Animations

Contents

• What are Animations?
• What does an Animation consist of?
  • Frames
  • Collision Bounds
• Importing Animations
• Switching Animations
• Controlling Playback
• More Animations vs. More Actor Types: The Zelda Dilemma
• Gotchas

What are Animations?

Animations bring actors to life. They represent the visuals of an actor, its collision bounds and the notion of being in a certain "state" - such as running, walking and jumping.

What are examples of animation states?

• A platformer hero's states (Stand, Walk, Run, Jump)
• Treaure Chest (Opened, Not Opened)
• Destructible Objects that "break" when hit by something else (Broken, Not Broken)

What does an Animation Consist of?

Each Animation state consists of 2 separate parts:

• Frames (how it looks)
• Collision Data (the collision shape )

Frames

Frames are like pages in a flipbook. Each frame represents a a different image or "page" in the book. When these images change quickly over a period of time, the result is an animation.

To bring this back to games...

This actor's swinging his sword to the right.

Importing Frames

We cover the how-to part of importing later in this article.

Frame Duration

Every frame can be given a different duration (in milliseconds). Just double-click the box for it.

Looping

Frames can be set to loop or play once.

Origin Point

An Animation can also have a designated origin point. The origin point is used to determine the point by which an actor rotates or scales. By default, this is set to the center point.

Atlas (Mobile-Only)

The Atlas field is specific to mobile games. View our Atlases article for details.

Collision Bounds

As their name suggests, Collision Bounds determine the physical shape(s) that an an actor assumes in a particular Animation state.

To define Collision Bounds, flip to the "Collisions" page of the Actor Editor. There, you will be able to edit your Animation's Collision Bounds on a per-animation basis.

Importing Animations

Now that you understand animations, let's go over the import process. You can import animations in one of several ways.

• Pick an image.
• Drag and Drop.

Method 1: Pick an Image

(Assuming you've got an Actor open in the Actor Editor...)

1) Click on "Click here to add frame" under the Frames pane.

2) You'll now see this dialog. Click the "Choose an Image..." button and pick out the desired image. Want to follow this exact example? Use this image.

3) Now, configure columns and rows to break up the image, as appropriate depending on how many cells it has in those directions.

4) If applicable, enter in values for the border and spacing fields. The majority of images do NOT need to worry about these fields.

5) Click Add. That's it!

After importing frames, you can give the Animation a name, alter frame durations and other properties we described above.

Method 2: Drag and Drop

You can drag and drop an image into Stencyl while the Actor Editor is open. Doing this will bring up the dialog you see in method 1.

Switching Animations

Notes

For all of these blocks, the "animation" blank takes in an Animation attribute or value. You can convert plain text into an Animation value using the "as animation" block.



All of these blocks are found under Actor > Drawing.

Switch Animation

Note: As stated right above, if you want to type in the name of the Animation directly, use the "as animation" block.

What's the current Animation?

Is the current Animation still playing?

Sometimes, it's useful to check if the current animation is still playing, particularly if the animation does not loop, and you want to detect if it has finished playing through.

Controlling Playback

Switch to Frame

This block lets you skip around or reset an animation to its starting frame.

Current Frame Index

Total Frame Count

More Animations or More Actors?

There is no limit to the number of animations an actor may have. However, it's best to consider when it's appropriate to go with more animations or whether it's better to create a brand new actor.

The Zelda Dilemma

The Zelda Dilemma is a classic game design problem you run into when making an Adventure game and decide how you want to create your Hero character.

So suppose that we start with just the basic animations.

• Walk
  • Left
  • Right
  • Up
  • Down

Not to bad so far. But Link holds a sword! So we have to add 2 more sets of animations, one for holding the sword and one for slashing it.

• Walk
  • Left
  • Right
  • Up
  • Down
• Walk + Sword
  • Left
  • Right
  • Up
  • Down
• Walk + Slashing Sword
  • Left
  • Right
  • Up
  • Down

But wait, there's more! Link changes swords throughought the game. He can hold the plain sword, the Master Sword and the Golden Sword, and they all look different! That would triple the animation count.

And what about the Bow and Arrow, holding a shield and... you get the picture.

The Bottom Line

In cases like these, it's better to create a new actor rather than add more animations. This is particularly applicable when an actor equips items that slightly alter the appearance and could be accurately and convincingly drawn separately.

(From Zelda - the sword is a separate actor)
 

There are other benefits to having different actors.

• Easier to define collision bounds, particularly for weapons.
• Confine extra behaviors to the separate actor, rather than creating 1 monolithic actor with everything.

The bottom line is that there's no silver bullet and no simple rule. You simply have to create and recognize when things are going the wrong way. Hopefully this example shines light on a case where it's thoroughly clear that an all animations approach is flawed.

Gotchas

It's best if all animations are the same size.

It may be necessary in some cases to ensure that all animations of an actor are equal in size. Making animations different sizes, for the same actor, could have a negative impact, especially if the origin point is different in each animation.

Two common scenarios are:

• The actor magically jumps to a slightly off-center location when you switch animations.
• The actor's collisions mess up because the new animation has the collision bounds located in a different part of the animation.

Animations, Blocks & Attributes

Note that when using the "switch animation" block, you cannot type text directly into the blank. Instead, you have to wrap that text inside an "as animation" block like the following.

Actors with No Animations

Actors with no animations at all may crash the game. We'll address this in a future version of Stencyl. Note that this is different from an Actor with a single blank (0 frame) animation, which will work just fine.

Summary

• Animations are states, such as standing, walking and running.
• Animations consist of frames (how it looks) and collision bounds.
• Exercise good judgement in deciding whether to go with an actor with many animations versus several actors with fewer animations.

Challenge: Equipment for an Adventure Game

We talked about the "Zelda Dilemma" above. Now's your chance to see this for yourself and do things the right way.

Create a simple walkaround demo in which the character can equip different items that show up in that character. Do this the right way, by making those items each their own actors.

rainvillain
This was a great tutorial but honestly this challenge is too much for me right now. Should I be worried?
0 3 months, 3 weeks ago

wilycodger
Let's say your character has 3 items, and pressing "Space" cycles between them. How/where do you keep track of which item to create next?
0 4 months, 1 week ago

etfonehome
Nevermind guys, there's a little plus button at the bottom in the column where it holds the states.

0 7 months, 2 days ago

etfonehome
How do you add another state/animation?
0 7 months, 2 days ago

Lingesh7
love d description bt i was wondering wether to use vector/raster graphics (between adobe illustrator and adobe fireworks which is better for designing actors)
0 7 months, 4 weeks ago

BlueSideWind
how do you make a "Slashing Animation" and trigger?
0 8 months, 1 week ago

SomeOnesBody
It would be helpful to know where to find good sprites for the challenge...
0 10 months, 3 weeks ago

Blackalokalypse
i think the concept of giving seperate components their own "actorship" would solve the problem with out having to make layers, as stated in the "breakdown"
0 1 year, 3 weeks ago

BossFight
Is there a way to actually make a layered actor, like in the Zelda example? Or would we have to make (in the Zelda example) 12 x actors with their animations?
0 1 year, 1 month ago

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