Coder Diary #3 - Variable Animation Speeds
Why, yes there is! But you'll have to wait for the release of CS Modern Wars, and future CS updates, in order to accomplish it. [:'(]ORIGINAL: what.if
Just installed JT campaign series on a Windows 7 64 bit pc and everything is working fine but the fast human play is now really fast, is there a way to slow this down a bit?
The Campaign Series of games currently offers you two choices of 3D animation speed
[*]"Fast", which is way too fast, even comically fast, especially on recent speedy systems
[*]normal, which is way too slow, even painfully so, on any system old or new
by way of the Menu Bar Options
[*]Fast Computer Player
[*]Fast Human Player
which toggle between the "Fast" and (default) slow animation speeds.
I have implemented the promised variable animation speeds, with two new Options choices
[*]West Bloc Animation Speed
[*]East Bloc Animation Speed
(where "Fast Computer Player" and "Fast Human Player" have been junked), and a new Animation Speed dialog box. Please see the screenshot:
In the dialog box, the far left Slow slider setting gives you the traditional default slow speeds. The far right Fast setting gives you the traditional fast speeds, i.e., as fast as your computer and the current game code permits. Between those two extremes, you can set each side's Animation Speed to your taste, from 0% speedup to 100% speedup, in increments of 1%.
The coding for this has been done in such a way that, as computers get even faster in future, we can easily ratchet down the speeds by means of a simple code tweak. (But the 100% Fast setting will still run the animations as fast as the computer and game code permit.) We might put this tweak in the hands of a player via a new configuration .ini file or somesuch.
("West Bloc Animation Speed" and "East Bloc Animation Speed" -- the option text might change to something more generic -- for example "Side A Animation Speed" and "Side B Animation Speed" -- since the Campaign Series encompasses wars where "West Bloc" and "East Bloc" are not appropriate.)
Variable Animation Speeds -- a big deal? No, especially if you don't play in 3D. But it was low hanging tech fruit, some essential learning by doing, so I picked it, and I did it.
Work on deep internals; QAing the game data; also scenario, OOB, map & graphics development -- these all continue.
Until the next time ...
