[PLUGIN] Creature2d

What is it?

A beta plugin for the Creature animation tool. See here to for more info about Creature:

http://creature.kestrelmoon.com/index.html

Download

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/542 ... 2d_0.1.zip

Example

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/542 ... _test.capx

Usage

1. Set the texture in the editor

2. Use ajax to load a creature json

3. when the ajax is done use the "load creature 2d" to load AJAX.LastData

Notes

* This is a webgl only plugin. If webgl isn't available for any reason then you won't see anything. I don't think I'll be making a non-webgl renderer since there isn't a way to make it fast.

* It only has one texture per object type.

* It currently only plays the "default" Creature animation. This is the main reason for being beta. More features in this area can be added easily and anyone who wants to add actions to do this is welcome to.

Thank you for this - an awesome addition!

Excellent! Will definitely try this out as soon as possible!

R0J0hound, hats off to you for creating this plugin. I took a look through the code and, to be honest, it is - pun intended - a monster! I did some testing and have some random questions as a result:

1. Is this plugin derived from the github js library and do you know which Creature export option should be followed? (Not that I can export from the demo version, I'm just interested)

2. I'm guessing that the animation name on load could be changed by modifying the runtime.js function at line 213 - but how would one go about changing the animation to something else mid-play, change animation play speed etc?

3. A follow on from question 2 - do you think it could be possible to change animations by blending the bones / mesh positions from the animation current position to the next animation (is this supported by the CreatureMeshBone.js , I guess is my question, or would that transition have to be written from scratch)?

4. I see that opacity is not supported, which is not a surprise as it's a webgl draw, but if I spawn an object with fade behavior over a creature object then the creature object inherits the fade (even though fade does not work on the creature object as its own behavior). Here's an example of what I mean.

As far as I can tell the plugin performs really well. The only limitation is a pronounced jank as the plugin loads the json data, but that could easily be worked around.

1.

The pixi.js renderer on the github repository was the most helpful in making the renderer work. As far as I understand it is as long as you choose the json export you can load it with this plugin.

2.

The way it works is the animations need to be loaded and then it's a simple matter of setting the animation. When I get around to it it can be made to load all the animations from a file and then the current animation, speed of animation and position in the animation can be changed.

3.

"CreatureMeshBone.js" is the meat of the plugin, which made it fairly easy to get working. It does have a feature to blend from one animation to another and you can specify the blend factor from 0 to 1, where 0 is the first animation and 1 would be the second. Any value in between like 0.5 would be a blend of the two. When I get around to it I can implement it, but it would be nice to have an example with more than one animation to test.

4.

It is, I just forgot to uncomment a line in the code. Not sure if the result is very pleasing to the eye.

The loading jank is kind of unavoidable, not sure if I can make it asynchronous, but it would be an idea to explore.

Hello!

First of all, i want to thank Scirra for this wonderful software, i am a beginner in this field but you gave us an easy tool to make real all our ideas.

I also want to thank all the developers who help us with custom plugins, behaviors, tutorials and answers on this forum.

And, not the least, to Mr. R0J0hound, who made this plugin. I was wondering what is the status on this one, because Creature2d looks very promising and i am thinking of using it in my future projects.

Can you give us an update?

Thank you for your hard work!

Have a great day!

UrsuPolar

There's nothing new to report, I lost interest coding it pretty quick. The Krestle Moon website has a slightly modified version of it with a few things added, but that's about it. I got it rendering without webgl somewhere on my pc, but I haven't gone through the trouble of updating the download, because it breaks compatibility with the modified version on top of not being finished either.

R0J0hound

Thank you for help. I will check the Krestle Moon website.

Here's the link, i think: kestrelmoon.com/creatureforu ... ruct2#p670

Meanwhile, i have found a lot of your work here, and it is amazing!

Hello all,

I am the developer of the Creature Animation Tool.

I am looking into polishing and enhancing the current Construct 2 plugin if possible ( or a port to Construct 3 )

The Creature Animation Tool recently added the ability to efficiently do Skin/Item Swapping. That functionality will be available for the JS runtimes when I get the cycles.

Having said that, I believe there is still quite a bit of work to do to polish up the current Creature Construct 2 runtimes:

github.com/kestrelm/Creature_WebGL

I am short on manpower ( having to manage multiple engines and feature sets ). So I am asking if anybody in the community is willing to help out in the porting/polishing of the Creature Construct plugin.

As an incentive, I will be happy to provide up to 2 FREE Creature Pro Perpetual Windows license keys to any volunteer out there.

The core functionality of for the Creature runtimes are already written, the work involves exposing those functions properly into the Construct 2/3 framework.

Please email me ( via the Contact link on the Creature website ) or join my Creature forum and post there if you are interested! Quite a few people have been requesting for a proper Creature Construct 2 runtime so that's why I am posting this here.

Cheers

I support this tool, it looks solid as heck, look at all this features!

youtube.com/watch

the plugin brilliantly made by Rojohund is now outdated, can anyone carry on the torch? It's a really neat tool with someone eager to repay the work. And god knows how much i need this (any) good animation tool in C2 without the prohibitive price of Spine.

Hello mattar128,

Thanks for your support of Creature! Yes as I said, I am more than happy to work with the Construct community here to bring the Creature Animation Tool into the current ecosystem

Creature, being a 100% mesh based high performance 2D Animation Tool, will be able to add a huge jump in visual fidelity to any of the games you guys are authoring in Construct!

I am excited to work with you guys to make it happen, so feel free to send me an email or contact me on the Creature forums.

Cheers