Strange Flic Glitch

[Plotinus]

I have a problem with a unit that I'm making, and it's driving me mad!

The image keeps corrupting. What happens is this. I prepare the storyboard as usual and load it into Flicster, and export it as a flic, as usual. When I view the storyboard in Flicster it looks fine. However, if I then load the flic back into Flicster - or view it in-game - it has become corrupted. Lines of pink appear on some of the frames. The odd thing is that it's only ever the first one or two frames of the storyboard, and only some directions. If I export the thing as a storyboard again and look at the pcx, I find that the pink lines have been drawn onto it. I can remove them by pasting in my renders once more, then loading the storyboard into Flicster, where it looks fine, and I can export it as a flic - only to find that the same thing has happened again.

Has anyone else encountered this? What's going on? I can't use Civ3FlcEdit to make storyboards into flics because it always adds an extra frame, which looks terrible in-game, and I have never been able to make it stop doing this (I think that that program invariably does it for some people and never does it for others, although I don't know why).

 

[Flamand]

Could it be a dimension error? Like the renders are 101x101 pixels large and Flicster uses 100x100? It would help if you post a screenie...

 

[NavyDawg]

Plotinus,
If you PM one of the storyboards and the palette that is messed up, I'll take a look at it. What program do you use to load the palette (I use PSP 9)?

 

[utahjazz7]

I'm not sure what that could be.

Where are the lines of pink? If they are over the unit, I don't know what it could be. But, if the lines are in the pick background color, it could be possible that you placed this particular shade of pink in the color palette—outside of the shadow/smoke area.

 

[Plotinus]

Thanks for the ideas. Flamand, it's nothing to do with the dimensions, as everything there checks out. In fact I have changed the dimensions of this unit as I worked on it. It was originally 230x230, but it's now 230x195. Exactly the same problem recurs each time. Since I've never seen this before, and this unit has the largest frame size of any that I've made, I thought that perhaps it was something to do with the large frame size, which is one reason why I cut it down. But it seems to be unrelated (unless it's something to do with the x dimension, which I can't alter). One odd thing is that the glitch appears in exactly the same place relative to the images, even after changing the frame size. For example, the NW direction always has it on the right wing like that.

NavyDawg, it's not a palette problem. The palette remains fine: it's as if someone has drawn in magenta over the image. I can correct it simply by pasting that frame back into the storyboard, but it corrupts again next time I load the flic.

To illustrate, this is what's going on. This is the first frame in each direction. Notice how most of them are fine, a couple (facing SE, W) have just a few pixels wrong, and one (facing SW) is worse. I can correct these, turn it back into a flic, and it looks fine in Flicster - until the next time I load it into Flicster or the game, when I see that exactly the same glitch has reappeared.

I'm wondering if this is something to do with Flicster as opposed to FlcEdit. If anyone here uses FlcEdit successfully, perhaps I could send you the storyboards and see if you can turn them into flics, and see if the glitch recurs?

 

[Olorin0222]

I use FlcEdit for all of my units. I would be more than happy to try and see what I can do for you (you've done a lot to help me, too).

 

[Plotinus]

Thanks, Olorin. I'll send them to you and see if you can work any magic.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

I'm not saying this would work, but I'm sure you agree that anything that sounds remotely feasible is worth a try when in desperation. Assume in this example that your movement is 15 frames long. Why not create in Flicster an 18 frame animation, cut and pasting your animation into the last 15 frames. Then, delete the first three frames (I would personally do this in AnimationShop Pro, but I don't know what software you use).

Like I said, it's a feasible (if messy) solution that might work. Serves you right anyway for not doing an Indian unit .

 

[Olorin0222]

Plotinus-Looked at the flc's, and everything looks ok in Civ3FlcEdit and in-game to me???

Working on it though reminded me of a problem I had with my Knight of Dol Amroth. Sometimes the flag would end up 'touching' the border of the frame, and for some reason would create a trail of pink stuff along the edge of a frame. How I solved it was simply painting the magenta over this new trail, and it worked fine. However, I didn't see any issues with your storyboards or flcs, so I can't tell you what's wrong.

 

[Bjornlo]

I had a similar problem once with Flicster and so now use Civ3FlcEdit instead.

ps: nice looking dragon.

 

[odintheking]

It's not a dragon, it's a Nazgul Fell Beast, .

 

[Plotinus]

Well, maybe the problem is only occurring for me then. Perhaps I should just post it and see if anyone notices anything.

 

[Bjornlo]

Well, maybe the problem is only occurring for me then.

I had a similar problem once with Flicster and so now use Civ3FlcEdit instead.

I do not know if the error I saw would have been visible in game, I just assumed it would and decided I need a tool which was more reliable.

 

[Plotinus]

Well, unfortunately I can't use Civ3FlcEdit - unless I want a frame's delay at the end of every animation, which I don't. It's a real pain because that program has so many nice features.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

I recently saw glitches in my own units that other people couldn't see (I posted the "poorly" Indian spearman). I then realised that I'd bought a new monitor, which, whilst being really good, picks up on lots of things my old, more "forgiving" monitor didn't - a lot of leaderheads look a bit patchy on it too. Perhaps what you can see on your monitor others can't see on theirs?

 

[Plotinus]

That's a cunning idea, but I don't think that's it - at least, unless I'm the only person who can see the glitches on the wing in the second-to-last frame posted above!

Anyway, I'll post the thing when I've finished the sounds, and hopefully either no-one else will suffer the glitch or someone will work out how to solve it.

 

[odintheking]

Uh... Plotty, to me it seems like those glitches are supposed to be there, they make the wings look tattered. Unless that's not what it was meant to look like...

 

[Plotinus]

Hm - if anyone asks I'll tell them it's intentional!

Actually I did want to make the wings tattered, but I found it very hard to make a texture work on them.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Plot, I know EXACTLY what is causing the glitches: I had them the first time I tried to make one of my airships, and with a bit of expermentation, I was able to determine that for some reason, any unit that has a frame size of over 200x200 (unless said unit takes up only a small portion of the total area), it will have the random pixel deletion thing going on. That is and has been a long-standing Flicster bug.

I also would have switched to Civ3FlcEdit, but it also has that wierd frame delay thingy whenever I try to make a unit with it, so I've just not bothered, and just learned to live withing Flicsters limitiations.

 

[WildWeazel]

I remember reading about this pixel-eating bug a long time ago. IIRC someone suggested placing a cluster of pixels away from the unit and labelling it "food"
If it doesn't happen when the unit takes up a small portion of the frame, perhaps increasing the frame size to 240x240 would help?