Bad Animation in Battle Model RSAA

[PitBrat]

I'm sorting through the battle models for Final Fantasy VII.
Kimera loads every model without a problem except for RSAA (green frog).
When Kimera loads RSAA it generates this error:
  Error reading animation 15(frame 0) from DA file rsda!!!

I'm using the data from the original, vanilla battle.lgp.

Is this a bug in the game?

[nfitc1]

It's a known issue. RSAA and HBAA are "corrupted". Borde is aware of it and the other animations in both those models are workable. We're assuming that it's just a corrupted animation. If you load HBAA just right the animations don't look...natural.

[Borde]

Yes, something is seriously wrong with that animation. I also found out a few odd animations which didn't fully comply the standard format. Some have wrong chunk lengths and some have different frame count on both counters. This could possibly have some sort of meaning, since I always found pretty absurd they kept this data dulpicated. There is also some apparently unused interlaved data at the end of most animations. I don't know what could this possibly be. Maybe it's just padding?

[nfitc1]

I don't know what could this possibly be. Maybe it's just padding?

It's likely compiler residue that they didn't clean up so they could make their deadline. Left over from a format they decided not to use, I'd guess.

[Borde]

Yes, seems reasonable NFITC1.

By the way, I got the 15th animation open. Turns out the secondary frame counter is missing for it, which is pretty odd because it forces you to parse the whole animation to compute it. There doesn't seems to be any flag that signals this or anything. The field that should contain the secondary frame counter equals to the animation block length - 5 (which is the maximum length of the animation chunk), but it looks like a very flimsy evidence for such a format change. I'd like to know if there are any other similar animations.

[nfitc1]

Whatever the reason, I bet if you tried to force the game to use that animation it would screw up too. Maybe someone should give it a try. Just set some enemy to having that model and make it "attack" using that animation and see what happens. I could set that up if you tell me which animation index that is. 10h on a zero-based index? Model RSAA (player frog)?

[Borde]

Well, 0xF actually. Unless the indices are different in-game than on the physical file. If you can give it a try it would be nice.

Thanks NFITC1.

[nfitc1]

I just tried it and I noticed a few things.

1. There doesn't seem to be a problem using that model as an enemy.

2. Animations 8 and 9 are missing from that actor in Kimera. Is that intentional?

3. Telling said enemy to use animation 0F in battle crashed. The game kept processing things, but the battle just stopped. Its like it encountered an error and kept going. I don't know what that means. Nothing out of the ordinary showed up in the app.log either.

[Borde]

So the animation really breaks the game. Yeah, I guess that makes sens.
As for animation 8 and 9, if they don't show up on the combo box it means they are empty animation slots (refered to as "special" animations in old docs). They don't seem to serve any other purpose.