Forum rules - please read before posting.

Advice for making smooth character transitions without walking animations?

edited December 2021 in Adventure talk

Hello,
currently working on my game, which uses a side view perspective similar to the AC 2D tutorial. However, I'm working on a very tight budget and I would like to have the character basically "dissolve" from one location to the next to save on walking animation costs. The game is point and click, so there is no direct control.
I (will) have many different character poses, but no walking animation to link them together.
My hope is to transition/dissolve from one location to another when you click on a spot on the screen you can access. Currently my plan is to essentially fade in/out the character model from one location to the next, but I'm wondering if anyone has any other tips, or perhaps examples of games that use this technique?

Comments

  • You mention a character model but with a 2D perspective - is your character a 3D model or a sprite?

    Are you looking to crossfade the transition, so that the character fades out and in at the same time, or have them fade out completely before fading back in? The former would be more complex, as you'd need to have a copy of the character graphic to handle the fade-out while the "real" character teleports and fades-in.

    Otherwise, if your character is sprite-based you can make use of the Object: Fade sprite Action to make them fade out, follow it up with an Object: Teleport Action to place them at the new position, and then another Object: Fade sprite Action to fade them back in. If you're using a 3D model, you'll need to look into a shader that can handle a varying alpha value.

    This three-Action ActionList could then be have its Marker to teleport to field set by a GameObject parameter so that you can recycle it for any time you want to teleport the character in an ActionList - see this tutorial for more on parameters.

    Having the character respond to regular point-and-clicking in this way would be more tricky, as you'd need to replace the built-in behaviour that expects the character to move naturally. I'd expect it'd be a case of setting your game's Movement method to None, and using a custom script to run the above ActionList instead.

    This script'll vary based on your chosen "Camera perspective" setting under the Settings Manager's "Camera perspective". What's this currently set to?

    Though, I'd recommend first focusing on an ActionList that can move the Player in your intended way as part of a Cutscene to pre-set Markers before looking into having them move dynamically with player clicks.

  • edited December 2021

    Thank you for the exhaustive response, Chris!
    The plan is for the characters to be sprite-based, though I haven't started on them yet (the script is finished and I'm only now moving on to concept art, while learning AC! :wink: ).

    I think the Object Fade - Teleport - Fade will work great, though I'll experiment with your suggestion to make crossfade work as well. The game is very light on the interactivity/puzzle solving, so perhaps having two instances of the main character that essentially "leap frog" into visibility whenever I do a transition might also work.

    You're right that point and click + teleport sounds complex. Probably too complex for me at the moment.
    I wonder if I can instead create a set of hotspots (say, 4 per location) that you can teleport to when you click on said location/zone.

Sign In or Register to comment.

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Welcome to the official forum for Adventure Creator.