Custom Collision Polygons for animations

#1 In a fighting game you would typically use multiple sprite nodes for the character. Each node would have its own collision polygon. This way you would know which part of the body is hit. This is how it works in Street Fighter 2. It also allows you to say, swap to head of one character and put it on the other (Ken and Ryu). In addition you could do some extra animation by moving the nodes themselves, without having to create more sprite animations.

#2 I thought about that method but would need to create a animation editor for the sprites and i would not know where to start.

a 2d bone system with IK would be ideal for this :p

#3 I have already done what I suggested, in T2D. I created an entity system and linked the sprites together in code. An editor probably wouldn't help too much, because you need a lot of custom logic to make the different parts of the entity operate correctly.

#4 Sounds like a lot work to get it working and I wouldn't know where to start.

are you linking animated nodes?

or are you animating just by moving nodes?

how about skeleton underneath with the body parts attached to it and then animating the skeleton?

as I said before a 2d bones based system with a keyframing ablity would be gold dust.

#5 Sometimes i mount the nodes with rigid mounts, and and animate it manually and sometimes I create chains and the like. A 2D bone based system would be a little overkill I think, but some people might find it useful. It takes a little bit of time to link together an entity, but the possibilities are endless if you control things using code.