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Shape Animation
File-Driven Animation
Issue: 2.4 (March/April 2004)
Author: Joe Nastasi
Author Bio: Joe Nastasi is the president of Pyramid Design, a software development firm and the developers of A-OK! The Wings of Mercury and FTP Suite.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 9,933
Starting Page Number: 38
Article Number: 2419
Related Link(s): None
Excerpt of article text...
In this issue's column we'll expand the functionality of the animation system by adding the ability to load animations from a file. One look at last issue's example will demonstrate how difficult it is to change or add an animation. By defining animations in a file, we make the whole process flexible and easy to experiment with.
Animation Description File Format
First, let's define a file format. Since this file will be set up by either a programmer (who should understand restrictive syntax) or a future editing tool, we're going to require things to be in a strict format and order.
General Rules
- Since we're using the EndOfLine method to parse lines, the text file must have line breaks that match the OS on which the program is running on
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