Talk:Idle Animations

A litle detail...

This article should start with a paragraph mentioning what is an idle and what it can be used for, with brief examples (not code examples, but contextual examples for the sake of an introductory paragraph). The same remark could apply to the PickIdle function, as well as many other function references : such a guess game makes the learning curve quite flat, as it seems that these references are addressed to knowledgeable modders who already know what those functions are used for, under what circumstances, and only need technical specifications/references. Since I still don't how to formulate the most correct and clear answer to the later (I am still learning), sorry, I can't provide this info : all I can say is that as a newbie, this would be very welcome.

Note: though it is obvious that an idle animation is an animation applied to a character, it is not so obvious when considering that an "idle state" means « when nothing happens, standing there, idle ». Indeed, some clarification is needed for not misleading newbies into interpreting a "first glance" : can an idle animation be used when an action involving the character is actually taking place?... These obvious questions need to be addressed at first place IMHO. In this case, we just don't get an introductory sentence mentioning a simple answer to the simple question « What is an idle animation? »... And true, this can be observed throughout many other reference articles. --HawkFest 14:47, 11 October 2007 (EDT)

Idle Placement

Per discussions on the Forums about puting new idles at the top of the tree:

There is no incompatibility because:

See here

The Wiki is telling modders to put the idles at the bottom? Unless I get feedback on this telling me not to do so I will be editing that out of the wiki.

If I understand this correctly putting the ildes at the bottom means that Pick Idle in your script will have to HOPE that all the other idles do not trigger as the manager searches the list all the way down to your idle. Others in the thread have also said that putting it at the bottom could result in the idles NOT playing for the same reasons.---Spooky F/X April-22-2011

One, new discussions on a Wiki go at the bottom, with their own header; I've moved it.

Two, I put some formatting around the quote; nothing I expect anyone to do since we don't have an easy/simple way of doing it, but it's much neater. I hope you don't mind.

Three, it would probably be easier to sign your comments in Talk pages with ~~~~; this will generate your signature as a link to your User Page with a timestamp. Your manual version isn't bad, of course, but using the tildes would be quicker (and the link is occasionally useful).

Anyway, as to your concern... I don't know. I don't know anything about Idles and I didn't write this page. However, I can tell you who did — Kkuhlmann is a Senior Developer at Bethesda (or at least was at the time this Wiki was written). I would recommend being extremely certain about any edits to this page that contradict him: it wouldn't be the first time, but he was, after all, in a rather good place to know about this.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 11:32, 22 April 2011 (EDT)

Actually, sorry, I misread the History log; the section you deleted was written by Qazaaq, and added to by TheMagician. Both are quite skilled modders, but neither is a dev. The original version of the page written by Kkuhlmann doesn't have that section.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 11:46, 22 April 2011 (EDT)

I added the note after reading about it on the forums. I haven't tested it myself and forgot who posted about it back then.

--Qazaaq 03:48, 23 April 2011 (EDT)

Thanks for catching and editing this, Spooky F/X. All I did was add the image and expand a little on what Qazaaq wrote since I happened to be working on animations at the time of the edit and had the image handy. I just always assume that Qazaaq is correct. :P TheMagician 11:44, 23 April 2011 (EDT)