Help required (any experts out there?)

Having visited www.asciimation.com and seen the Star Wars animation I
have, prompted by a mass viewing of "Bad Taste" while under the
influence, undertaken a perhaps over-ambitious project.
	Put simply I'm creating an ascii art B-movie. I am, however,
encountering difficulties (this is my first experience with
Javascript) and any help would be appreciated.
	How can I repeat a single frame for a set number of ticks? I
need to do this so that I can have scenes with speech which will
remain on screen long enough for people to read. 
	Also I need an economical way to repeat that single frame ad
nauseum with slight variations (like the speech and small areas of
animation going on in other parts of the screen). The optimisation
technique at Lizard's site is unsatisfactory as I need to be able to
change all the lines of the animation at some point (whenever the set
changes for example).
	Can anybody help me?
	
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In article <376...@news.freeserve.net>,
pin...@spammers.will.be.nailed.to.a.tree.mindless.com (Mepacrin)
wrote:
> 
> Having visited www.asciimation.com and seen the Star Wars animation I
> have, prompted by a mass viewing of "Bad Taste" while under the
> influence, undertaken a perhaps over-ambitious project.
>         Put simply I'm creating an ascii art B-movie. I am, however,
> encountering difficulties (this is my first experience with
> Javascript) and any help would be appreciated.
>         How can I repeat a single frame for a set number of ticks? I
> need to do this so that I can have scenes with speech which will
> remain on screen long enough for people to read.
>         Also I need an economical way to repeat that single frame ad
> nauseum with slight variations (like the speech and small areas of
> animation going on in other parts of the screen). The optimisation
> technique at Lizard's site is unsatisfactory as I need to be able to
> change all the lines of the animation at some point (whenever the set
> changes for example).
>         Can anybody help me?

Whoa!!! And I thought I was best at trying to run before walking.
Shimrod knows quite a lot about Javascript. Is he still around? And you
might try The Omega

http://transload.starblvd.net/cgi-bin/forum?name=the_omega. 

He knows a lot about Javascript (not that much about ascii-animation)
and may know a way to repeat the single frame. That would be an amazing
thing to be able to do. If you find out how, please post here. I will
alter my optimization page.

But if you are making a whole movie, then you should probably go the
Java route that whoever made the StarWarsasciianimation used. Alas, I
know nothing of it yet as it isn't viewable in Netscape3 and I am still
refusing to upgrade (I have no reason). I have been able to see the
StarWarsasciianimation though by looking at the Jar File and using the
pagedown technique. (Hilarious!) 

Doing a whole movie makes for a huge huge file. And I don't know if the
Java style can be optimized. Meph, miK? Anyone else?

Why don't you make a little trailer showing exciting scenes from your B
movie to entice us?


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       ___                        cq547@freene+.+oron+o.on.ca
     _/   |    ,^%---                         llizard aka ejm
    |_____|  __<_ \ ...mad for new animations!
      --- ==   >/
    [_____]  __>,^          ASCII-ar+, ASCII & gif anima+ions
  ejm|   |  //| |        www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9334/

llizard <lli...@iNOdirect.ca> writes:

> But if you are making a whole movie, then you should probably go the
> Java route that whoever made the StarWarsasciianimation used. Alas, I
> know nothing of it yet as it isn't viewable in Netscape3 and I am still
> refusing to upgrade (I have no reason). I have been able to see the
> StarWarsasciianimation though by looking at the Jar File and using the
> pagedown technique. (Hilarious!) 

It doesn't work in my netscape (4.x) either, but it runs in the 
appletviewer which comes with Sun's java development kit
(http://java.sun.com/).

> Doing a whole movie makes for a huge huge file. And I don't know if the
> Java style can be optimized. Meph, miK? Anyone else?

Holding a frame so that the text can be read would be easy enough,
but making small changes to a base frame is more difficult (although
possible), and may cause further problems such as:

It is much more difficult to edit an animation file in this format,
although this could be solved by writing the animation in full and
having another program to convert it to the compact format.

The amount of processing required to reproduce the whole frame from
the compact version may be too much for slower machines, or, if the
whole file is pre-processed before display, it may take longer than
the time saved by having a compact file format.

-- 
 _   ___    dav...@dmriley.demon.co.uk | www.dmriley.demon.co.uk/      ___   _
|=| |:-)|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|:-)| |=|
|:| |___|   "There's no film. Cinema is dead. There can't be film   |___| |:|
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llizard writes
>In article <376...@news.freeserve.net>,
>pin...@spammers.will.be.nailed.to.a.tree.mindless.com (Mepacrin)
>wrote:
>> 
>> Having visited www.asciimation.com and seen the Star Wars animation I
>> have, prompted by a mass viewing of "Bad Taste" while under the
>> influence, undertaken a perhaps over-ambitious project.
>>         Put simply I'm creating an ascii art B-movie. I am, however,
>> encountering difficulties (this is my first experience with
>> Javascript) and any help would be appreciated.
>>         How can I repeat a single frame for a set number of ticks? I
>> need to do this so that I can have scenes with speech which will
>> remain on screen long enough for people to read.
>>         Also I need an economical way to repeat that single frame ad
>> nauseum with slight variations (like the speech and small areas of
>> animation going on in other parts of the screen). The optimisation
>> technique at Lizard's site is unsatisfactory as I need to be able to
>> change all the lines of the animation at some point (whenever the set
>> changes for example).
>>         Can anybody help me?
>
>Whoa!!! And I thought I was best at trying to run before walking.

[][ hi ... that is sound advice

... best idea may be to create all the animation pictures for your film
frame by frame ... complete with a play-script of frame order and time
duration ... and then worry about the means of automation transport

once you have a sequence of pics that you can page-down with to see it
you can then set about optimising it for your chosen animation method

there are a few wrapping tools that i have tried that add javascript
to your animation for you ... the driver routines are configurable to
some extent ... in some cases

AFAIK javascript is only available on three web browsers Ns, Ie & Opera
which covers about 75% of web users

java-applet gives access to a lot more ... try-out Meph's TextArt.class
since it permits direct-cursor-addressing and speed/delay instructions
... if you are familiar with ANSI or VT100 console controls it will be
easy
... there are other java-applets ... but i haven't tried using them



>
>Why don't you make a little trailer showing exciting scenes from your B
>movie to entice us?
>
>  ejm|   |  //| |        www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9334/


[][ see yuz
[][ colin
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