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Blips

I posted a question earlier on these forums about GIFs. You see, I'm using a galaxy map for one of my games and I intended to use flashing radar blips/dots to essentially show the players where their ship is as well as the surrounding ships. I was told GIFs were not supported, but there was a way to do this with API scripts. Now I'm not particularly well versed in API at all... In fact, I haven't used it once. Is there any way I could do this?
1513199946
The Aaron
Pro
API Scripter
It would need to be written.  Can you go into more details about what you're thinking?
1513201527
Gold
Forum Champion
There is an existing Initiative Tracker API that has an option of putting an animated flashing marker around the Token who is at the top of the Turn Tracker.  So as you rotate through the Turns Tracker, it will flash the next player/ship each time. Would that fit what you're looking for? If so then I will find the name of that script for you.  If not then it's what Aaron said, an idea for a new script!
Yeah, what I wanted specifically was just a small dot that would ping every couple of seconds. A tiny "shockwave" effect would emanate from it, fade and then it would ping again. Kind of like this: Different color "blips" would be different things. Blue would be the players for instance.
1513203266
The Aaron
Pro
API Scripter
Where would you want this to show up?
I planned to put it onto my map as a token, only 1x1 really unless that's too hard. If it's too complicated to move it around I can just use something else.
1513210418
The Aaron
Pro
API Scripter
Would it represent the entire map, or some range from the "radar" object, or from some other object?
1513214283

Edited 1513214433
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Would it be simpler to put some sort of timer/cycler function into token-mod, to rotate through faces?
1513236405

Edited 1513236963
The Aaron said: Would it represent the entire map, or some range from the "radar" object, or from some other object? The map is done and visible, the idea is that on the map between star systems, planets and such, there would be those small blinking dots to signify ships. I was going to just use the ships themselves but thought maybe having small blinking dots might give players a better sense of scale since otherwise, it might look like the ships were the size of moons lol. As for how close you would need to be to actually see the blip, I was thinking it would depend on the player's ship. Maybe at first when their ship radar is just basic, you'd only see the blips of other ships at a short distance. Then as the players make their ship better, the range would increase and they'd be able to see farther out. When the player's ship gets close enough, I would switch to a more "zoomed in" map to serve as the encounter and that would have the actual ships. I guess a good example of the system in action would be like something like in Heat Signature, where when you're exploring the map you see the actual heat signature of ships instead of the ships themselves. The difference here being instead of a heat signature it's a tiny radar blip. Example here keithcurtis said: Would it be simpler to put some sort of timer/cycler function into token-mod, to rotate through faces? Probably yeah, that sounds like the easiest way. Again though I have no knowledge of how API works.