Game Development Community

Animation Builder and Controller

by WesTT · in Torque Game Builder · 01/18/2008 (12:32 am) · 1 replies

I think it would be great to have some updates and additions to the animation builder in TGB, and also the animation controller. At the moment, it's very simple, and while that in itself is a Good Thing(TM) I think it would also be advantageous to start including some convenience functions and some advanced features, such as:

1.) setAnimationPaused(bool)

At the moment you either have to setup a one frame still animation when you want to pause, or override the onFrameChanged callback. Neither of these is particularly appealing. One duplicates data, the other is a drain on CPU resources. You could also just update the frames manually in onUpdate, but again, this is a drain and a bit of a hack.

Having a pause function is a great way to stop yourself from duplicating data and hence making your game a bit larger. It also means less work overall. I noticed the animation builder itself actually uses image blocks and controls the animation preview manually.

2.) Playing an animation backwards. Perhaps have a parameter in the playAnimation function to play an anm in reverse?

3.) Per frame settings, such as time to remain on frame, or to pause on a particular frame for a certain period of time.

4.) Being able to resize the animation builder window in the case of having a fairly large sprite sheet.

I think some of these things fit into the general ease-of-use and flexibility of the engine, so it would be nice to see them. Once I am done with my current project I will probably go ahead and make most of them myself, but having them in stock would be cool! :D

Thanks for reading. Let me know if I've mentioned something that is already there but somehow missed.

EDIT: You can insert animations in the builder now.