Hello everyone, ACTION GAME MAKER Producer Morino here!
In this fifth Producer’s Letter, I think it’s time to cover animation!
ACTION GAME MAKER uses similar logic to how Pixel Game Maker MV used animation, in that each action can be assigned an animation.
However, in the older tool you either used our custom animation function or imported a sspj file created with OPTPiX SpriteStudio. But with the new engine, all animations go through Godot’s Animation Player functionality.
Overview of Godot’s Animation Player
Godot’s Animation Player is based on a modern Timeline format using Tracks.
Anyone who has used a video editing program should be familiar with this system. Bezier curves and easing as supported, and creating rich animations without the use of another tool should be possible.
This applies both to sprite-based animations and bone-based animations. All animations we have shown so far are all made using the Animation Player’s bone system without use of an external tool.
Additionally, Godot Nodes can be placed into the Animation Player as an additional track to make changes to Node properties during the animation.
This means that position and rotation information, scale, color information, and many other elements can be updated directly within the animation structure.
So, what does this enable for users of ACTION GAME MAKER?
Improvements over Pixel Game Maker MV: What was difficult is now possible!
Animated Cutscenes
In PGMMV you needed to script up a complex sequence of events in order to create an in-game cutscene. With the power of Godot’s Animation Player, creating in-game cutscenes with lots of animation should be a much less complex task.
Mid-animation Particle Effects
Particles are represented by a single Node in Godot, so simply adding the particle effect Node to the Timeline as a Track and then assigning the start time is super simple, and makes it much easier to accurately time the effect start and stop time compared to PGMMV.
Parameter Inheritance from Animations
Not only can you update Node parameters directly within an Animation, those parameter changes are retained at the end of the animation, and thus carry over into subsequent animations. So it’s now possible to easily make an animation where a weapon is dropped, a facial expression changes, or even hair color is changed based on game events without complex scripting. When you combine this functionality with graphics Filters, there is a lot of variety and versatility available easily to any user of ACTION GAME MAKER.
Shaders in Animations
This is for the advanced users, but of course Godot has full shader support via scripting. A shader can be added as a Track to the Animation Player, so there’s really no limits on what kind of effects you can use in ACTION GAME MAKER.
2D Bone Animations: Collision Movement
As each Bone in an animation is a child node, each Bone can also have its own independent collision detection. So this makes it easy to have tracked and controlled collision dynamically updated through the animation. And of course Connection Points are available to easily control projectile generation.
These are only examples, of course! Godot’s Animation Player is richly featured, and when combined with ACTION GAME MAKER’s additional functionalty should allow for a lot of creative uses!
However, there is one unfortunate limitation that has resulted from this change. While this is generally a much more versatile and capable toolset compared with Pixel Game Maker MV, ACTION GAME MAKER will not support the importing of OPTPiX SpriteStudio sspj format animations. Despite the release of SpriteStudio Player for Godot, SpriteStudio animations are not supported due to a variety of technical issues. We understand that some of our existing users have gotten very skilled at using it, but we ask for your understanding on this matter, as the Godot Animation Player does provide mostly equivalent functionality.
Also, while configured sprite animations cannot be imported from Pixel Game Maker MV, the sprite sheets are compatible and setting up sprite animations in ACTION GAME MAKER MV is expected to be a quick process.
And that’s all for this letter! I’ll be back in December for the final letter of 2024. Thank you for your continued interest in ACTION GAME MAKER, and we look forward to sharing more information soon!