Hello community,
i am fairly new here, actually its my first post. I am really into games for almost about 35 years now. Not only playing, but also interested in how things work behind the scenes. And i managed to stay interested without the wish to actually learn how to program. I am more a visual type of guy. So now with the unreal engine and introduction of visual scripting i want to give it a shot and try how it works for me. So keep in mind that i am not a programmer, more a creative grafics guy who can figure things out (by communicating oviously).
I have a few questions that are crucial to how i make my assets.
1.) its a top down viewed RTS i have in mind that should have a bit of customisation. Can i use sprite animated figures that turn 360° without the need of animating the full 360 single sprites? For example: a tank with tracks - tracks movement animated via sprites but the animated sprite moves in every direction the cursor points freely across the tiles.
2.) is it possible to have two animated sprites use together? like the tank (moving tracks animation) and the turret turning 360° conneted at the center (with firing animations).
3.) now next level: can i use more and different sprite animated objects together in Unreal (Paper 2D)? To stay with the tank example: tank moves and turns, the main turret can turn 360° and has a sprite animated fire animation, whiel on the side there are sitting to soltiers with guns whos torsos turn in a 90° angle and fire their weapons (which again is a sprite animation).
4.) and to make things worse: those soldiers should be identities that can be equiped (armor weapons) and don’t change when leaving the tank and get onto a patrol boat (for example).
If i would know those things i can set up my Photoshop files accordingly and don’t have to use a third party animation tool. I just guessed that if animate can have movieclips within movieclips within movieclips with different triggers, Unreal could be the same way (different setup obviously).
I am not asking for a complete soloution, just want to know if thats possible or if i need an in between step using an animation program (like Blender).
Thanks for your time reading. I would be glad to hear any information regarding my problems.