Windows Game Design Idea Implementation & Alternatives

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Ljubaga

Guest
Hi everyone!

This is my first post so be nice :p

Here is my question, or an elaboration on a question:

I've been modding warcraft 3 and other games for a long while, so I'm not a newbie. But I've never made an
actual game from scratch so I'm trying to pass my knowledge so far from those games into game maker. So far its been bumpy, completely new logic of thinking.. I guess I've been stuck in other game editors for a while


As my first project, I wanna make a metroidvania game. Idk if its suicide or a sense of masochism for that.
Anyway I plan to draw my own sprites and make my own music. It will take a while, but in my mind I was
prepared for it, until I ran into an animation pitfall - I have made too many items and now the only way I know how to do it is animate the player with every possible gear combination....

Then I read somewhere on this forum about cutting the player sprites and animating those instead.

Does this mean for example, animating the head only wearing all my kinds of helmets?
Then animate an arm holding the weapon, then another animation for attacking with the weapon?
And after all of them are done you stitch up animations through step event?
 

Morendral

Member
That is a way to do that, although it would be the draw event. You might want to look into spine though, it allows you to switch out sprites in the animation during run time, and you don't need to have multiple frames of drawing.
 
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Ljubaga

Guest
Ok, thanks.

Spine sounds like the first way, first making each animation in every possible combination, then swapping them out.

What about the second way, of cutting body pieces? How is that done?

Also any other ways of doing it?
 

Morendral

Member
Spine is not that, it is like making a puppet that you can change the clothes on. You program in animations that are as simple as rotating joints. It's very easy to use, but some people don't like how it rotates sprites. It's probably the best for what you want to do.

The other way involves drawing separate animations in your draw event of each piece of your character that needs to show something unique. The draw back is that it's slightly slower due to more draw calls, but it doesn't rotates sprites like spine does, unless you want it to. Also, you need a heck of a lot more sprites this way.

Spine is faster and easier to setup for what you want. Cutting up the sprites is much more work but can look nicer
 
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Ljubaga

Guest
Spine is not that, it is like making a puppet that you can change the clothes on. You program in animations that are as simple as rotating joints. It's very easy to use, but some people don't like how it rotates sprites. It's probably the best for what you want to do.

The other way involves drawing separate animations in your draw event of each piece of your character that needs to show something unique. The draw back is that it's slightly slower due to more draw calls, but it doesn't rotates sprites like spine does, unless you want it to. Also, you need a heck of a lot more sprites this way.

Spine is faster and easier to setup for what you want. Cutting up the sprites is much more work but can look nicer
Ok spine sounds like the perfect solution for me. I'll do research on my own, but I'd be grateful if you can pm me some example or tutorial.

EDIT: Spine looks like a program to me, my point wasn't to buy a new tool to make a skeleton.
Trial looks free, but could be very limited I don't know.
 
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