Hello, I have a question regarding how to make a complex character made of multiple parts
Let’s imagine that I want a player that has multiple skins, and the weapon they’re carrying is visible in their hand. What’s the best way to go about this?
I’ve thought of three potential options:
OPTION 1: Manually animate the whole body
This isn’t ideal because I’d have to redraw the body for every skin + weapon combo, but it does make the animation more expressive
OPTION 2: Animate in-engine
This gives me more control, and it puts the surprisingly powerful sticker extension to good use, but from my experience, it’s a headache to work with, especially if you want to crossfade tweens together. Also, I fear performance might take a hit from all the extra code
There ARE parts where these composite parts disappear and the whole body is drawn, like for a specific sprite. For example, Yoshi from SNES Yoshi’s Island is made of multiple sprites, but when he takes damage, his hurt sprite seems to be one single piece.
Should I hide or delete the composite parts when this special animation plays, and respawn/reshow them after the animation resumes?
OPTION 3: Spine
Spine makes things easy and efficient, but it costs money.
Also, Spine is still experimental, and most likely low priority on the developer’s to-do list, and therefore unfinished
The condition to check for a certain frame in an animation is missing. In fact, the Calcopus example LITERALLY showcases this problem in it’s comments:
That being said, I’m torn on which one I should use to animate a composite player. Option 1 isn’t ideal, so that only leaves me with 2 and 3
Should I stick with 2 and animate the character in-engine? Or should I wait it out for more features to be added to the Spine behavior and go for 3?
