Custom creature animation question

[queenbee1990]

I hope this isn't a stupid question, but I've been scratching my head over it for days and I haven't been able to find a discussion about it here. 

I'm working on a creature design with custom animation, which I'm working on in Spriter. I got the (side) idle animation done, tested it in game, and everything looks great. My question now is about the other animations, and how the game recognizes them. For the idle animation, I simply titled it "idle" in the animation pane. I assume that, when compiled and loaded into DS, the game recognizes the titles of the different animations? Is that right? So that got me wondering, how does it differentiate between an idle pose from the side, versus front and back? Same for running, attacking, etc. I've watched a few tutorials that have a handful of these animations created, and they have labelled them FrontAttack, BackAttack, SideAttack. Is that format the same for every animation? So, for example, FrontIdle, BackIdle, SideIdle? (Seems like a silly question, I know, but all of these tutorials also had only one idle animation so that made me question myself.) 

In Klei's Creature Mod Tutorial, the .scml file has an animation called "Yell." So this made me realize that creatures in general might have animations that characters do not, and even after spending a lot of time digging through the game files, I couldn't find anything that I could use as a reference. Like, if I hadn't opened the .scml file, it never would have occurred to me to make a yell animation, so now I'm thinking I might accidentally leave out a lot of things.

I feel like there must be a more efficient way to do this, rather than stumbling around and hoping I include all of the necessary animations, as well as label them correctly. I realize this is a pretty big undertaking, so I'd like for it to go as smoothly as possible!

Tl;dr, basically what I'm asking is if there's a list somewhere of all the creature animations that I should include in my Spriter file? And, if not, how do you know what to do? 

[Lampofulmine]

Animating four-sided creatures can be pretty difficult; the amount of animations needed is quite consistent especially if you're planning to have your creature to not only walk and run but also to attack, go to sleep etc... Usually for four-sided creatures you would have three different "groups" of animations: up, down and side + some single-always valid anims.

Now, follow me here, there are FOUR necessary anims needed per group as a basis, these being: idle, walk, run, death. So if there are 4 anims for each group now you have 12 anims but this is not the end. The "walk" and "run" anim are not just simply one but include 3 more anim, this being the (walk or run)_pre, (walk or run)_loop and (walk or run)_pst.  On the other hand, the "idle"requires only 1 anim per group and "death" only 1 which is used for all groups. I KNOW IT FEELS MESSY but what comes next its the easy part.

**The bold text is just for guiding, the anims name is what come after it**

(A) In other simpler words the .scml file for four sided creatures has the following basic set up:

- idle: idle_up, idle_down, idle_side

- walking: walk_pre_up, walk_loop_up, walk_pst_up 

- running: run_pre_up, run_loop_up, run_pst_up

- dying: death

(B) In case you wanna do a creature that also has the "attack" this follows the same structure of "idle":

- attacking: atk_up, atk_down, atk_side

(B) In case you wanna do a creature that also has the "sleep" you will need to add slightly different anims:

- sleep: sleep_pre, sleep_loop, sleep_pst

(C) In case you wanna do a creature that also has the "hit" and "eat" you could do the following:

--Less complex creatures

- hit: hit

- eat: eat

--More complex creatures

- hit: hit_up, hit_down, hit_side

- eat: eat_up, eat_down, eat_side

(D) (Optional) Lastly, if for some reason you want your creature to become a prefab after dying e.g. the DS fish that once fished it becomes a pickable prefab, you will also need to add the "death" anim (where the anim is the still creature or essentially an object):

- death: death

(E) (Super optional) If you fancy adding some special animations like custom anims which are just for fun/aesthetics and hence are not essential you will just have to add the special animation name:

e.g. (using random names)

- special: special

- fun: fun

 

HOPE THIS HELPS !