How to use AGS Part 23 (Custom Animations 1) Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Adventure Game Studio (AGS) - Game Development

hi folks and welcome back to the AG s
tutorial in this video we're going to
talk about custom animations let's just
say that in your adventure game you have
an instance where I don't know your
character gets surprised and he sees
something that shocks him and so you
want to display that that shock or that
character you would do that through
through a custom animation it's not it's
not a standard animation that's provided
via a GS and the character editor but it
said it's a custom one I'm gonna open up
the C Sammy character here if you
remember in the properties tree of a
character you have several views you
have blinking view idle view normal View
speech view thinking view but there's no
you know surprise you or anything like
that so how would you go in in a GS how
would you go about creating a custom
view and having that custom view animate
your character when when a certain event
happens in your game or a certain time
in your game well that's what we're
gonna do in this video what I've done is
I've created a new view if you look up
in the views here I have one at the
bottom view number five called V Sammy
shocked
this is him being you know being
surprised or shocked I'll show you what
it looks like it's really simple it's
just one loop and it's two frames of
animation it shows him sort of with his
arm with his hand up and with a weird
expression on his face and then the very
next frame of animation is his eyes wide
and his mouth is open so if we play
those two back to back I'll show you
what it looks like so he's just gonna go
in Bob Bob Bob like that and so that's
that's what I'm gonna use for showing
Sammy as surprised I told you I didn't
have very very much artistic ability and
so you're seeing that display here but
anyway so this is what it's going to
show like when he's surprised so let's
go to our cutscene room and go into the
room script which we've been editing our
after fade in function and
in order to make Sammy have this custom
view we have to change his his typical
view remember when he was Sammy is just
standing there or walking around that's
that's I'm using what's called his
normal view there's a normal view and we
need to change that view if we want
Sammy to animate in a different way than
normal
well the way that we would do that is to
say see Sammy dot walk view lock view
will lock his view into another view so
that no matter what happens to the
character whether he's moving around or
what-have-you
his view won't change from whatever we
lock it into in this case if I open up
the parentheses here it wants an integer
for a view number that we want well then
in our case that view is 5 we know that
the view that we created for the Sammy
shocked is 5 but we can also specify
that number by sit by actually spelling
the name of the view so I can say the
Sammy shocked and that's all uppercase
for constants like that V Sammy shocked
so I'm locking his view into this V
Sammy shocked view and that will just
automatically change his view from
normal to this V Sammy shocked view now
it's just simply a matter of causing
Sammy to animate that view so what we
can do is we can say see Sammy dot enemy
now the animate function will animate
the character within his current view if
we had done this without locking his
view first it would just animate him
through his normal view but now that
we've locked it into the shocked view
we'll animate through those two frames
that I showed you earlier of sanity
being shocked and surprised the first
thing the animate function wants is to
loop well there's only one loop in our V
Sammy shocked
view and it's loop number zero the delay
is the the amount of time the game
weights between frames of animation
the longer the the bigger this number
the the slower the animation will be
let's just say five for delay again this
is in game loops so for T game for T
here would equal one second between
frames which would be
really really slow but I'll just say
five you can play with that number and
get it way the way you want it our
repeat style do do we want this
animation to happen once or do we want
it to repeat over and over again well in
this case we want it to repeat the next
parameter is block or no block they
actually want to specify no block here
because I want I want this function to
exit immediately and continue on with
the scripting immediately so that I can
wait
using a weight function afterward so
that I can tell exactly how long to wait
to animate this for and then it asks do
we want to animate backwards or forwards
through the loop now in this case it
doesn't really matter because there's
only two frames of animation within my
my loop here but you can imagine if you
had a very long long animation you might
that might matter you might you might
want it to end emit forward or you might
want to animate backwards in this case
I'm just gonna say forwards close the
parentheses close this in and type the
semicolon now I'm gonna have I want that
animation to happen for a second and a
half so that would be 60 game loops so
I'll wait 60 and now I want it to stop
in animating now there's no stop animate
function the way you stop animating is
you unlock the view we started this
animation by locking the view and then
we animate it we waited a second and a
half now we need to unlock the view and
what that will do is that will just
return the character's view back to his
normal his normal view again so we say
see Sami the high unlock view so that's
it that's how you that's really how you
would do it it's pretty simple again I'm
just gonna quickly go over this you lock
the view into the view that contains
your custom animation in this case V Sam
you shocked
then you animate that custom animation
you tell it which loop
you want to animate how long you want
the two delay between frames of the
animation whether you want the animation
to repeat or just play through one time
and stop and then whether you want block
or no block to occur and whether you
want it to go forward or backwards
through the animation finally you might
want to if you specified no block here
you might want to specify a weight
parameter so that you can weigh a
certain amount of time
before stopping the animation and then
finally stop the animation by calling
unlock view so let's run through that
and see how that works now when I run
through this it's going to play it's
kind of oops you know what I didn't
change the default room from the
character in the last video I had set
him up so that he started in the main
hall I'm gonna start him in room 3 this
time because that's our cutscene room
let's try it again music start and then
we're gonna hear our music stop and now
we see there did you see it
he animated for a second and a half and
then stopped so that's how you would do
the animation there so this is a
relatively short video I'm going to end
it here because on the next video I want
to talk about how we can do a little bit
more with the custom animations
including having the character move
while animating or while there's a
custom animation or a locked view going
on if you remember in the little short
cutscene that I showed you there was a
point where Sammy walked up to to
something and sort of bumped off of it
when he bumped off of it his arms flew
up in the air he sort of fell back and
landed on his butt so I want to show you
how to do that in the next video so I
wanted to get this out of the way though
to show you how this Locke view and
animate functions work because we're
going to use that in the next video as
well so join me then guys