DDF Animations

Animations are defined in the DDFANIM data lump, or in the anims.ddf file.

DDFANIM allows you to change floor and ceiling animation or wall animation sequences. Each entry consists of a unique name, enclosed in square brackets, plus a series of commands that specify the first and last frames of the animation, as well as how frequently it changes.

Names should be descriptive, but are used in the map editor when adding animations to your maps, so should be no longer than 8 characters (without spaces).

Commands

The commands used for animation entries are as follows:

COMMAND	TYPE	EXPLANATION
TYPE	[special]	Either 'FLAT' for a floor texture animation, 'TEXTURE' for a wall texture animation, or 'GRAPHIC' for a UI graphic animation (backgrounds, menus, hud). Note that if using GRAPHIC, then you **must** use SEQUENCE instead of FIRST/LAST.
FIRST	[string]	The first texture in the animation -- Refer to name of entry in wadfile.
LAST	[string]	The last texture in the animation -- Refer to name of entry in wadfile.
SPEED	[time]	The time to display each frame in tics(T). Where 8T is normal Doom speed and 4T is double normal speed.
SEQUENCE	[string]	Use it to specify the full animation sequence. Names cannot be used twice. For example: SEQUENCE = TEX1, TEX2, TEX3, TEX5, TEX8; If the animation is a GRAPHIC type, then you **MUST** use SEQUENCE.

Notes

The full animation sequence consists of all the flats / textures in the WAD file between the first and last entry.

You should make sure that you don't muddle up your entries in the wad, e.g

MYANIMB
MYANIMA
MYANIMC

rather than

MYANIMA
MYANIMB
MYANIMC

If you don't do your flats/textures properly, EDGE-Classic will give you an error message.

You can also use quotes around names with an underscore in it:

[MY_ANIM]
TYPE  = FLAT;
FIRST = "MY_AN_1";
LAST  = "MY_AN_2";
SPEED = 8T;

If you leave out the quotes, DDF converts an underscore to a space, so the name MY_AN_1 would be read as "MY AN 1". The other obvious solution is to never use an underscore in texture names you plan on animating.  

Examples

The following are examples of complete animation entries:

[NUKAGE1]  
TYPE = FLAT; // floor or ceiling animation  
FIRST = "NUKAGE1";  
LAST = "NUKAGE3";  
SPEED = 8T;  

[WALL_BLUE]  
TYPE = TEXTURE; // wall animation  
FIRST = "TEXTURE1";  
LAST = "TEXTURE3";  
SPEED = 8T;

DDF docs written by Andy Baker and Ziggy Gnarly, with updates by Andrew Apted, Andy Brewood and Luke Brennan. © EDGE Team, et al. 1998 - 2024.