Asymmetrical arm sprites for custom character

[Egorator]

Hello!

I'm working on a modded character, and his design is assymetrical. He has a pauldron on his right shoulder and scarf covering his left shoulder. Is there a way to use separate arm sprites without breaking anything? Also is it possible for the side animation to use a different sprite depending on if he's facing left or right?

[IronHunter]

Its technically possible to get some limited asymmetrical designs for characters. But requires client side trickery, to change the build when facing a specific direction. As each client has a different camera it cannot run on the server.

The arm issue is largely still near impossible to solve as they mirror each other. You can potentially hide the normal and carry arms and use a follow symbol for the entire arm but it is experimental territory I have yet seen anybody touch.

I wish I could help more but I don't have much time right now. I believe there is a AnimState function that gets the current facing and you would need to create code that checks every frame to swap builds back and forth as needed.

Edit:

I guess if you are clever you could make the pauldron into a follow symbol, then it would appear over top the carry/normal arm side.

Edited September 23, 2025 by IronHunter

[The Starver]

4 hours ago, Egorator said:

Hello!

I'm working on a modded character, and his design is assymetrical. He has a pauldron on his right shoulder and scarf covering his left shoulder. Is there a way to use separate arm sprites without breaking anything? Also is it possible for the side animation to use a different sprite depending on if he's facing left or right?

No idea about the issue, but the character looks awesome!! 🤩

I hope you post when the mod is done!!

[Egorator]

18 hours ago, IronHunter said:

Its technically possible to get some limited asymmetrical designs for characters. But requires client side trickery, to change the build when facing a specific direction. As each client has a different camera it cannot run on the server.

The arm issue is largely still near impossible to solve as they mirror each other. You can potentially hide the normal and carry arms and use a follow symbol for the entire arm but it is experimental territory I have yet seen anybody touch.

Yeah, I figured it wasn't likely. I really don't want to mess with anything tricky, as I have no experience nor knowledge with programming at all.

18 hours ago, IronHunter said:

I guess if you are clever you could make the pauldron into a follow symbol, then it would appear over top the carry/normal arm side.

Don't know what the follow symbol is, but I did manage to work it out somewhat: I extended the scarf on the body sprite over the shoulder, and it proved sufficient. The side view will only have the pauldron, though, but that's barely a noticeble nitpick. Actually, all of this is barely noticeble in-game unless you zoom in to max, so no big deal.

I also wanted to ask if it was possible to change the hirearchy of sprites, so that for example the hair was behind both arms (for some reason it's over the left arm but behind the right arm by default). Just moving them up and down in the spriter file doesn't actually affect in-game animations. Not an issue anymore, but still curious. It's all about working around the limitations it seems.

18 hours ago, The Starver said:

No idea about the issue, but the character looks awesome!! 🤩

I hope you post when the mod is done!!

Thank you, I'm glad you like him!!! It's one of my original characters, Aki Sunslammer.
It will be a long time before the mod is complete, though, especially if I want to make him more than just a reskin. As I said I have 0 lua or any programming knowledge, so I will probably ask around here often. At the very least I want him to have a basic target heal spell with his book, and maybe a special hammer move. No promises, though.

[The Starver]

Good luck!

[IronHunter]

On 9/24/2025 at 11:35 AM, Egorator said:

I also wanted to ask if it was possible to change the hirearchy of sprites, so that for example the hair was behind both arms (for some reason it's over the left arm but behind the right arm by default). Just moving them up and down in the spriter file doesn't actually affect in-game animations. Not an issue anymore, but still curious. It's all about working around the limitations it seems.

There is limited options for changing the z-order for the sprites, as you have found changing anything in spriter does nothing as that is only compiled to make a build not the animation.
The only thing you can do is use stuff like:
AnimState:SetSymbolExchange
AnimState:SetMultiSymbolExchange
AnimState:ClearSymbolExchanges

Which would allow you to swap the position of a symbol's z position with another, but these functions are mostly meant for skins so shirts can be tucked in front or behind pants/skirts and pants with shoes. As only a single instance of each type of symbol exchange can be active, it will result in the tucking stuff probably not working if you use skins.

I don't know why Klei made hair symbol the way it is, but a clever work around for longer hair characters is to utilize the pigtails as extensions for part of the hair.