Water Animation

[Calsmurf2904]

Hello,

I've been investigating how the water animation is build from the original files. Harold told me that on the original kam site they say its Palette Rotation. So I started looking into how different palette's influence the position of the water in the tiles.

This is how I found this out:
When using General Palette the water position is default.
When using Unused Palette 1 the water position changes, but the land position doesn't. (So this is another frame)
Same happens when using Unused Palette 2 and 3.

So we have 4 different frames then, but the original KAM uses 8.
So there should be a few more palette's around that we haven't found.

Anybody wants to share their info or help with the investigation?

Calsmurf2904

[Krom]

I don't know what you mean by "water position"

KaM uses:
5 frames animation for waterfalls
3 frames animation for swamps
and 8 frames of animation for water

colors are sampled from palette and looped (3,5,8 frames accordingly)

[Calsmurf2904]

I mean different frames, when you look at the changes in the water you see that each palette makes a different frame.

[Krom]

Can you post some screens please?

[calsmurf2904]

Unimportant message

[Krom]

I don't notice anything special inbetween these 3 frames, one is bright, one is dark and one even more dark ... What should I see - different frames of water animation?

[calsmurf2904]

Yes, well....its less noticeble because its JPG. (Lower quality, and the KAM textures aren't very high resolution anyway)
Alright, Open up Barbarian's Graphics Reader and goto Texture Map 4.
Look at some water tile first, then change the palette to Unused Palette 1.
You should see difference in the water between the 2 palette's. (Except for the brightness ofcourse). When you change it to Unused Palette 2 you see a difference between the General Palette and the Unused Palette 1. (Indicating another frame.)

[Krom]

All frames are in one palette, you can check that by capturing a hundred of screenshots from KaM (like I did) and separating all anim frames from them. Then you can clearly see that colors just cycle through. All from the same palette.

I've uploaded captured frames and posted a link here somewhere.

If you open decoded tile files (tex1..4) you could see there ANIM sections which roughly correspond with animated tiles (meaning tex3 won't have animated details, and tex4 will have most of them). So my opinion is that all anim data is inside tile files and has nothing to do with external palettes. Btw, tile files have their own palette data inside

[calsmurf2904]

I thought so first, the brightness doesn't match up either.
But when you look closely you see that they are different frames when using different palettes. So this could mean 2 things:
1) There are still some undecoded palette's. (remapX.dat files perhaps?)
or
2) The game does something with the Unused Palette's to make them match up with the General Palette's. (Maybe sample them together?)

This could ofcourse also be a weird coinvidence, but this looks like something that needs to be worth investigating.

[Krom]

Hm.. I tried GraphicsReader but it won't let me see tile-textures..

[H.A.H.]

They are under Textures, they are named Texture Maps.
Just scan the game

[Krom]

Damn, I don't have "Texture Maps" row in GraphicsReader (version 1.0.2).

[calsmurf2904]

I created a gif file of it (please note, this is not done with screenshots, this is just palette changing)

[Krom]

I wonder how do I get to work TexturesMaps in GR... And how did Barbarian decoded them into usable images.. Unless that I can't say anything, but your idea looks good!

[calsmurf2904]

The TextureMaps are just the textX.dat files. I just displayed them with different palette's. (As you can see it does cause a different frame of the animation to kick in). The unused palette's are the ones default in the textX.dat files. As far as I can see do the palette's that are standard with text0.dat and text1.dat making a different frame, and the one in pal0.bbm (General Palette).