I believe Gdevelop needs to able to change which frame of the animation the object would be at the start of the scene through the scene editor, I mean it already has the ability to change which animation so why not add in the ability to change the frames of that animation also?
I saw this post and it would be really helpful to have this in the engine:
Waiting for any help on this, maybe it’s there with the newer updates and I’m missing it.
Hey Coriander,
Thank you for your post.
Can I ask what is the issue that you face to request this feature? (as explained in ⭐ Welcome to the User Feedback channel!, describing this helps understand the perimeter of the solution).
Thanks!
I think this feature request lacks 1 key component
Aside from set animation frame it should include PAUSE animation checkbox
Cause it would run all animations as soon as you start a game
Unless you won’t pause it via events
And core issue here is that if you have your animations as frames and not as different animations
So for example i have sprite called buildings and now i have in it animation called Small with each frame being some small building like well or trash can or tree
I can set them all same collision mask and points
And manipulate what player will see via frames
I do not need to make each animation for each building when they can share same stuff
Yes i know about these switches here
But when i have spritesheet of my buildings and i cut it i get like
Bulldings1.png
Bulildings2.png
Buildings3.png
And so go on
And i could import them all at once into ONE animation
And every new image i add to that animation will inherent same points and collision mask
Since we don’t have it as soon as i add new image as new animation i need to again set up its collision mask and points
Coriander have actually pretty good idea which would allow us to use animations in more clever way to our advantage
Hey @Luni ,
Thank you for getting back to me, first of all my apology, first time seeing that post ⭐ Welcome to the User Feedback channel!, because I was away from GDevelop for years, anyway so the real reason I want this to be added is this:
In my next project Lynaria Last Light, I will be creating very detailed complicated parallax backgrounds and in order to do that I will need many background assets.
so for example I will be adding a sprite called “Rocks” and then adding in animations from lets say (1-15) which is going to be a nightmare to keep scrolling and adding all that in, now another sprite for “plants” and another for “whatever” and so on… now I have several sprites with many animations so I can in the editor choose and move and edit that specific sprite in that specific animation.
Now why not do this instead?
I make one single sprite object >>> call it “Parallax Background Objects” >>> add in animations but now each animation has it’s own set of images, lets say the first animation is called “Rocks” and has several frames which I can choose from in the scene editor from 1 to 15 frames or whatever, second animation is called “plants” and has all the plants pictures and so on… so much cleaner.
Having the ability to change frames in the scene editor will make life easier especially when things are complicated and require you to work with 100s of pictures all the same time, also you now have a single sprite instead of having god knows how many sprites.
Makes life easier in general, and I’m sure that many people with benefit from this, not only this way but other ways too…
Hoping this will be added in the new updates
Thank you
So if I understand correctly you want a Sprite object with multiple animations.
Saying -as an example- the Sprite is called “BackgroundElements”, it will have different animations called:
And inside each animation, you want to have in each frame (1, 2, 3) different visual designs (of a rock, of a bush…) so you can switch between them to add some visual variation to your scene.
If I understood correctly: why do you want to work like that instead of:
What is it about this way of managing the objects that doesn’t work for you?
Thanks!
Hey @Luni
Yes that’s exactly what I want, now why working in the current way is not great?
It can work if you’re working with like 10 - 20 pics in a single sprite object
But imagine 100 - 200 pics?
Now it gets pretty difficult to know where everything is and to keep track of all that it’s going to be a nightmare to know where this bush or that tree and so on, instead you can have the first 2 animations for rocks, and things will be easier to choose from and everything is in a single object.
It’s faster and cleaner to work that way.
I would like to add some more thoughts to this topic. The visual element already mentioned is very important. For example I have one tree object and each animation is a different type of tree. But I also want variations of each tree type in the frames of each animation. If I can see what it looks like in the scene then it’s much easier to place things to look nice than to keep running previews.
Why not have a different object for each tree type? It’s not like I’ll have a lot of them like Coriander does. I could have them as separate objects, but it’s a lot easier to treat them as one object. If I put one tree in the scene I can just control click it to duplicate it and then change the animation for a different type of tree. This is much simpler than having to make and place lots of different objects.
A visual preview of frames would also be useful for custom objects, for example a person custom object made up of different body part child objects. Let’s say each body part has a few variations. Say, the hair child object has a few different animations representing different hairstyles and the frames of those animations face different directions like front, left and right. If we could change the frame number of the hair in the custom object visual editor then it would help make the process of editing points (to get everything correctly aligned) a lot more streamlined.
You say you don’t have that much images
But someone else could have more A LOT MORE
And then sooner or later you will be that someone
Trust me i been there i fall into that
I was not using something someone feature requested and i did not see any reason justifying it
Until i on day had to use same thing
Just pointing out rest of your justification is totally valid
Every single decoration you see is same object (ok candles are different object)
Being able to add all that as one animation and just select frames would be WAY easier
Now i want to add more decorations
It goes without saying how easy it would be to just slice spriteshet and add it with 1 click to object as that one single animation
Managing wise it would not change anything since i would still in same window need to flip some value
But adding them
WAY easier and faster
same here - i haven’t needed this until my latest puzzle game where pretty much everything is the same object and the frame is set in the events. I can’t picture properly what it’s going to look like until i run the game. so …just have more animations …dont use frames. But the natural way to achieve what im trying to do is to have each image within an array of arrays …ie animation/frame
