Allegro Newbie Tutorial

Allegro Newbie Tutorial : Lesson 7 - Simple Sprite Animation

This tutorial will just play a simple animation over and over again, regarless of what key you are pressing, or in what direction you are moving.It will keep playing even if you don't press anything.

To acheive different effects, you could create different variables to hold the states as to what direction the user is heading, or whether the user is even moving at all!

This stuff should be pretty much memorized by now:

#include <allegro.h> // You must include the Allegro Header file

/* Timer stuff */
volatile long speed_counter = 0; // A long integer which will store the value of the
// speed counter.

void increment_speed_counter() // A function to increment the speed counter
{
  speed_counter++; // This will just increment the speed counter by one.
}
END_OF_FUNCTION(increment_speed_counter); // Make sure you tell it that it's the end of the
                                                                 // function

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
allegro_init(); // Initialize Allegro
  install_keyboard(); // Initialize keyboard routines
  install_timer(); // Initialize the timer routines

  LOCK_VARIABLE(speed_counter);                 // Used to set the timer which regulates the game's
  LOCK_FUNCTION(increment_speed_counter); // speed.
  install_int_ex(increment_speed_counter, BPS_TO_TIMER(60)); // Set our BPS

set_color_depth(16); // Set the color depth

set_gfx_mode(GFX_AUTODETECT, 640,480,0,0); // Change our graphics mode to 640x480

Here we create 3 bitmaps. One bitmap per frame of animation, and we have a total of three different frames for the animation, so hence: frame1, frame2, and frame3.

BITMAP *frame1 = load_bitmap("frame1.bmp", NULL); // Declare a bitmap and Load our picture in one single statement
BITMAP *frame2 = load_bitmap("frame2.bmp", NULL);
BITMAP *frame3 = load_bitmap("frame3.bmp", NULL);

This code is the same as in the previous lesson. Create the buffer, and location holders for the position of the frames.

BITMAP *buffer = create_bitmap(640, 480); // Declare and create a bitmap in a single statement

/* Declare some integers for later use */
int my_pic_x = 0;// Holds our pictures X coorinate
int my_pic_y = 0;// Holds our picture's Y coordinate

Here is a simple integer that we are going to increment on each logic loop, therefore it will be incremented at the speed of the speed counter, which (in this program) is set at 60bps. That means when our frame_counter == 60, one full second has passed. Keep that in mind, as you will see how we use it later on.

int frame_counter = 0; // A counter for which frame to draw

This code stays the same as the previous lessons

while(!key[KEY_ESC])//If the user hits escape, quit the program
{

while(speed_counter > 0)
{
  if(key[KEY_RIGHT]) // If the user hits the right key, change the picture's X coordinate
  {
    my_pic_x ++; // Moving right so up the X coordinate by 1
  }
  else if(key[KEY_LEFT]) // Ditto' - only for left key
  {
    my_pic_x --; // Moving left, so lower the X coordinate by 1
  }
  else if(key[KEY_UP]) // If the user hits the up key, change the picture's Y coordinate
  {
    my_pic_y --; // Moving up, so lower the Y coordinate by 1
  }
  else if(key[KEY_DOWN]) // Ditto' - only for down
  {
    my_pic_y ++; // Moving down, so up the Y coordinate by 1
  }

speed_counter --;

Increment our frame counter at the same speed of the speed counter.

frame_counter ++;

Here we test to see if the frame counter is over 4 seconds.If it is, we set it back to zeroin order to restart the animation.We are only testing for four seconds because we are only drawing 1 frame a second, and we're drawing a total of four frames. The next big chunk of explanation will clear up any confusion regarding this.

if(frame_counter > 240) // 60 * 4 = 240 (When frame counter = 60, 1 second has passed)
{
frame_counter = 0;
}

This doesn't really need explanation. This is the closing bracket for one statment, and the screen aquiring function in the beginning of the drawing section of the code.

} //Closing bracket for the while(speed_counter > 0) statment

Here is where things get a little tricky.There are multiple ways to do this, but I'll showyou the one with the least lines of code.

As you read earlier, when frame_counter == 60, one second
has passed, so we will draw each frame at one second.

// In the first second, draw the first frame
if(frame_counter < 60) // Less than a full second
{
  draw_sprite(buffer, frame1, my_pic_x, my_pic_y); // Draw the first frame
}
else if(frame_counter >= 60 && frame_counter < 120) // Between 1 and 2 seconds
{
  draw_sprite(buffer, frame2, my_pic_x, my_pic_y); // Draw the second frame
}
else if(frame_counter >= 120 && frame_counter < 180) // If we are between 2 and 3 seconds
{
  draw_sprite(buffer, frame1, my_pic_x, my_pic_y); // Draw the first frame again,
                                                                        // to acheive better effect
}
else // If we are over 3 seconds
{
  draw_sprite(buffer, frame3, my_pic_x, my_pic_y); // Draw the last frame.
}

End of the drawing portion -- same as the previous lesson's

blit(buffer, screen, 0,0,0,0,640,480); // Draw the buffer to the screen
clear_bitmap(buffer);
}

Don't forget to destroy all the bitmaps we created, and do the rest of the deinitializing.

destroy_bitmap(frame1);//Release the bitmap data
destroy_bitmap(frame2);//Release the bitmap data
destroy_bitmap(frame3);//Release the bitmap data
destroy_bitmap(buffer);//Release the bitmap data
return 0; // Exit with no errors
}
END_OF_MAIN() // This must be called right after the closing bracket of your MAIN function.
// It is Allegro specific.

That's it. That's as simple you can get with animation. Feel free to play around with the timing, and the framing. Add in more frames if you would like. Create integers to allow the animation to play ONLY when a key is being pressed by setting a value to TRUE, when a key is pressed, and FALSE when no keys are pressed. Experiment to get exactly what you want.

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