What does TNT1 AAA 0 do?

[echo4]

Hello,

I am wondering what this line does and why this would be used at all? From what I understand, it displays a blank sprite for 0 tics, still, why do this at all? I can understand if there is a function call afterwards (like A_ReFire), but not if there is nothing at all.

TNT1 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 0

Also, what is the difference between the line above and say

TNT1 AAA 0

From what I understand, the # of letters means it would loop through 3 states with 0 tics

TNT1 AAAAA 0

and the above would be 5 states with 0 tics.

Still, why would more states be useful? Is it to make goto+offset more likely to hit it? A mystery...

Thanks

[Rachael]

To answer that question it's best to get into the minds of those who are in the development process. What's most likely the case here is these are leftover remnants of when these actually had function calls.

The states may be left in because the author does not want to recalculate their goto+offsets, or because they plan to add something back again later and wanted to preserve the number of state frames the original implementation had.

But beyond that - it's anyone's guess why any particular developer does it.

[echo4]

Thanks for the reply. Another reason why its often easier to write code than read it.

You indirectly answered another one of my questions about offsets. I tend to replace offset gotos/jumps with labels because it was tricky to know if goto+2 meant 2 states ahead, 2 lines of code ahead, 2 tics ahead, etc. Now you confirm it is 2 states ahead.