Comments

• ChrisIceBox

  January 21

  Welcome back, @luuk!

  Is this for a 2D or a 3D game, and does the charater have a dedicated "turning" animation? One thing you could try is the "Has Exit Time" property of your Idle -> Turning transition, to ensure it only transitions at the end of the Idle loop.

  You could then feasibly have a simple script that ties the NPC's "Turn speed" value to the playback of the turning animation itself, so that they don't rotate until Idle has finished playing.
• luuk

  January 21 edited January 21

  2D, always 2D. And Sprites Unity. It's a Monkey Island style retro pixelart game with no head/body turning towards objects/characters or dedicated turning animations, so this one is really a special occasion where the sweeping NPC has her back towards the player until she's talked to. So actually what I mean is just a broader case of wanting to "play this character animation now, but only after the current idle animation loop cycle has finished, because that way the switch between the animations looks smooth".

  I'd have other uses for the same idea, too, that aren't about turning, so a solution which wouldn't rely on the character turning features would likely be better (unless this happens to solve all such cases – I have to admit I hadn't looked into the specifics of what the turning features of AC offer yet, because I was thinking about the other uses, too – but for what I'm going for, from what I now glanced at, the manual doesn't seem to cover it that much).
• ChrisIceBox

  January 22 edited January 22

  Thanks for the details.

  It's a bit tricky, but you should be able to do this by introducing a "Wait" bool variable that is set to True while the sweeping animation is playing, and have your ActionList wait until this is set to False.

  Essentially:

  • Animate the NPC using Sprites Unity Complex if they're not already, so that animation playback is driven by Animator parameters
  • Transition from sweep to the next intended animation using a Trigger or Bool parameter, set using the Character: Animate Action
  • Check "Has Exit Time" in this Animator Transition, and configure it so that it waits for the sweep animation to finish
  • Add a Variables component to the NPC's Animator
  • Add a Bool variable named Wait
  • Attach the script below as a State Machine Behaviour to the Animator's sweeping state. This will set the Wait bool to True when is starts, and False when it stops
  • Run Variable: Check on a loop until the Wait variable is False

  SetWaitBool.cs:

  using AC;
  using UnityEngine;
  
  public class SetWaitBool : StateMachineBehaviour
  {
  
      public override void OnStateEnter(Animator animator, AnimatorStateInfo stateInfo, int layerIndex)
      {
          animator.GetComponent<Variables>().GetVariable("Wait").BooleanValue = true;
      }
  
      public override void OnStateExit(Animator animator, AnimatorStateInfo stateInfo, int layerIndex)
      {
          animator.GetComponent<Variables>().GetVariable("Wait").BooleanValue = false;
      }
  
  }
  
• luuk

  January 23

  Thanks a lot for this Chris, it should prove very useful in the future. However, the thing is, for this NPC, I have over 50 animations setup already using Sprites Unity. From the looks of it, Sprites Unity Complex seems to handle animations so differently that the amount of work required to change animation engines for the character at this point seems a bit overwhelming. Therefore, I'm left to wonder if there's some way, some sneaky detour to accomplish what I'm going for while sticking to Sprites Unity, even if that's not the most smart or natural way to go about it? I'm sorry to be a pain – feel free to ignore this comment.
• ChrisIceBox

  January 23

  Maybe.

  Currently, if you run a Character: Animate Action's Play Custom method, it'll restart the supplied animation even if it's currently already playing.

  You can prevent this by opening up AC's AnimEngine_SpritesUnity script and pasting the following into line 285:

  if (character.GetAnimator ().GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo (action.layerInt).shortNameHash == hash)
  {
      return action.willWait ? action.defaultPauseTime : 0f;
  }
  

  What this should mean is you can then begin the sequence by re-running the Idle animation using this Action, with Wait until finish? checked, so that it then continues to play the animation until it finishes it's current run of the loop.
• luuk

  January 23

  Thanks a lot, that solution makes sense and I hope it'll work! However, I made the mistake of not reiterating that I'm still using the version of AC I started this game with back in 2020 (v1.72.4) and I'm betting that's why line 285 probably isn't the correct place for this script bit... but in the off chance it is, here are the error messages I get:

  Assets\AdventureCreator\Scripts\Animation\AnimEngine_SpritesUnity.cs(285,101): error CS0103: The name 'hash' does not exist in the current context
  Assets\AdventureCreator\Scripts\Animation\AnimEngine_SpritesUnity.cs(287,5): error CS0127: Since 'AnimEngine_SpritesUnity.ActionCharAnimGUI(ActionCharAnim, List)' returns void, a return keyword must not be followed by an object expression

  Another thing I wanted to ask is whether there's a way to donate to you? This forum and your tireless contribution to it is second to none, and I think paying for AC once years ago isn't quite enough. I'd like to show my appreciation of your amazing dedication in helping us make our dreams come true.
• ChrisIceBox

  January 24

  I made the mistake of not reiterating that I'm still using the version of AC I started this game with back in 2020 (v1.72.4)

  Yeah, this'll be a different line then. Instead, best to look for the following in the ActionCharAnimRun function and paste it underneath:

  character.charState = CharState.Custom;
  

  Another thing I wanted to ask is whether there's a way to donate to you?

  Well, let's see if we can get the above issue solved first! Happy to share details over PM, but please don't feel obliged.