POWERPACKER ANIM (PPANIM) Typed in by ???. Edited by PARASITE. AN INTRODUCTION PPAnim was written to complement one of my other utilities, PowerPacker (a command and data cruncher). It is used to play normal IFF ANIM #5 files or ANIM files crunched with PowerPacker. The decrunching is done automatically so the user does not have to know if a file is crunched or not. The ANIM #5 format is used by most ANIM generating programs, including DPaint III and Videoscape 2.0. PPAnim uses the powerpacker.library, so make sure it is present in your LIBS: directory. If you haven't got PowerPacker you are of course missing one of the main features of this program. PowerPacker is available as shareware (up to version 2.3b) or as a commercial program (version 3.0a). Order a copy from UGA, P.O.Box 881, 3700 AW Zeist, The Netherlands. The commercial version offers several enhancements like 40 to 50 times faster crunching of programs with overlays. USAGE PPAnim can be used in four different ways. - First of all via the CLI: If you enter 'PPAnim ?' will get a usage template. You use PPAnim like this: PPAnim [-h] [-j#] [-l#] [-r[#]] [-i] [-o] [] The program will by default load the ANIM file and play it in a loop. If the file was crunched using PowerPacker 2.0 or higher PPAnim will first decrunch it for you. If the file was encrypted you will be prompted for the password. If you enter PPAnim without options, you will be presented with either a file prompt or a filerequester (if arp.library or asl.library is available). Entering PPAnim with a directory instead of a file as an argument will also get you a requester, but it will be positioned in the directory you specified. PPAnim has several options: -h : This option is used to force HAM mode when no CAMG chunk is found. If you don't specify this option PPAnim will assume a 6 plane screen is extra-halfbrite. (Note that it is wrong for an Amiga IFF ANIM file not to have a CAMG chunk, especially when there can be doubt about what display mode to pick!) -j# : Set a delay between frames in jiffies. A jiffie is 1/50s (PAL) or 1/60s (NTSC). -l# : Set number of times to loop. -r[#]: Select repeat mode instead of loop mode (see below) and (optionally) set number of repeats. -i : Force screen to be interlaced. -o : Play the animation once, no loop (same as -l1 or -r1). The difference between loop mode and repeat mode is the following: in loop mode PPAnim expects the last two frames of the animation to be the same as the first two frames, this makes looping easy and above all fast (DPaint saves animations like this). Some animations are not like this however and if you want these to loop correctly you must select repeat mode (-r), PPAnim will then simply restart the animation when it finishes (note that there may be a small hickup when the animation repeats because the first frame takes longer to draw than the rest). PPAnim can be made resident so it doesn't have to be loaded every time you use it, use the ARP ARes command or the c: Resident command for this. You can't make PPAnim resident when it is crunched !! The file is supplied as an uncrunched command file with the pure bit set. PPAnim is reentrant as well, so you can run it from several CLI's at the same time. (Not that this is very useful, but it's possible :-D) Example: '1> PPAnim -j10 -i Hard1:anim/SlowInterlaced.anim' - Via the WorkBench: There are three different ways of using PPAnim via the workbench: you can set the default tool of the (crunched) ILBM file to 'PPAnim', you can single click the PPAnim icon and then shift double click the animation icon or you can double-click the PPAnim icon and enter the filename in the string gadget (or filerequester) you will be presented with. You set the default tool by single clicking the icon of the picture and selecting 'Info' from the workbench menu. You will get a window with several gadgets in it, click in the string gadget where it says 'Default tool' and enter ':ppanim'. PPAnim should be in the root directory of your disk for this to work, if e.g. it's in the C directory you should enter ':c/ppanim'. Last of all select the 'Save' gadget. You can set the same options as from CLI by setting tooltypes in the animation's icon (NOT PPAnim's icon!). PPAnim recognizes the following tooltypes (for more info see CLI options): TIMES= Set number of loops or repeats. JIFFIES= Set delay in jiffies. REPEAT Select repeat mode. ONCE Play once only. LACE Force interlace. NOTE: - PPAnim will add '.pp' to the filename when the file wasn't found. This is very useful in the WorkBench enviroment: you can make an icon for 'bird.anim' but name the file 'bird.anim.pp'. Now the WorkBench will show an icon with 'house.pic' as name, but if you doubleclick it 'bird.anim.pp' will be played. (As long as there is no 'bird.anim' file in the directory !) FEATURES - PPAnim uses the filerequester of the asl.library or arp.library if available. - PPAnim supports a change of the color palette during the animation. - Abort PPAnim by pressing 'Q' or the right mouse button. The screen can be dragged by an invisible drag bar at the top. - The pesky little mouse will be removed while playing. - PPAnim offers full overscan support, PAL or NTSC. All Amiga display modes (like HAM, EHB) are of course also supported. - Press 'L' to load another animation, you will be prompted for a filename. - Press 'S' or the left mouse button to start/stop the animation. Press 'N' to advance a frame (when stopped). - PPAnim reads the 'DPAN' IFF chunk DPaintIII saves with animations to find the rate at which to play the animation. Note that user options override this rate (-j# or JIFFIES=). - PPAnim is short (only about 7K) ! A lot shorter than Sparta's ShowANIM, and on top of that it has a lot more features :-) - PPAnim is compatible with Kickstart & Workbench 2.0. End.