RFC: Loop anchor point

[duckwizard]

Currently AGS matches the center point of the loop with the X coordinate of the character.  What would be really fun is if each loop could have an X "anchor" value that would specify an alternate point to use instead.

The reason I think this would be neat is for when you have a lot of loops in a view where the feet don't necessarily line up with the feet in the other loops.  For example your talking loop might be really slim if the guy has his arms at his sides, and that loop fits naturally because there is no space on either side of him.  But if you have another loop where he gestures to one side, then you'll have a bunch of space on that side for his arm to move around.  You either have to edit all your sprites in order to pad the other side of the guy, or you have to adjust the character's X coordinate before you run the loop.  Otherwise, the guy will "jump" to one side while that loop plays and then jump back when you switch back to the normal loop.

In fact it might be cool if you had both an X and a Y that you could use to anchor the loop.  But even just the X coordinate would be awesome.

Just something to consider if the contributors have too much time on their hands

[Khris]

This has been suggested already quite some time ago and not yet been implemented (different offsets for each frame, iirc).
One of the reasons I take it is that the additional transparent space in the sprites takes up a negligible amount of memory due to the internal compression.
The only other benefit is a purely cosmetic one so understandably this request doesn't have high priority.

You know about Character.LockViewOffset, right? So every time you animate the character by hand, you can use that anyway.

[duckwizard]

No, I did not know about those functions.  LockViewAlign makes my life a lot easier - thanks for the tip!

I still think anchor point control would be neat, but I won't begrudge anyone for not getting around to it.