(Just a heads up, I’m still quite a beginner, so I appreciate simple/ beginner friendly language, and may need slightly more in-depth explanations!)
I’m currently making a paper 2D game hybrid (the player and everything they interact with is 2D, but the world around them is 3D) and I’m wondering what the best way to implement cutscenes would be!
Ideally, I would need two types of cutscenes:
player moving and doing things, more cinematic
talking to NPC, camera only slightly pans between the two characters when text appears.
I also imagine I would probably create all the flip books individually? So for example
FB_PlayerSitting → FB_PlayerStandsUp → FB_PlayerWalks → Transition to gameplay
And then play them in order in the sequence editor? Or is it better to make it all as one animation?
I’ve looked into cutscenes in the sequence editor, but I can’t seem to find anything for 2D paper Sprite characters and animations, so any help is appreciated! ^^
To help get things started, check out this non-Epic affiliated overview on how to make cinematics/cutscenes in an Unreal 2D Environment:
Ideally you would want your sprite animations all set up so you can play them as needed. Breaking them down as you described would get you more reusability from them.
I’ve already watched through that tutorial, but it only covers camera movement, not animations!
In the video, the guy makes the ‘enemy detection collision’ very large, so the enemy starts automatically walking towards the player (to attack). The camera follows him during this gameplay rather than the cutscene itself triggering the animations to play?
It’s essentially the camera following live gameplay while the player is stationary, then giving control back to the player and returning camera moment to normal.
I’m more so looking for the way to have the cutscene trigger, then the non-gameplay animations play, then the gameplay resumes.
Do you know if there is a way to do this through the sequencer, or is that not possible? (If it’s not possible, then we could find another way! I’m just not 100% sure what is/is not possible yet on my Unreal Journey!)
Or perhaps it would be ‘correct’ to have the player collide with an invisible trigger box, then start playing their animations (with only the camera effected in the sequencer, like in the tutorial?)
I’m not sure how to do either of these things, but right now I’m just spit-balling about the best possible approach! ^^
I’m thinking about doing that with my own project, except it would only be for fight scenes, and not everything else.
What I plan to do in the fight scenes is make the movement of the characters hand drawn and animated throughout the battle sequence. For example, in idle mode, the players can still see the characters moving around and taking small jabs at each other until the player finishes making their turn-based options. (Skies of Arcadia did something like this, but the movement still looked a bit stale.)
I preferred to only do this with the fight scenes because I felt it would be a real pain in the butt handrawing EVERY player interaction and EVERY scene. That would take a lot of manpower and money,which my studio just doesn’t have.
If you really want to go that route, I’d suggest hiring an animation team to handle the specifics. This is not a one man job afterall.
