[solved] Characters face is displaced in game but not in spriter

[Chirpidi]

Hello there! Im Chirp, and I'm 100% new to the forums and making mods for DST. With that being said, Im so' sorry if this post in is the wrong place, I know that can be annoying, and I'm also sorry for any of my ignorance when it comes to modding. I'm new, please bear with me, thank you! now, onto the problem:

I'm working on my first mod now, my main character, a TV head named Giggabyte, and, well, I'm already having loads of problems with it. things that I wanted it to have cold resistance, weakness to rain and other things like that that would go in the .lua are not working, the name not changing when selecting a character etc, but that's all for a different post and I'm sure that's something I can fix on my own. No, this post is about the character itself: it looks different in game than it does in spriter. here is what I mean:

In spriter:

In-game:

Now, the only thing that i have edited in spriter itself was the back of the head, since it is a bit crooked (and on the .png itself, its perfectly straight) as for the face, I drew in a different spot directly on the canvas. such as (Also, Im using the extended sample from dragon wolf leo):

I have tried changing the placement of the face (on the canvas; I did not touch the face in spriter besides right-clicking to scroll through the different expressions), and even replaced the face textures with the ones from the sample but they are all still too low. I know I could probably fix this easily by just changing the position of the face on the canvas, reloading DST for every time I move it until I get it right, but that would take ages and, don't get me wrong, I know this stuff takes time and patience but that just simply can't be the right way to do it, right? It seems like there would be an easier way to do that or maybe I've done something wrong and its just some silly mistake that's causing it to be off-centered. what gets me also is the back of the heads tilt: it is perfectly straight on the canvas:

and its the same spot on the canvas as the other head angles, though its only the back of the head that's tilted. I suppose I could edit it in spriter but that's what I did before, and it didn't save -even though I clicked save - and it's still tilted.

 

I know its not a lot of information, and the lack of it will probably result in little to no answers, and that's fine. If I need to provide anything else like screenshots or anything I'll be happy to oblige. I'm also not in a rush for answers since I was just doing this as a fun little project for myself and if I can't fix it then oh well, at least that I can say I tried and appreciate a modders work just that little bit more cause it's definitely a lot harder than it looks. Thank you so much for any answers! and once again, I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place. Thank you!

Edited August 8, 2020 by Chirpidi

[Yagi2137]

Well, from what i know spriter is basically useless if it comes to editing positions. You have to do it by hand in .png file and test it, just like u said.

Quote

I could probably fix this easily by just changing the position of the face on the canvas, reloading DST for every time I move it until I get it right, but that would take ages and, don't get me wrong, I know this stuff takes time and patience but that just simply can't be the right way to do it, right?

Quote

 I suppose I could edit it in spriter but that's what I did before, and it didn't save -even though I clicked save - and it's still tilted.

Well, spriter is a lie, i dont recoment do change positioning bcs spriter is just preview and if u change something, it will be confusing.

I might be wrong and there might be way to edit in spriter but i asked about it some time ago and noone respond me so i guess that if there is better way then nobody knows it. So if im wrong and someone know how to do it, please correct me  

[IronHunter]

Couple of questions.

1) did you modify any of the .png dimensions?

2) did you change the pivots of any of the .pngs?

I suggest downloading a fresh spriter file, to see what is wrong.

You can preview your .png pivots

And change them to be in the correct position.

For player characters the animation portion of template is just a rough preview. You can even delete the .anim inside the compiled .zip to save space as it has no relevance.

The .build contains a list of all the symbols and their pivots.

Making a character look nice with default animations requires trial and error especially if your character strays more and more from vanilla character dimensions.

[Chirpidi]

Thank you both for the replies! and that kinda sucks if spriter is useless like you said, Yagi. and IronHunter, No I havent changed any dimensions. I was opening the templates files, then drawing on a new layer and hiding the base rather than just drawing on an entire new canvas.as for the pivots, I have no idea what that really is. I may have maybe accidentally pressed a button and messed something up if there are hotkeys for pivots but i doubt that could be it. the only thing i done in spriter was click the head, click the little dot that allows you to rotate stuff and rotated the head to be straight.

and I think ive got a solution figured out: I tried replacing all the faces with the defaults from the template and I realized it wasnt changing; then I realized I wasnt deleting the zipped file in .anim so it wasnt re-compiling and loading the changed (I think). I can just re-position all of the faces on the canvas and tilt the head in the art program like how it was suggested before. Thank yall so much for the replies!! I'll start taking spriters preview as a grain of salt rather than a set thing. thanks again!

Edited August 7, 2020 by Chirpidi