There would be alot more games that use bone style animation IF it were supported by common authoring tools. I guarantee you lots or maybe MOST of us will be using the bone animation in some or all of our projects.

In fact humbler versions of this style of animation are used constatly in developing for platforms where memory is limited. You'd be hard-pressed to find a good mobile or handheld 2d action game that isn't using this technique.

Hi Rich,

thanks again for taking the time to respond. the ability to have each frame set to different duration would be a great feature.. it would also be great if frames could be reused multiple times or in multiple animations without redundant data usage.

QuaziGNRLnose,

Some programs could generate the alpha version automatically, or semi-automatically. I use Pro-motion, which can save out animstrip images (spritesheets) and automatically save out an alpha image for the spritesheet. I could then very easily reconvert the spritesheets into gifs.

I'll put it in the bug tracker. Thanks Rich,

Davioware,

the point is I not only want some filpped, but ALL of them to be different widths and heights from one another... think lush forest..all trees, plants etx different sizes and shapes.

I know that. but its cetianly a bug, or at least "feature that doesn't work as expected" and its certianly slower and less user friendly to type and retype numbers until you get what you're after instead of a simple drag of the mouse...which already works when not dealing with negative values.

if I need to place 200 or so objects per level in a huge game with perhaps a hundred or more levels, and each one needs to be tweaked for shape, and flipped or not, this will make a substantial difference in time...

Also, I had assumed/hoped this would be an easy "fix"

My point about gifs was to have a sprite that would NOT lose the timing per frame. IE, not a plug-in to load it into the current sprites, but a new sprite with unique timing per frame.

Also, thats why I mentioned a second GIF, that would me nothing but the alpha data... in other words, a greyscale GIF that is loaded in automatically due to naming convention that would be aplied as the alpha chanel per frame.

Aslo, with flash, I mentioned potentially leaving out the vector part, Flash or tools like the one I had mentioned (Express Animator) can be used to create animations with bitmap images... by giving the seperate bitmap components new position, rotation, and scale (and semitransparency) per key frame.

This could be used to create beautifully animated characters that use very little memory. SEE ODIN SPHERE for ps2.

I alsos mentioned I had contacted the creator of Express animator. One sugestion I had made to him was to create a unique file format for the data.. basically just text file with the needed data for frame timing, x,y coordinates, transforms and such....

Then it would simply be a matter of interprating this data in the construct runtime and doing what it already does well, rendering rotated, transformed bitmaps.

Here's a couple ideas I'd love to see..

1) A sprite oblect that can load in Gif animations and retain not only the frame image data (and play it back of course) but also keep the frame timing data. Ideally, it could also automatically load in same-named gifs for alpha data...like walk.gif and walk_alpha.gif so long as frame number and size were the same.

2) A sprite object that could load in and play back perhaps super-simple flash swf animations... even if ironically no support for vector art... if it allowed for playing of swf files that simply moved around bitmaps (with translucency, rotation, and scaling), then this would fascilitate extreemely robust and memory efficient animations... (like the bone-animation system, but more robust and allowing for artists to use really robust tools they are alread used to to make the animations.)

This would allow for a non-artist construct user to contract freelance artists who may have never heard of construct and may not be willing to learn its bone animation system and deal with its current limitations.

I've tried to contact the maker of Express Animator but have not yet recieved a response about potentially making a feature-reduced version of his swf animation making program (only 40 us dollars) for this specific purpose. This would allow for an extreemely inexpensive animation tool that would not allow for the accidental use of features that construct didn't support.

If anyone else likes this idea...especially if your a programmer, please do contact them as well.

thanks

Hi,

Let me just jump on the bandwagon and say that this is an awesome addition to Construct. Here's some suggestions that to me would make it an indespencible tool. (I'm sure others have requested the same or similar.)

1) seing a preview of the animation you're making would drastically improve workflow.

2) if possible, a linear timeline type bar for navigating and moving/creating keyframes

3) the ability within the editor to switch any of the bone-animated sprites to a different animation at any keyframe

4) the ability to change the semitransparency and dimensions of an object per keyframe.

as you can tell, number 3 is especially important to me. Anyone who wants to know what I'm hoping to be able to do with bone animation, please go on youtube and check out gameplay footage of "Odin Sphere" for the ps2.

H everyone,

I'm new to construct and love how its shaping up.

I was excited to learn that one could horizontally flip an instance of an object in the layout editor by switching is dimensions to a negative number. Sure enough, It works.

However curretly it seems to have a bug.. After switching to negative dimensions, using the mouse to actuallt drag its corners to adjust its dimensions no longer works properly.

In adition to eventually fixing this bug, might I suggest a shortcut key like "x" or "cntrl+X" to horizontally flip a selected object.

This would be incredibly useful for quickly populating levels with enemies, npc's and other props and simultaniously setting the direction that particular instance is facing.

For me, this would be especially wonderful, as I'll be populating the levels with tons of trees, bushes and flowers and I'm trying to get as much mileage as possible out of the art by using flipped and resized versions of all this plantlife.

thanks for listening

Hi everyone,

Sorry to bump an older thread but I could really use those example files, (being new to construct) and all the links now appear tobe dead. Could someone repost an example file please?

This is definately the sort of thing I'm after, but yeah...I was hoping for a solution that wouldnt have three unnecessary sides (for just a floor) and which would lend effortlessly toward an endlessly scrolling level design as well as a short one loke a room. (Without lining up a bunch of boxes and hoping there's never a slight gap or overlap.

The artist could provide an image already drawn in perspective. (A trapeziod) which is already designed to tile semalessly...if construct simply takes each row of the trapeziod and scrolled it at a different speed based on its size relative to the total width, that would gove it the propper scrolling in perspective....then the user should be able to tell it which row of the trapeziod should be sinchronized to scroll at the same speed of the layer its on (if at all) This way you could properly "PIN" the floor, ceiling (or wall if vertical) to the layer in proper perspective.

Does that make sense?

This is similar to the technique used for the paralax extension that was recently made for MMF2.

There are actually tqwo great extensions for MMF2 that we should all be looking at.

one is called Paralaxer and the other is called Perspective. Both work wonderfully with very diferent aproaches...and both run very fast with no HWA required.