Animation and Transparancy (Very Newbie questions)

Before I go investing time in learning the nuts and bolts of Construct 2, I have a very general question regarding animation that I cant seem to find anywhere.

Lets say your animating a person, can you have one sprite for the head, another one for the arms, and another one for the legs and just join the sprites together? (to save on memory) Or does it work like an animated GIF where its just a series of pics stringed together?

Another question has to do with collision detection and transparency, are transparent layers handled in Construct? Easiest thing I can think of is a character walking on hilly terrain where the terrain is just one image.

Thanks in advance.

Hi

Of course transparent layers are fine, and while previously box collision, it's now polygon collision, so angles are fine.

You can animate either frame by frame or by algorithm like ragdoll animation. Check out physics demos..

scirra.com/construct2/physics

I did see the ragdoll example, but could you have the rag doll stand on its own or run? Meaning, could you animate that rag doll? Sorry if the answer is supposed to be obvious but I'm just the finance guy on the team and am looking for a cost effective game engine to work with.

If you're looking for something like Classic's Bone movement (where you can animate a series of objects connected together), I'm afraid we haven't got anything to match that in C2 yet. You might be able to animate them via events, but it might be a lot of work. The usual way is to use a series of animation frames.

You might be interested in spriter, a program specifically designed for that: http://www.scirra.com/forum/spriter-multiimage-animation-coming-to-c2_topic44969.html