Most efficient way to visually/animate give character multiple sized weapons/armor/helmets etc etc

Howdy fellow Constructors,

So I've been trying to search on my own but haven't come up with any good info.

Basically I have a (non-pixel) animated character and my goal is to have him be able to use different sized weapons (axes, swords, shields etc etc) as well as wear different sized/style armors, clothing, hats, helmets...

My question is; short of animating multiple sequences (idle, running, jumping etc) with the character wearing/holding multiple weapons/armors...is there a more efficient way to do this?

Animation is pretty quality; think Dust An Elysian Tail. I've tried the pin behavior and tried to connect image points but getting the image point to line up with the hand/arm animation is a pain and doesn't seem to work at all.

I'm guessing I may have to animate ALL sequences and just limit choices to 4 or 5 weapons, armor sets etc etc

Hope this makes sense. Any advice would be welcome.

howdy

No, multiple animations for each possible combination is not a efficient way.

i do this in my game. ive done both methods.

basicly you animate a placeholder object for all animations, and in the game you just swap them with watever you want "helmet" "weapon", "bikini" watever.

method 1

one way is like you said and create a placeholder object, set that placeholder object´s position to an image point in your player, yes you have to tweak the image point position in every frame, it takes some time but its doable. also in my experience pin doesn't work very well here, just use every tick set position to player.imagepoint("") and unless your object doesn't rotate you also have to set its angle to change manually via events for ex:

if animation frame = 5 - set placeholder object to angle 120º

method 2

get spriter, its waaay easier for everything. strongly advised

after you figure out how it works with construct (youtube is your friend)

in spriter you create all your player parts separately for ex: "head", "cheast"

after you make your animations and export it to construct

go to your event sheet.

youl find your spriter object has an option to

set c3 object to spriter object "position , "angle", or both )

set it to every tick and thats it

as for changing those parts thats another ball park but what i do is

my placeholder "head" has multiple animations for each different head

and i just change them using variables.

I do not recommend Spriter. There are already many great games that use it, but from my own experience it's very buggy and lacking in features.

If I remember correctly, if you buy Spriter now, you'll get Spriter 2 for free, but you have already a free alternative that has possibly everything Spriter 2 has, which is Dragon Bones, you should research and find what best suits you, but just keep that in mind.

Hey there! Thanks for the reply!

So when you say place holder, how exactly did you implement this mechanic when you have, say, a RUNNING animation and the character can wear different armor and hold different weapons. Each arm is bending, rotating, torso is rotating, weapons is moving at different angles etc etc

Unless the objects are perfectly vertical or horizontal, it seems like pinning a sprite over a placeholder would not work because of the unique movements each animation has?

Short of animating everything using funky math around an image point, how did you do this? Did your characters just have very basic animations?

I'm thinking at the very least each limb/armor piece needs it's own animation?

I tried Spriter out but the limitations of the animation GUI is a huge downgrade for quality animation. I use Toonboom Harmony and get extremely fluid animation. I do like the functionality with construct 3 but it seems like the trade off for the sprite functionality isn't worth the bad animation and frustratingly backward UI limitations (thank you however for the recommendation!)

Anyway, I'm more interested in your method 1. Can you enlighten me?

I do not recommend Spriter. There are already many great games that use it, but from my own experience it's very buggy and lacking in features.

If I remember correctly, if you buy Spriter now, you'll get Spriter 2 for free, but you have already a free alternative that has possibly everything Spriter 2 has, which is Dragon Bones, you should research and find what best suits you, but just keep that in mind.

Indeed. I tried Spriter and can't get over how much of a downgrade the animation software is. The functionality seems to be promising, but I have yet to see impressive animation quality. The UI isn't very intuitive either and is lacking for quality animation.

It seems the major selling point is functionality with construct but It's not worth it when there are so many better animating programs.

well spriter is definitely not perfect and has some problems that i hope they fix.

actually i might take back what i said about being easier, maybe i should have said its saves you time in the long run.

spriter has a self draw mode witch basically works with construct in way that you dont have to export animations frame by frame to construct,it basically codes all the animations and it saves you all the image memory that a ton of frames are. so if i make a new animation for my char all i have to do is resave a spriter/scon file and update it in construct...all done, this method is good for your main character, i was going to change all my enemies to spriter too but there is a problem that spriter´s self draw object appear´s in construct workspace as transparent blue boxes and i cant distinguish them :(

i dont get why people find it hard to animate with it, but maybe thats just me,

for armor weapons skins etc, look in youtube for "spriter character maps"

if you just need bones animations and export to png any program will do.

this might get long

this is my player, he is obviously separated into different parts, if you so wish you can make character maps for each part in spriter and change them like bellow.

in construct you have the option to change them there via events.

i dont use the character maps xD

in my player i only change the head and the sword that are separate construct objects, every tick i set the sword object angle and position to the spriter object named sword like below,

-the reason i dont use char maps is because my "heads" and "swords" have self animations like a fiery sword for example but with spriter i cant do that.

for method 1

i only change my head and sword as i mentioned, so my player looked like this:

every tick my player´s head object would just set its position to the yellow imagepoint.

same with the sword

as for when my character went for attack animations i set the swords position/imagepoint to the hand , and i manually changed the sword object angle manually for each frame in the attack animation via events.

if you want to have multiple parts changing angles and stuff id say forget it, too much work.

but its doable i guess.