No sprites in the margins

I'm making a fighting game and each fighter has 36 separate animations. How do I add all 72 (both fighters) to a layout? I've been adding them as sprites. Placing them in the margins seems impractical. Is there an alternative?

Thank you.

As you probably know, if you have 72 different sprites, you need to have one instance of each sprite in a layout. So either you create a new, unused layout and keep all the fighters there, or you have to keep them in the margin.

Edit: Or since it's a fighting game, add them to a "character selection" layout or something?

Thanks for the advice.

There will be 10 or so fighters (360 animations!) so I was hoping that there is a way to add them without having to add each sprite individually to a layout. Perhaps an "add all files from folder" kind of option and then have the sprites only in an "Object types" folder as opposed to spread across the layout/margins. Currently, I'm thinking I'll give each fighter's animations its own unused layout. It should make it much easier to find a specific animation if it needs to be changed.

Wait, are you making one sprite for each frame of every animation?

You should add them as frames in an animation instead, you'll only need 10 sprites total.

One sprite per animation and each animation has several frames. Each character has 36 different animations i.e. one sprite for high punch another sprite for low kick, etc. When I said 360 animations I meant 10 fighters * 36 animations each.

Wouldn't it be easier if you made several animations per sprite aswell?

I'm not sure. A friend who likewise knows nothing about video game art is making the graphics. It uses stop-motion photography much like Mortal Kombat (MK2 clone is our goal). We discussed if it should be one huge sheet or all separate animations. We went with all separate because I thought it would make the programming (eventing?) more confusing if I had to remember which frame to jump to for each move, then count the frames to know if the move has finished, then jump back to the default stance.

If you name your animations something like:

Low Punch (or LP)

High Kick (HK)

etc..

So if you know that the High Kick is, say, 8 frames, you can easily choose a specific frame within that animation.

You would only have to specify; animation HK, frame X. Or just use, "is animation HK finished", then "set animation Stance".

Edit: And as for sheets/frames, I would probably make a sheet for each animation move, for easy importation. You can import several frames into an animation though, so that'll work fine too.

I might just be misunderstanding so bear with me.

The biggest problem with knowing how many frames an animations has is that the number of frames isn't standardized. Everyone involved with this game is an amateur. As such the high punch for some characters is 5 frames while for others it's 6 and so on. I'm sure this is going to cause intense balancing problems.... So to combine multiple animations on a single sheet would necessitate knowing how many frames that animation is for that particular character as a high punch isn't always x number of frames. Which is why I'm keeping high kick and low kick on separate sheets instead of one kicks sheet.

Thanks for your help. Looks like I'll just have to be patient and add each fighter's animations one at a time. Primarily I was hoping to find some batch way of doing this.

no your not understanding =D

You can have as many different animations with as many different frames per animation as you want all in 1 sprite.

You could make just 1 sprite per character and that sprite contain animations for each move (all named individually) and they have as many or as few frames as you need. It doesnt all have to match up exactly to work. Hell the SIZES of the sprites can even change between frames

http://www.scirra.com/manual/48/image-and-animations-editor

Notice the: "The animations bar is where multiple animations can be created for Sprite objects."

Even if all the framecounts are different, it will be easier/faster if you add them as frames and animations. You can use expressions and events to get a lot of information from the animations & frames.

It's up to you obviously, but I really don't think 360 different sprites is the way to go.

Ah, I see now! Thank you so much. I've add multiple animations in the animations bar for a single sprite, but now I don't know how to switch between the animations - before I was switching between sprites. I'm guessing it has to with "Set animation", but when I double click on FighterA I don't get the list of animations. I've checked the manual, but I'm still unsure of what to do.

http://www.scirra.com/manual/115/sprite

There should be a small window called "Animations" where there's one animation called "Default". Right-click inside this box to create new animtaions.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I've done that much now I'm trying to switch between those animations in the events. Such as: On key pressed switch to fighterA's high kick animation.