Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven Windows game

Finally a news item not about delays or showing signs of life.

In Mafia, it is currently impossible to implement your own animated 3D models. The only animation capabilities within the game are either linear or a constant rotation.

This would mean a huge problem for bringing the ship's reciprocating engines to life, which consist out of many complex movements. This week I had been doing some thinking with the lead programmer, and we found a way to circumvent such limitations. Rather tedious, but by the use of stop motion animation.

What that basically means, is that instead of one animated object, a sequence of separate models are loaded in instead. Each one advancing the animation by one frame, until the loop is complete. A script then toggles the visibility of each frame on and off one after another, causing the end result to appear like an animation. The result is basically the exact same, only more work to make it happen. But surely worth the effort.

Please keep in mind that this is a demonstration scene. The final scene will obviously be a lot more fleshed out. I also found that the current sound is rather obnoxious, as cool as it may be. This sound will be different in the finished scene.