Adding new animations

[Dom Pedro II]

Is it possible to add new animations to units in the game? For example, if I wanted to add a new action that allowed a siege unit to shoot flaming shot, for example, could I add a new animation to the existing ones expressly for that purpose? Or would I have to make a new catapult unit that shoots flaming shot instead?

I have seen parts of the SDK code that covers the kind of animations, but I wasn't sure whether or not we'd need to have access to the graphics engine to actually allow for a new kind of animation.

 

[The Great Apple]

I think you'd have to make a new unit. You may be able to attach an effect to the unit, and make a new animation file. You would then change the KFM file that the catapult uses just before you attack so that the flaming shot one instead of the normal one, and then change it back after the attack so it now becomes default. You might get some issues if you had a flaming shot catapult against a non-flaming shot catapult in a combat, as change the KFM dynamically would effect all the units.

In short, you probably could, but I'm not sure it would be worth the effort, unless you were going to make many such units, in which case it would help prevent the units XML file getting clogged.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

So it would not be possible then to add, for example, a "flame attack" unit action for a catapult and then provide it with a new animation for that particular action, eh?

 

[The Great Apple]

I'm pretty sure it would be impossible. I'm not certain though - I haven't yet done anything with Civ 4 units.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Well you can't add an animation (i.e. have both regular and flame attack) without redoing the unit, but you might be interested in the fire catapult I made. The one in the first post will make it so all catapults shoot fireballs, but in post #25 I made a version that will only have the fire catapult with fireballs, and the regular catapults will keep throwing rocks.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Well you can't add an animation (i.e. have both regular and flame attack) without redoing the unit, but you might be interested in the fire catapult I made. The one in the first post will make it so all catapults shoot fireballs, but in post #25 I made a version that will only have the fire catapult with fireballs, and the regular catapults will keep throwing rocks.

Yeah, I saw that before... and downloaded it.

The fire catapult was really only an example of what I wanted to do not specifically what I wanted however.

I don't mind redoing the unit, but I want to know at least that if a new animation were to be included that the game would actually use it.

 

[Chalid]

You can only reuse the animation sequences firaxis provides as far as i use. The only way to add a specific animation to a specific action that i know of would be to use the slot of Great_person_activation animation (the one that is usually played when a GP is used).

EDIT: animation seqences is meaning different ones that are marked by there respective Evencode. eg Attack is ec_1022,ec_2022 or ec_3022.