I have idlely been work on a weapon that has a single large JPEG for the weapon's effect. It would be possible to chop the image up to and make imageTicksPerFrame="1" and imageFrameCount=width of the image / speed of the weapon, but that would result in the image file increasing in size by a factor of ten or more. Would it be posible for you to add an 'offset attribute' to the Image tag that defaults to the imageWidth, but could be explicitly set?
For example, the weapon I am working on fires a jet of flame that arcs through space. Basically, want the "camera" to PAN over the JPEG instead of reading the image as a series of cels.
Feature Request: Overlapping Frames for Weapons, etc.
As I was previously reminded, you could decrease the color count of your image from 256 bit (or whatever it is) down to 16 bit and then chop it into cells. 16 bit really doesn't change the image too dramatically where the effect is concerned but it will drastically reduce the image file weight. And that is your biggest concern with using cells? Remember to reduce the mask (if used) to 2 bit as well.
Otherwise, having an "offset attribute" could open a wider door for using images as effects while maintaining smaller image file weight. But come to think of it, doesn't the armor display use something like that already? It's only one image but it offsets to another section of the image whenever armor is damaged. Try looking at that code and see if you can use it with your effects.
That weapon does sound pretty kewl too.
Otherwise, having an "offset attribute" could open a wider door for using images as effects while maintaining smaller image file weight. But come to think of it, doesn't the armor display use something like that already? It's only one image but it offsets to another section of the image whenever armor is damaged. Try looking at that code and see if you can use it with your effects.
That weapon does sound pretty kewl too.