Spriter or dragonbones for animation?

Hi. Unsure what I should use for animations? With dragon bones you can convert to png, then just add in as separate spritesheets.

I have just read you need a plug in with spriter.

Unsure what I should use. Any thoughts?

Thanks

Freddy33

Hi Freddy, If you're having trouble with dragonbone. I suggest you take the sprites from the dragon bone and put them in a single sprite. See this in Angry Birds Epic, I mean and what, you mount sprite by sprite with the sprites of dragonbone

EX:

Cheers for that dude. Animation is quite tricky. I will defiantly try it this way :-). Heard that dragon bones can cause issues, but not sure if thats true. (Read a blog).

Ta

Hi. Unsure what I should use for animations? With dragon bones you can convert to png, then just add in as separate spritesheets.

I have just read you need a plug in with spriter.

Unsure what I should use. Any thoughts?

Thanks

You can export to spritesheets from Spriter too, you don't have to use the plugin, but using the plugin means a smaller memory usage, the ability to swap body parts, and tweened animations instead of just keyframes.

With Spriter you can have tweened animations that are smoother and take a tiny fraction of the memory and loading time.

You can also do cool things like use the "character maps" feature which lets you change character appearance, weapons, etc on the fly based on power-ups or what they equipped.. again, using a tiny fraction of the memory as compared to having the character variations as entire separate Construct sprites.

youtube.com/watch

Ahh OK. Thanks for the help. I will try the spriter plugin and practice with spriter free. If it's good I will upgrade.

Thanks all

Does the spriter plugin run OK with mobile? It won't hinder performance will it?

It depends too much on what you're doing with it. For example, with Spriter you could make smoothly animated giant bosses that would be completely impossible with full frame standard Construct sprites, and it would run very well on mobile.

Here is the basic platformer game engine running on my old Ipad Pro:

youtube.com/watch

In this example, the player and trees in the first level are all Spriter based, as is the boss at the end of the video.

Also the entire main menu system is made in Spriter.

But you should always try your best to optimize and test your game often on real mobile devices frequently, no matter which (if any) plug-ins you use.

I would not recommend making every last particle effect a Spriter object, for example... simple things like collectible coins, explosions, shots etc are best left as regular construct sprites.

Thank you for this. If I get spriter Pro from the asset store, do I still need to upgrade the spriter I downloaded?

Not sure the difference or if I need them both.

It should be the latest version, but I think you'll need to go into the menu and choose Help/Activate Spriter Pro and enter your email address and serial number.

Check the help menu option and if it says "Spriter Pro activated" then you don't need to do anything.

Thank you, so then I can use the pro version from my desktop, it's cheaper to buy from scirra store than actual spriter?

If there is a sale here and not at brashmonkey.com at the time. Yes, Spriter is a desktop app, it's not web based.