tutorial Adding Sailing Face to your mod character (for Island Adventures)

[Mobbstar]

The mod Island Adventures adds the boats from Shipwrecked. Sadly, the sailing animation from Shipwrecked requires a face sprite which does not exist in DST. IA adds it in a roundabout way, so you can have the DST emotes and the SW sailing in the same DST character art.

Why should I bother adding this?

It makes your character fancy when sailing in the IA mod. Also, you probably already have the art for it without realising. The Extended Sample Character template of 8th October 2018 added it.

What is the "Sailing Face"?

The sideview sailing face, also known as face-33 in the Shipwrecked animations, is the same as the sleepy face (face-11), but looking to the side.

If you are using ESC 1.2.4 or later...

Just draw "face_sail-0.png" as with any other face. You're done!

How to add it to non-ESC characters...

Step 1: Find or make it.

I will be using Warly's face for screenshots. He already has a sailing face in his "face" symbols:

If you need to make one, just copy the regular sideview face and put a sleepy eye on it.

Step 2: Make the new symbol

This part is easy! Just make a new folder "face_sail" next to "face" and move the sprite there.

And rename the sprite to "face_sail-0"

Step 3: Adjust the pivot
This is the difficult part. Open the character project in Spriter and place the face_sail-0 symbol. You should notice a movable ball with a handle on it, that's the pivot (alias anchor). This is what the animation needs to place the face correctly. Usually, it should be on the beginning of the nose. When you are done moving it, right-click and select "overwrite default pivot" to save the position.

Save the project and test the face in-game! You might need to adjust this a few times. Compare it with the other face symbols.

 

If you have any questions regarding the Sailing Face, please ask them!

(Because I got asked a few times: We cannot add the Sailing Face as face-33 because in DST, this name is used for an emote face. By adding it as face_sail-0, it will never conflict with emotes.)

(Because I got asked a few times: Tropical Experience doesn't use the Sailing Face. Instead, it uses a frame of the blinking animation. This is why the characters look unusually angry when sailing in Tropical Experience.)