The Mana World Forums

Well I've been making a monster, it's basically a bird and I'll post my progress soon, but before I waste all my time I want to know exactly what the limits of events eAthena allows monsters to do is.
If you don't get what I'm saying basically I'm asking how far can you push eAthena...
I want to make my bird be able to sit and perform actions on spawn and a few things when it's standing...
what I want to know is which ones of these are possible.
If you want great detail here is what animations I want to make (that I don't know are possible) exactly:
* Spawn (I wouldn't expect to be able to make this)
* Stand event (Basically an event it performs randomly on stand)
* Sit/Stand Event (See above except I want it to sit down)
* (To go with the above) A stand (Basically it's a take-off for after the bird has been sitting on the ground)

I know I am a noob to this but I just wanted to make my monster do these things XD

* P.S. Once I've good a good answer to this I'll rename the topic and post my bird sorry about how its pretty off-topic

Unfortunately mob behaviour (animations as well as ai) is one of the least 'pushable' aspects. There are only 4 states/actions for mob animations:
1. stand (its the default action)
2. walk
3. attack
4. dead

There are no transitions, it only displays one of those 4 at a time. You can do cool things within these limitations though. As you mentioned you can add a complex stand animation, though it cannot be random. Instead you can do something like this: show default stand frame(s) for 2 seconds, then make it tap its foot, then back to default frame(s) for 1 second, then have it flap its wings, then back to default.... When you have 5 or so of the same mob around each randomly walking or standing for diff amounts of time, these prescripted events will appear random. Squirrels are an example of a mob that do this, though they area bit too hyper IMHO.

PS: leave this as its own topic and make a new one for the mob once you start it. Give this one a better title like "What animation states can a mob have?", so that others who have the same thoughts might be able to find this information more easily.

leave this as its own topic and make a new one for the mob once you start it. Give this one a better title like "What animation states can a mob have?", so that others who have the same thoughts might be able to find this information more easily.

With this in mind, moved to Technical Development and renamed. Also, this is more of a client limitation that a server limitation, unless you want the states to be synced.


---Freeyorp

nmaligec wrote:Unfortunately mob behaviour (animations as well as ai) is one of the least 'pushable' aspects. There are only 4 states/actions for mob animations:
1. stand (its the default action)
2. walk
3. attack
4. dead

There are no transitions, it only displays one of those 4 at a time. You can do cool things within these limitations though. As you mentioned you can add a complex stand animation, though it cannot be random. Instead you can do something like this: show default stand frame(s) for 2 seconds, then make it tap its foot, then back to default frame(s) for 1 second, then have it flap its wings, then back to default.... When you have 5 or so of the same mob around each randomly walking or standing for diff amounts of time, these prescripted events will appear random. Squirrels are an example of a mob that do this, though they area bit too hyper IMHO.

PS: leave this as its own topic and make a new one for the mob once you start it. Give this one a better title like "What animation states can a mob have?", so that others who have the same thoughts might be able to find this information more easily.

Okay thanks for the info, I'll make the mob land after a few seconds (as I have done this before)
what I don't know is can I make a sound for this particular stage in the animation?
Or would I have to make the audio file wait etc seconds before doing the frames?

Well anyway I'm going to start threads in sound development and graphics development, as I have sounds for my bird ready. Thanks again guys

Freeyorp101 wrote:This is more of a client limitation that a server limitation

Maybe an idea for a client...

Also I made a hurt frame that will also be useless now...
Why isn't there a hurt frame?

Anonymous!!! wrote: Okay thanks for the info, I'll make the mob land after a few seconds (as I have done this before)

I am guessing this is part of the stand animation. If not please explain.
Making a spawn animation as the first frames of the stand cycle is a great idea, if that is what you are doing. I would totally do that for a few other mobs except that the spawn animation would not logically fit when the stand animation gets played after a move or attack.

But in your case: if the bird lands on the ground for standing, you could make it so that it does not loop and ends with a frame of it standing on the ground. This would transition especially well with the walking and attack animation if the bird flies to do so. The attack can start with the bird taking off. When the attack ends the stand animation plays and the landing portion is displayed. Unfortunately the walk cannot have such a nice transition, because it needs to loop with itself.

Can the amount of time dedicated to the stand/walking states be played with?

Is there a set amount of frames available for each of the states?

Yes you have full control over how long your animations are and what frame order they are in. However, the server controls when its state changes:
1. Standing: lasts until ai makes it walk (random chance) or attack or it is killed by a player.
2. Walk: lasts until ai switches to stand or mob becomes aggressive/dies.
3. Attack: time in milliseconds (1000 ms = 1 sec) listed for aMotion in the mob_db entry for the mob (you can set this to what ever you need).
4. Death: I don't know the time but there is a maximum. I had to cut down death animations to fit the time limit (if someone knows the time limit or how to set it please let me know).