Feedback on Spriter

Hey Constructors,

One of my current projects, Galaxias (), uses a custom built modular system to display different heads, bodies, legs, and weapons on screen depending on different conditions. Right now I'm utilizing a bunch of image points and ticks to make that happen, and there are times when I see a drop in responsiveness or lagging body parts.

I'd love to hear from some people that have really utilized Spriter - namely, what were the performance gains like, and was it pretty easy to utilize? Or are there any other quirks to keep in mind?

I've been playing with building sprites and animations this week and it seems like it would be a good direction to go in - but I know it'll be kind of a large undertaking, and considering I just dialed in the current modular system, I'm a little hesitant to start on something else.

Thanks guys in advance for any feedback.

Hi mudmask,

I recommend you grab the free version of Spriter from our site and then do some bench-marking to see if it suits your needs.

cheers.

-Mike at BrashMonkey

I really like Spriter, and use it mostly because I didn't want to have to draw all the animations. Although I can't vouch for the performance gains, on paper it makes sense as a way to save a ton of memory.

Luckily, Brashmonkey has some step by step videos as well.

Actually ryanrybot, there is no need to rename anything anymore. I should notate the tutorial video that that step is no longer needed and hasn't been for a long while.

cheers.

-Mike at BrashMonkey

This thread will tell you all the steps necessary:

https://brashmonkey.com/forum/index.php ... nstruct-2/

ryanrybot - thanks amigo - I figured you were using Spriter to get those silky smooth animations.

— - thanks for hoping on here and replying super quickly. I actually nabbed the pro version a while back when there was a sale of some kind or some early adopter special (I think) because I anticipated maybe moving to that one day - at least as a way to streamline some of my work. I've been watching a bunch of your videos this week, and I think I'm going to give it a shot. Great job on those btw.

I will still be separating upper body and lower body, but it doesn't see like that should be an issue binding two body parts together as opposed to 3 to 4 +. I'd like to start doing some of my enemy work on there too, where appropriate... but first I'm going to see how this goes.

Thanks for the heads-up —! The last thing I want is to spread misinformation.

It's been a while since I've imported any animations, and should have researched before I spoke.

I got it, highly recommend it, make sure you go through some of their video tutorials, will help a lot, and save you lots of times on certain animations

ryanrybot

No problem, I should have updated the video to mention that step is not necessary. Cheers.

Don't forget, Spriter also has a built in manual (choose help/help in Spriter's menu)

cheers.

-Mike at BrashMonkey

—

Does Spriter have image warping?

—

Does Spriter have image warping?

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It does not. It's a planned feature, but there's no telling when it'll be available.

just a quick update on this - I've been playing around quite a bit with spriter to try and streamline my main character - and I've had some good success in creating animations and understanding the workflow thanks to — 's excellent video tutorials.

Right now though I'm running in to some issues with action point positions lagging significantly behind, and so it looks like a multi-part character might not work out so well. I did read a comment about updating the action point on the actual imported sprites... that sounds a little intense though.

note the separation between the upper and lower body

I still think it will be more than worth it to get this working, even just for character map functionality. I also plan on using this very heavily on a future project. Seriously, Spriter is a great tool... even for an old school pixel pusher.

just from one of my original tests

just a quick update on this - I figured out a workaround. it wasn't SUPER complex, but essentially since it seemed like there would be some lag in following the player container no matter what, I forced both the top and bottom parts of the character to lag... and viola, they lagged at the same time, and it seems to work on mobile and tablet as well (although I might not release on those platforms).

mudmask - Glad you found a workaround. Unfortunately, fixing the point issue would make it so all the sprites being moved around to animate the character would lag behind a tick if you pinned the character to a sprite using the pin behavior or something similar. It seems like the it has to be one or the other, since the only choices are to animate the character and update the point values at the beginning or end of a tick (before or after all events), and either choice causes one of those two issues.

I would keep an eye out on the main Spriter thread, however, as this is something that might be streamlined with sub-entities. At the moment, importing sub-entities are a little cumbersome to import, but I have an idea I'm going to try to add in the next Spriter update that will make it a lot easier. Assuming you had the top half of the character as a sub-entity attached to the bottom half, you could just call an override action to change animations on the top half.

Edit: As another user is having a similar issue, I will see about having an action that will let you attach a c2 object to an image point, to let it manage this for you. If it works out well, it will be an upcoming plugin update.