Kyatric, apparently you can't actually set it to negative and change the orientation yourself. At the same time, if the sprite is mirrored and you try to set the width, it cancels out the mirroring. So essentially it seems the two can't work together at all.

If anyone else who looks at the capx thinks they have a better way to do it, by all means take a swing at it! I just don't think it's possible to do that way.

I was going to say don't worry about it, since Animmaniac's fix works, but after porting it into the full project, I just realized that it actually doesn't... <img src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Alrighty, explanation time. The ninja, as you see, is just a blob, so most of his animations are him bouncing around like a cartoon ball. The previous animation system used frames to do all of this, but the new one uses far less frames and instead stretches and squishes him by changing width/height with events. Unfortunately, that makes it a lot more difficult to use mirroring; since that works (presumably?) by making the width negative, if you use "Set width" and set it to a positive number, it messes things up. I couldn't get that working right, so rather than use mirroring to make him face left, I used a second frame and flipped it in the editor.

This is the basic animation system, with everything but walking and turning cut out. Hopefully you'll see what I mean:

db.tt/UCWRhbcs

It certainly is convoluted, but like I said in the first post, there's a reason for it. It's hard to explain... trust me on this one. <img src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

It's not like it's THAT much more complicated anyway. No big deal!

Perfect! Thanks a lot guys. Who knows how many more hours of blankly staring at the screen it would've taken for me to notice that? <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Thanks Yann! That works fine, but... the way it was set up before, the turn animation ping-pongs and mirrors so that it looks as smooth as possible. This way only plays half, so he starts turning to the left, then halfway through teleports to the end of it, if you know what I mean.

Maybe it's only the kind of thing I'd notice, but if at all possible I want to have the full thing play. I tried altering yours to include that, but the imagepoints are acting up again... Mind taking another look?

dl.dropbox.com/u/19702035/ninjaTurn.capx

(The timescale is set to 0.1 so you can really see what's happening. If it's set to 1 and you make him turn repeatedly, you can see it doesn't happen every time, just most of the time. I don't know if that's important or not.)

I'm completely redoing the animation system in my game, Sneaky Ninja, but I seem to have hit a snag. The ninja's usually holding something, and his hand is a separate object set to one of his image points, which works perfectly fine as you'd expect it to. When I tried implementing the turn-around animation, though, it flips out for a single tick. It's really quick, but it's extremely noticeable, and I've spent the last three hours trying to find a way to get rid of it with no luck.

The ninja himself also flips out for a single tick, only when turning to the left. Again, extremely noticeable, and seemingly impossible to fix.

I made a super basic version with only 8 events to show the problem. Press any key to make him turn, and well, see for yourself. <img src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

db.tt/TukM7llC

EDIT: Oh, and the way I have things set up may seem a bit strange at first, but trust me when I say it's (mostly) necessary. It's a bit of an odd animation system, but it's part of a bigger scheme... <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Happy birthday indeed! Here's to another year of progress! <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Haha, that's pretty cool sqiddster. I admit, I ran it and sat there watching the screen fill up completely... twice. <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Maybe at the end of each stage the ninja reaches his target - walks into the house and you see a Silhouette of the assassination?

While that might seem a bit out of place with the game's current style, it did give me an idea... There could be a special colored samurai at the end of the level that you have to "assassinate" as a goal. He'd be more difficult to get to than the other ones, probably with several normal samurai nearby for protection. I think that could work pretty well, what do you guys think?

Feedback:

- Yellow glow-animation could be more transparent, less intensive.

- Ninja invisibility must be more easily recognizable. Like the ninja-"icon" coming out of the shadows or disappearing slowly as he is less seen by enemy

The yellow glow for the fire, you mean? It looks pretty transparent on my screen. I might include some various lighting options to account for screen differences like that. And yeah, I'll be changing up the invisibility icon, I'm not too happy with the way it works right now.

As for the bug you mentioned, I can't reproduce it but I have a pretty good idea what might cause it. Thanks for the heads up. <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I had so much fun playing it, there are some control problems but other then that, a++. I featured the game on indie-gamers.com with a more detailed preview. Cannot wait to play more of the game <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Wow, thanks for the feature! I can already feel the pressure building up... I gotta put more time into getting this thing made! <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Just curious, in that video you had to walk basically off the screen before it would start scrolling -- is that how it is for you when you play it, or only the way the video was taken? If it isn't just the video, well, that's a problem... it isn't supposed to work like that. <img src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

That means different instances have different initial values. If you click on an individual instance, you can set initial values for its variables on the left bar. If all the instances have the same value, it'll show you the value in that screenshot, but if any are different, it'll say "<varies>" like that.

I do like the gong idea, but making a very loud noise is generally the complete opposite of what a ninja wants. <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I'll keep it in mind though.

Starred! I just ran into this problem with the game I was making for last weekend's Game Jam. We had to rework the controls so that clicking wasn't necessary. It's a shame that such an awful bug has gone unfixed this long... I really hope it gets taken care of soon.