Need Help/Info for .flc CREATION

[GhengisFarb]

A little bit of clarification, the .flc used for the units graphics can be edited with Flicster. I'm trying to make a STANDARD .flc for the animated Leaderheads. This software format became obsolete in 1994 and apparently Firaxis just discovered it. I've been blowing dust off old shareware sites but they've all deleted the .flc creation software. The only software left that will read a .flc is Jasc PSP, but you can't create a standard old-fashioned .flc with PSP. It creates a superior version that Civ3 can't handle(a 121 frame .avi becomes a 3000+ frame .flc. The last Corel PhotoPaint version that would read/create .flc's was 6.0 (Corel's on version 10.0 now). Anyway, I've got some Leaderhead .avi's but I need to find some 'old' software to 'antiquate' them to Civ3's level, if anyone has some leads, let me know.


PS: Would really like to find Corel PhotoPaint 6.0. I hate to downgrade my PhotoPaint but I really would like to put some quality Leader animations out there.

Historical note: the .flc format was created by AutoDesk Animator (I think all the original programmers have died of old age) and ran on 286, 386, and maybe the first 486's. Why did Firaxis choose this format for the Leader animations?

 

[Moeniir]

I'm not entirely sure that Leaderhead flcs use 'standard' FLCs. I believe they also use the modified format used by units. However, one of the fields in the 'extra' header in the Civ3Flic format indicates the number of 'directions' in the animation. In a normal unit animation, there are 8 directions (SE, S, SE, E, NE, N, NW, W) included in the animation. A leaderhead only has one 'direction', so in that respect it's like a standard FLC. I *think* civ3 will handle a standard FLC for leaderheads. You mentioned Jasc PSP... versions since 5 or 6 come with another program included, called Animation Shop. AS *will* create a standard FLC.

As I am planning to begin work on a new version of FLICster, I'm planning to do some research into the leaderheads. I will post any helpful info I find. If it turns out that a leaderhead is just a standard flc with the 'extra' header added, I could probably add such a feature to FLICster.

--Moe

 

[GhengisFarb]

Thanks for the reply Moenir.

I've been playing around with the leaderheads for 5 weeks now. I can make MINOR edits to the original flcs with PSP and they work fine but there's a threshold where by doing too much modifing PSP starts adding duplicate frames. You don't notice it in PSP because it has a built in feature to eliminate the duplicate frames but when you run Civ3 the animations are jerky and the images are screwed up.

I may have to shelve the leaderheads until this riddle is solved and try working on some units...

 

[Moeniir]

That rings a bell... FLC files support the notion of frame delay, or how long each frame is display. Animation Shop fakes this by inserting duplicate frames. I'll play with it and see what I can find.

 

[GhengisFarb]

Originally posted by Dark Sheer


To stop Animation Shop from doing that, make sure you change all the delays to 1 per frame before you save the file.

Animation Shop tends to save 1 frame for each delay. So a delay of 10 will be saved as 10 frame.

Dark Sheer gave me the solution. Posted my first pair of Leader Flics this morning. Thanks for the help everyone.