Animated Maps

ericwdhs · Post by **ericwdhs** » Tue May 08, 2007 7:17 pm

The maps can be in .gif format, so can maps be animated? Has anyone tried making one?

dominationnation · Post by **dominationnation** » Tue May 08, 2007 7:19 pm

see age of merchants map

he tried but it was voted against

DiM · Post by **DiM** » Tue May 08, 2007 7:31 pm

yes i made an animated map. see page 34 in the age of merchants thread. and yes it has been voted against but because it does not suit the style of the map. on other maps animations could be more appropriate.

but probably the main reason why people voted no is the slowing of the pc. nobody wants to wait for their map to load especially in a RT game. :lol:

i still belive animated maps are great but only as an option. this way we'll be able to choose if we want animation.

ericwdhs · Post by **ericwdhs** » Tue May 08, 2007 7:35 pm

Yeah, I think a simple 4 or 5 frame gif with waves crashing on the shoreline or something like that would really make a map look cool.

mibi · Post by **mibi** » Tue May 08, 2007 8:11 pm

DiM wrote:yes i made an animated map. see page 34 in the age of merchants thread. and yes it has been voted against but because it does not suit the style of the map. on other maps animations could be more appropriate.

but probably the main reason why people voted no is the slowing of the pc. nobody wants to wait for their map to load especially in a RT game.

i still belive animated maps are great but only as an option. this way we'll be able to choose if we want animation.

the map would only load once, and then be in the browsers cache until it was wiped... so the closet part of an RT game would still be lacks server.

plysprtz · Post by **plysprtz** » Tue May 08, 2007 9:39 pm

animated maps are pointless they will just make the site lag even more and totally screw people with slow comps.(ME) up

DiM · Post by **DiM** » Tue May 08, 2007 9:44 pm

plysprtz wrote:animated maps are pointless they will just make the site lag even more and totally screw people with slow comps.(ME) up

not if they are as an option.
you can chose:
[small map] [large map] [small animated map] [large animated map] :wink:

Coleman · Post by **Coleman** » Wed May 09, 2007 1:26 am

I'd still like to see animated maps in the future. I wouldn't mind a great plains Indian map where occasionally you see the Lakota or Iroquois wander about or a map with factories and animated smoke coming out.

The problem is I'm not skilled enough to pull either off and those that are happen to be busy with other projects.

EDIT: Oh, by Indians I don't mean the doctor types in the Asian area, I mean Native Americans, if we are all about being politically correct.

EDIT2: I do have kind of a secret project I'm working on that I'll share some about that is an animated map designed to be extremely disturbing. Basically I'm trying to emulate the feeling of going insane while playing the map, complete with a sanity bar at the top that slowly drains empty the longer you stare at the map without moving. I'm not sure how it will be received and I'm slow with art and especially animation so it is taking a lot of time.

ericwdhs · Post by **ericwdhs** » Wed May 09, 2007 2:17 am

If they incorporated Flash, that'd be easy, but gif? No way could you do anything longer than a few frames with map-size images.

DiM · Post by **DiM** » Wed May 09, 2007 8:45 am

ericwdhs wrote:If they incorporated Flash, that'd be easy, but gif? No way could you do anything longer than a few frames with map-size images.

actually you can do ample animations with gif. all you need is patience and hard work.

Guilty_Biscuit · Post by **Guilty_Biscuit** » Wed May 09, 2007 8:49 am

DiM wrote:
plysprtz wrote:animated maps are pointless they will just make the site lag even more and totally screw people with slow comps.(ME) up

not if they are as an option.
you can chose:
[small map] [large map] [small animated map] [large animated map]

That is a great idea!

mibi · Post by **mibi** » Wed May 09, 2007 8:54 am

ericwdhs wrote:If they incorporated Flash, that'd be easy, but gif? No way could you do anything longer than a few frames with map-size images.

I agree, gif are way too limiting. My maps are about 250k, 4 frames and your already over a 1mb. not much you can do with 4 frames. flash would be the way to go here, but that wont be happening any time soon.

DiM · Post by **DiM** » Wed May 09, 2007 9:15 am

mibi wrote:
ericwdhs wrote:If they incorporated Flash, that'd be easy, but gif? No way could you do anything longer than a few frames with map-size images.

I agree, gif are way too limiting. My maps are about 250k, 4 frames and your already over a 1mb. not much you can do with 4 frames. flash would be the way to go here, but that wont be happening any time soon.

i agree gifs are limiting but your math is not correct.

checkout my animated map it only has 600k.

and for that map i used 20 frames, each frame was a jpg saved at 80 quality and had 210k. i don't know exactly how the gif compression works but instead of having 4 megs i got a 600k gif.

and i think 20 frames are more than enough for simple animations like some troops moving, trees swaying in the wind or waves crashing on the shores.

as i explained in the aom thread the main problem is that after you make the animation you can't modify stuff. because even if you use layered pngs for each frame, they are flatten and transformed in jpgs after the conversion to gif. the animations can be made only after each and every little detailed is solved. so they should be the final step in the map making process.

mibi · Post by **mibi** » Wed May 09, 2007 9:25 am

DiM wrote:
mibi wrote:
ericwdhs wrote:If they incorporated Flash, that'd be easy, but gif? No way could you do anything longer than a few frames with map-size images.

I agree, gif are way too limiting. My maps are about 250k, 4 frames and your already over a 1mb. not much you can do with 4 frames. flash would be the way to go here, but that wont be happening any time soon.

i agree gifs are limiting but your math is not correct.

checkout my animated map it only has 600k.

and for that map i used 20 frames, each frame was a jpg saved at 80 quality and had 210k. i don't know exactly how the gif compression works but instead of having 4 megs i got a 600k gif.

and i think 20 frames are more than enough for simple animations like some troops moving, trees swaying in the wind or waves crashing on the shores.

as i explained in the aom thread the main problem is that after you make the animation you can't modify stuff. because even if you use layered pngs for each frame, they are flatten and transformed in jpgs after the conversion to gif. the animations can be made only after each and every little detailed is solved. so they should be the final step in the map making process.

yeah i guess i dont really know how animated gif compress works either...

unriggable · Post by **unriggable** » Wed May 09, 2007 2:37 pm

mibi wrote:
ericwdhs wrote:If they incorporated Flash, that'd be easy, but gif? No way could you do anything longer than a few frames with map-size images.

I agree, gif are way too limiting. My maps are about 250k, 4 frames and your already over a 1mb. not much you can do with 4 frames. flash would be the way to go here, but that wont be happening any time soon.

Have a smokestack or something? I dunno, when you think about it its just to make some images move a bit, not to have a whole storyline behind the map.

ericwdhs · Post by **ericwdhs** » Thu May 10, 2007 2:44 am

Wow... I didn't know .gif compressed that much.

DiM · Post by **DiM** » Thu May 10, 2007 10:12 am

ericwdhs wrote:Wow... I didn't know .gif compressed that much.

me neither.
when i started the animation i was sure it would be a few megs but in the end i was very very surprised in a pleasant way

snufkin · Post by **snufkin** » Thu May 10, 2007 11:22 am

It´s not really compression.

frame 2,3,4 etc only have to contain the info that is different from the background. The remainder of those frames are transparent and actually showing the first frame at the same time as the changes.

Bodmanbod · Post by **Bodmanbod** » Thu May 10, 2007 11:36 am

just want to point out that gif images are generally worse quality than jpgs though so any animated map would be a worse quality image than the map without animation saved as a jpg.

DiM · Post by **DiM** » Thu May 10, 2007 11:56 am

Bodmanbod wrote:just want to point out that gif images are generally worse quality than jpgs though so any animated map would be a worse quality image than the map without animation saved as a jpg.

are you sure? go to page 34 in age of merchants map and see if there's any downsize in quality :shock:

i haven't noticed.

Bodmanbod · Post by **Bodmanbod** » Thu May 10, 2007 12:15 pm

DiM wrote:
Bodmanbod wrote:just want to point out that gif images are generally worse quality than jpgs though so any animated map would be a worse quality image than the map without animation saved as a jpg.

are you sure? go to page 34 in age of merchants map and see if there's any downsize in quality
i haven't noticed.

well yeah i'm sure

the reason gifs are lower quality is because they have far fewer colours your map has only a small range of colours and tones so the difference is not noticeable. but on an image with more colours (anything over 256 which is the highest a gif can have) then you will begin to notice a difference. If you consider that photoshop has literally several millions of different colours and shades then it will be highly possible to see the drop in quality from a gif to a jpg.

However gifs are better on things with very few colours such as pixel art.

DiM · Post by **DiM** » Thu May 10, 2007 12:26 pm

Bodmanbod wrote:
DiM wrote:
Bodmanbod wrote:just want to point out that gif images are generally worse quality than jpgs though so any animated map would be a worse quality image than the map without animation saved as a jpg.

are you sure? go to page 34 in age of merchants map and see if there's any downsize in quality
i haven't noticed.

well yeah i'm sure the reason gifs are lower quality is because they have far fewer colours your map has only a small range of colours and tones so the difference is not noticeable. but on an image with more colours (anything over 256 which is the highest a gif can have) then you will begin to notice a difference. If you consider that photoshop has literally several millions of different colours and shades then it will be highly possible to see the drop in quality from a gif to a jpg.

However gifs are better on things with very few colours such as pixel art.

you're probably right i never looked at it from this point of view.

rebelman · Post by **rebelman** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:26 am

looks like the first animated map is about to be in live play - wm's conqueurclub man

gimil · Post by **gimil** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:34 am

DiM wrote:as i explained in the aom thread the main problem is that after you make the animation you can't modify stuff. because even if you use layered pngs for each frame, they are flatten and transformed in jpgs after the conversion to gif. the animations can be made only after each and every little detailed is solved. so they should be the final step in the map making process.

O know this is old but ill quote this anyway . . .

With photosho theres a neat little animation window which allows you to modify your animation as you go along in a layered format, once your finished you then can choose to save it as a gif animation which still keeping a modifyable PSD file.