BuildupTime
The length of a structure's construction animation, in game minutes.
- Applies to
- global rules
- File
rules.ini- Section
[General]- Value
- floating point
- When omitted
.05
BuildupTime sets how long a newly placed structure plays its construction animation. A game minute is 900 frames, or 60 seconds at 15 frames a second. The shipped rules.ini sets .06, which is 54 frames or 3.6 seconds. The engine default of .05 is three seconds, and 1 is a full minute.
The time is divided evenly across the animation’s steps, and each step lasts the result rounded down to a whole frame. The step count is half the number of frames in the buildup art, or GateStages plus one for a Gate=yes type. A value too small to give each step at least one frame skips the animation, and the structure finishes construction as soon as it is placed.
One value covers every structure. A type with more buildup frames spends less time on each frame and takes no longer overall. Buildup covers what happens while the animation plays and when it ends.
When a scenario starts, a Theater=yes structure’s animation is retimed to play every frame of its buildup art over five seconds, and BuildupTime does not apply. A Theater=yes structure that sets DemandLoadBuildup=yes is the exception and uses this value like any other structure.
Two later events drop the five-second timing for a Theater=yes structure: loading a saved game, and starting a map that has a section for the structure. After either one, the animation is timed from BuildupTime like any other structure’s. If the buildup art has no .SHP file, those events leave the structure with no construction animation.