Animate character while standing still

[daveysloan]

Hi,

I'm making a simple platform game & looking to give my character 2 or 3 frames of animation when they're standing still. Does anyone know of an efficient way to do this? Thanks

[mas]

I think you probably need 2 alternate sprites (one for facing left, one for right - unless the sprite faces towards the screen), a timer (so it triggers after a few seconds of inactivity) and way of tracking a key has been pressed.

If you're having a standard timer to count the seconds, on a keypress I'd zero an inactivity count. If the inactivity count gets > 3 seconds I'd switch the image to the "bored sprite" animation. I'd then, if the player image is the "bored sprite image" I'd animate slow until a key is pressed. On keypress, you zero the inactivity timer, change the sprite back to the correct left or right image and carry on.

Or you could do the standard "death animation thing" if you want the sequence to play out and change the sprite type... but I'd probably just swap images.

[mas]

Expanding a bit on the previous.

If we have a timer running with M, S, and F (Minutes, Seconds, Frames - assuming 25/second) running on the mainevent1 for "whatever reason" we can set another variable, say P, for "player inactivity in seconds"

If we assume IMAGE 0 and IMAGE 1 are your left right sprite images, and IMAGE 2 is your bored animation, you'll have something like the following in the player event. (typed from brain, not 100% checked)

IF IMAGE <> 2 ; don't respond if the sprite is bored
IF KEY LEFT
LET DIRECTION = LEFT
LET IMAGE = 0
ANIMATE SLOW
IF CANGOLEFT
SPRITELEFT
ENDIF
LET P = 0 ; player inactivity reset
ENDIF

IF KEY RIGHT
LET DIRECTION = RIGHT
LET IMAGE = 1
ANIMATE SLOW
IF CANGORIGHT
SPRITERIGHT
ENDIF
LET P = 0
ENDIF
ENDIF

IF F > 23 ; I'm assuming a 25 fps loop, just updating P everytime it hits 23 to avoid reset of F clashes
ADD 1 TO P
ENDIF

IF P > 2
LET IMAGE = 2
ANIMATE
IF P > 5
LET P = 0 ; reset after a couple of seconds of the animation
IF DIRECTION = LEFT
LET IMAGE = 0
LET FRAME = 0
ELSE
LET IMAGE = 1
LET FRAME = 0
ENDIF
ENDIF
ENDIF

[daveysloan]

This is fantastic, thanks so much for this.