this has been asked before, specifically about unity. but the main concepts would be the same Unity Cutscenes

We're using spine to create 10 cutscenes in an HTML5 game at the moment, treating each as a linear animation with different skeletons of equal time length to create a few layers so we have bit more control and keep the structure clean. Works well.

Hey there,

We're using Spine to do all our cutscenes in GameMaker Studio. For what we need it works great but we work within what GameMaker and Spine do well. One thing that serves us well is to look at Spine for what it is, an animation program and not a full featured editing suite. If you keep that in mind you can do some nice things.

Mostly we just setup a Spine file with a bunch of assorted skeletons representing all the various 'actors' in the scene. From there we load them all up at once and let the animations go. We do little things like use dialog (from scripts inside GameMaker) to trigger animation changes if we need. Mostly though it's all about managing the abilities of the program. For Boss 102 we might add in a few more features using some sort of homebrew editor.

Cinematics and Boss 101

First – well, to be frank, we plot out the script. Any old word processing program or whatever you like works at this stage. Just layout the idea and the plan out the art assets you will need. From there we move into Photoshop for basic pixel artwork. We also reuse sprite and assets from the game (huge timesaver). We can call in any asset previously made and have it run any animation we like. For the most part we are running talk idles and general motion idles during cinemas. Background objects have their own idles for things like blinking light panels or machinery.

Second – we bring it all into Spine for basic layout. Here’s the magic of our system in place. We can position all the assets and place all the bones for things like dialog balloons (both the tails the main balloon can be positioned in Spine). The reason for this is to allow a nice level of precision. During gameplay the balloons are dynamically placed and that’s fine for high action but here we want composition and control.

This image shows the setup in Spine of the various assets

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Third – We take the rough script and convert it into ‘cinema-code’ in Excel. This is just an easy-peasy way to get the code all straightened out and cleaned up. It’s WAY easier to enter and edit in here than most text editors especially if you are dealing with code snippets as part of the input.

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Fourth – The code is simply cut and paste from Excel and BAM! Cinematic script is all done!

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Fifth – then we test things out. The assets are called out from a script and loaded up. Here’s a snip from some game dialogs.

Asset loading

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The above script tested

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Some later dialog during this cinema.

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There's more of course but that is the basic overview - feel free to message me if you need more info.

Best,

-Tim

Very neat stuff, thanks for sharing, SunWuKong! :happy:

Nate ha scritto

Very neat stuff, thanks for sharing, SunWuKong! :happy:

You're welcome! Hope it helps some people out who are looking to use Spine like we do.

-Tim