Civ3FlcEdit - Civilization III animation viewer & editor

[Cyber Dreyk]

Thank you, Dease and The Great Apple!
I'll analyse all your requests and try to implement them in release.

I very appreciate for your advices - it's impossible to make good utility without feedback.

 

[Dease]

This suggestion may be a bit hard to do but I'll request it anyway

7. The ability to play custom sounds as the animation plays, this would help deteriming the frame delay needed to make the animation "in-tune" with the sounds.

 

[warmwaffles]

That is a DAMN good idea please Cyber do it.

8. Also get the flic viewer to open INI files and tracks all of the flics down

 

[Cyber Dreyk]

Points 7 and 8 - the good ideas, I like it!
I promise to make it. Maybe not in the first release, but I'll make it obligatory.

 

[Cyber Dreyk]

Good news!
Last week I have finished function to save FLC files and made FLC->Storyboard->FLC conversion!
Now I should make code optimization and add some necessary features. After I can release an early beta of FLC editor.

 

[rmontaruli]

Does not run correctly :-(

Win 98 SE
Civ3 (standard version) installed on C:\Games\Civ3
Civ3Flc (version 24) installed on C:\Games\Civ3\Civ3Flc
Civ3MM installed on C:\Games\Civ3\Civ3MM

I run Civ3Flc. It starts.
I try to open a .flc file from units directory (i.e. ArcherRun.flc)

It shows me a corrupted icon. I can guess it has a shape like the archer, but it is not clear.

What i noticed is that ArcherRun.flc is composed of 96 frame!!!
Is that number correct?
Or may be the program does read badly this 96 and computes 96 frames?

Other flc seems to have more frames than i guessed.

 

[rmontaruli]

Don't ever mind!
I've found the answer.

My problem was the same described by Mr. Will (who posted the image).
And the solution is written a few messages later: change display to 32 bit!

I switched to 32 bit and now it works fine!

 

[Cyber Dreyk]

Hi, guys!
I have uploaded Civ3FlcEdit application.
Enjoy it!

 

[The Great Apple]

Hi, guys!
I have uploaded Civ3FlcEdit application.
Enjoy it!

ACE!

Ummm.... there are a few things I've noticed so far...

When repeating the sounds, it quickly gets out of sync, even if the sound length is the same as the animation time. One one play through it works excelently!

The select civ colour box behaves odly when the animation is running. If you try to change the colour the selected bit keeps snapping back to the orignal colour.

I haven't actually tried the editing tools, but I will certainly use it for my next unit



Now all we need is something to do our palettes for us...

EDIT: This is REALLY cool (I just needed to add that!)

 

[Cyber Dreyk]

ACE!

Ummm.... there are a few things I've noticed so far...

When repeating the sounds, it quickly gets out of sync, even if the sound length is the same as the animation time. One one play through it works excelently!

The select civ colour box behaves odly when the animation is running. If you try to change the colour the selected bit keeps snapping back to the orignal colour.

I haven't actually tried the editing tools, but I will certainly use it for my next unit



EDIT: This is REALLY cool (I just needed to add that!)

Wow!
I just uploaded the utility and you have already sent first reply!
Fantastic feedback!

 

[The Great Apple]

Wow!
I just uploaded the utility and you have already sent first reply!
Fantastic feedback!

Well, I got an email notifcation from MSN in the corner, so I checked it out

It turns out the sound is rather odd. It appears that it plays when you press the play button. That may not sound odd, but surely it would make more sense to wait untill the animation started before playing the sound, rather than having to click at the start of the animation?

What I mean is: You press the play button, and the next time the animation loops to the start, the sound starts.

 

[Dease]

Ah yes, finally flicster shall have to retire
one thing I noticed regarding offsets, they can only be changed when you create a new file, that's no very useful, since I have no idea what the offsets should be until I load it up

A suggestion - could you make it able to open 24bit storyboards, then load a custom palette in the actual program, doing it in PSP sometimes crashes my comp

anyway, thanks for the great util , it will be very useful.

 

[Aluminium]

Thank you very much, Dreyk!!! Finally, an alternative for Flicster!

Dease is right with the Offsets. Also a center-point mask would be useful.

A suggestion - could you make it able to open 24bit storyboards, then load a custom palette in the actual program, doing it in PSP sometimes crashes my comp

That's odd. Do you use a Windows 9x?

 

[The Great Apple]

One more request... how about the ability to zoom in. I just found myself hitting the "+" key cos I wanted to see exactly what the animation was doing.

Ummm. How about a new thread for the update - as it is, at first glance, you can't see that the utility can edit .flcs (or maybe ask a mod to change the title). I think this utility has gone fairly un-noticed so far...

 

[Dease]

That's odd. Do you use a Windows 9x?

Yep, win98, I think it crashes cause my computer isn't very powerful, and applying a palette to a file ~15mb is a bit job

Anyways, I've got a storyboard all made using SBB now I want to try this out, but I can't, when I hit create, it doesn't create anything!
anyone able to help me?

 

[Cyber Dreyk]

About "sound tool".
Well, it was last feature which I have added so it still not thought-out.
Here a few words about this feature.
Play Sound - on/off sound. In case this check box is unchecked sound is not playing at all.
Autoplay (WAV) - In case this check box selected sound will playing when "Play" button clicked (animation started) and stopped when "Pause", "Stop" etc. were clicked. In case checkbox is unchecked you can play sound only if clicking on the "Play" button on the "Sound" area.
I'll look for improvements of Sound feature...

One more request... how about the ability to zoom in. I just found myself hitting the "+" key cos I wanted to see exactly what the animation was doing.

What do you mean? In case zoom in whole animation when FLC file is playing - I doubt that it's possible. In case zoom in a single frame, for example click on "Zoom In" button and current frame will show in a separate dialog window - it's possible.

Ummm. How about a new thread for the update - as it is, at first glance, you can't see that the utility can edit .flcs (or maybe ask a mod to change the title). I think this utility has gone fairly un-noticed so far...

It is a good idea to change thread title. I'll ask moderator for it.

 

[The Great Apple]

About "sound tool".
What do you mean? In case zoom in whole animation when FLC file is playing - I doubt that it's possible. In case zoom in a single frame, for example click on "Zoom In" button and current frame will show in a separate dialog window - it's possible.

Well I was thinking zoom in while the animaition was playing - like you can with animated gifs in WinXP. I don't think single frame zoom would be too usefull.

 

[Dease]

so.... has anyone been able to actually make a unit with this? It doesn't seem to work for me

 

[Aluminium]

There is a problem with the alpha-colors. The exported storyboard has gray scales as alpha-colors. That's not useful for the editing in a graphic program. It would be the best to have the original palette in the exported SB.

There is a bug too. After the export of a SB some of the gray alpha-colors lose theirs palette indexes. I think this happens if hues with lower index numbers have the same RGB value like hues from your alpha-color setting.

Perhaps you could include a additional export option for alpha-color settings. This should work like the civ-color menu and the principle is the same.

 

[Cyber Dreyk]

Well I was thinking zoom in while the animaition was playing - like you can with animated gifs in WinXP. I don't think single frame zoom would be too usefull.

Well, it possible, but is not useful. Point is that such zooming is too long, especially in case big FLC files, such leader heads or BarlogDeath.flc etc.