yes another question

[English Mobster]

Oi.
A bit of a bump, but I'm having a bit of the same problem, and search was my friend.

However, search did not tell me how to fix I bug I was having following the GBX tuts.
The RAR file had 404'd a LONG time ago, so that's no help.
I have a 32-frame tif file, at 256x16384. Yes, every frame is needed, and yes, it goes into Tool just fine.
I've followed the steps to the letter in the tutorial OmegaDragon linked to, but I'm encountering an issue.
In my Blood Gulch test map (and Sapien), instead of seeing my animated bitmap, instead, I see a white bitmap covering my animated shader. If I move around, it changes opacity, meaning it's still transparent, even though I did every little thing the tutorial told me to do.
I don't get it. That RAR would have been helpful if it hadn't 404'd, as I could have just modified a couple things and gotten it ingame without a hassle.
If it helps, Sapien spits out this beautiful error when I import the .scenery tag with my shader on it:
\halopc\haloce\source\rasterizer\dx9\rasterizer_dx 9_hardware_bitmaps.c(148): D3DERR_INVALIDCALL in IDirect3DDevice9_CreateTexture(global_d3d_device, width, height, bitmap->mipmap_count+1-mip_levels_to_drop, 0, rasterizer_bitmap_format_table[bitmap->format], D3DPOOL_MANAGED, &(IDirect3DTexture9*)bitmap->hardware_format, NULL) (code=-2005530516, error=<can't get description>)

Doing a Google search turns up one result, in which Dennis basically told the guy his laptop was too shitty to see it. However, I'm not getting that multi-colored shit like that guy was getting, I'm just getting a blank screen with some opacity to it that shouldn't be there.

Anyone have a fix or that RAR file?
Also, Ghost, if you're listening, you need to stick that animated shader tutorial on your tutorial database, I looked there first and couldn't find anything on it.

[klange]

This is for a sign, right? You can always try the scripted device-machine + counter method.

[English Mobster]

Scripted device-machine + counter method?

[klange]

Scripted device-machine + counter method?

Basically, you slap a counter texture (like what the AR uses for its display) on a device machine and link it to the power value, then increment it by 1/frames every so often. While it's not as clean and efficient as the other method, it's far easier to implement.
This was my first test, the final version that I did in this map is much better looking (higher frame rate, etc.):

[English Mobster]

Ah, I get what you're saying.

So you just put all your frames onto a blue background, AR-style, then just tell Halo it's a counter, and tell the device_machine to go up by 1 every 1 second?

[klange]

Ah, I get what you're saying.

So you just put all your frames onto a blue background, AR-style, then just tell Halo it's a counter, and tell the device_machine to go up by 1 every 1 second?

Pretty much. I'll grab the tag and script sources tomorrow afternoon, I have to extract them from my own map.

[English Mobster]

That would be fucking awesome. Thanks.

[klange]

HEK+ isn't running for me under Wine. I'll just jump into Win7, so tomorrow, not today. Sorry about that. I should get that working this weekend so this situation doesn't come up again. (Don't worry, it's not like I actually need to do anything here, just extract tags...)

In the meantime, here is the important part of the script:

(script continuous anim 
(if (= (device_get_power sign) 1) 
(device_set_power sign 0) 
) 
(device_set_power sign (+ (device_get_power sign) 0.0089285714285714285714285714285714) ) 
(sleep 2) 
)

I'm not sure if Halo uses that many decimal points, but regardless, you replace that with your 1/frames (this should be, what, 1/32 or something?). Adjust that and the sleep time to suit. This should be the higher framerate sign from the newest NFA (which was this gif animation, all frames, should play at around the same rate):

Also, turning a really long gif animation into a sign takes some time to get it all right and make sure you don't have the spacer-blue in the actual image! I accidentally left a logo in that blue, and it appeared transparent during the animation .