How to [store_unit], kill, [unstore_unit] with fade out/in?

[Simons Mith]

I'm using store_unit with kill=yes and a delay to make a unit briefly disappear then reappear after about 0.7 seconds with some changes. Works fine, but the unit disappears and reappears abruptly. Is there a neat way to fade a unit in and out at about recruitment speed? For the fadeout I can't use kill+animate because the unit has a die animation and I don't want her to actually 'die'.

[Sapient]

Well the obvious way would be to use http://wiki.wesnoth.org/ImagePathFuncti ... g_function
and change opacity of a unit image in a loop.

However the more correct way would probably be
using an [effect] to add a [new_animation] (which allows the full AnimationWML syntax to be used, e.g. highlight=1~0:600,0~1:600) then trigger it with [animate_unit]

[Simons Mith]

Darn, I was hoping there was a lazy way. Thanks.

But one other question: what exactly is the 'highlight'=1~0:600 tag? I've tried it (in several combinations) and it seems to do nothing. It's referred to twice on that Wiki page, but it's not listed or explained in any of the syntax summaries.

Edit: Another question arises: why in the name of all that's arcane does this code cause my mage to float upside-down??

Code: Select all

[object]
id=fade_in
silent=yes
[filter]
id=Wiowen
[/filter]
[effect]
apply_to=new_animation
[animation]
fade_in_start_time=0
[fade_in_frame]
duration=1
image="misc/blank-hex.png"
[/fade_in_frame]
[fade_in_frame]
duration=600
highlight=1~0:600
image="units/human-magi/mage+female.png"
[/fade_in_frame]
[/animation]
[/effect]
[/object]

mini-bump (merged double-post) - is this a bug? Even if there is an error in that code, I'm mystified as to how anything in it could cause a unit to turn upside down. The behaviour appears identical if you replace highlight with alpha.

[Simons Mith]

mini-bump (will merge this double-post later) - is this a bug? Even if there is an error in that code, I'm mystified as to how anything in it could cause a unit to turn upside down. The behaviour appears identical if you replace highlight with alpha.

Edit: Ack! I thought I /could/ merge my own posts, and/or delete the second one. But if I can, I don't see where you do it.

[Pentarctagon]

I don't know, but if it isn't you should keep it. Might be useful as a starting point if you wanted to make a unit spin in place or something .

[Simons Mith]

Some progress. The unwanted unit inversion appears to be due to something absent from the code above:
the new 1.9 auto_vflip= tag must be added and set to no, as it seems to default to yes.

What is this tag actually intended for, and shouldn't it default to no? So that not having it present at all doesn't introduce unexpected behaviour? auto-flipping left/right seems more reasonable, but for up/down aren't there likely to be more cases where you have to turn the feature off than leave it alone?
I actually had to add dev WML code to turn off a feature I didn't know about before my girl stopped randomly standing on her head! For that reason I think auto-vflip and auto-hflip should be no by default.

I've also tried applying fade-in/fade-out to a unit's move animation, and the result was a partially-cloaked Sword Drake swooping across the map. But the same code applied to a stationary unit still has no visible effect!