have more animation frames than the 
default 4 for each critter!

I could then copy the source code changes from P6014 that allow me to fine-tune 
the framerate of each critter individually. This would allow the anims to not 
slow down even if they had a ton of frames.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by Jaakko.M...@gmail.com on 24 Sep 2014 at 5:58

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I would love to add more frames per critter. However, I'm concerned about file 
sizes, and the sheer amount of work involved. If a new animation system were 
implemented, I could add hundreds of frames per second.  Smooth animations.

It would save months (hundreds of hours) of work.  Can we see if we can create 
a separate project, test code to try out the new animation?

https://code.google.com/p/uqm-hd/wiki/SpineAnimationSoftware

Original comment by dczanik@gmail.com on 24 Sep 2014 at 3:38

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I see such an animation system would make things a lot easier for you! It's 
always a good idea to try to reduce the repetitive mechanical work.

I'm a bit at loss about how Spine could be married with the proprietary draw 
system of UQM. Maybe it'll be easy using Spine's C/C++/Objective-C runtime and 
handling the final rendering with the familiar SDL commands. Or maybe it isn't 
?? I don't know :) At least I'm pretty sure we can't exceed the frame rate of 
the UQM code itself (24FPS in battle, 30FPS on planets, I guess). But that's 
not that critical. The most important really would be that there would no 
longer be need for tons of .pngs.

Maybe it's wisest to leave this enhancement yet out of the next, small bug-fix 
release? Trying it out in a separate project is a good way to go.

Original comment by Jaakko.M...@gmail.com on 25 Sep 2014 at 5:52

• Changed title: Version 3: Trying out SPINE / More frames for hi-res biocritters