Revamp Animated Sprite to allow swapping the texture it uses

[Shadowblitz16]

Describe the project you are working on

Spaceship game

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

My ship consists of multiple animated parts which I find animation tree too complicated to use

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

I want to be able to easily swap a animated sprite's whole texture out.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

AnimatedSprite.texture = ...

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

not sure how often it would be used but it certainly would be convenient

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

The sprite node allows it

[KoBeWi]

The problem is that AnimatedSprite doesn't have its own texture, it uses SpriteFrames, which might use multiple textures. Your best workaround could be either making multiple SpriteFrames resources (you can save them to file) and swap them or change the texture manually for each frame by using set_frame() (should be easy to do in a loop).

[Shadowblitz16]

I mean why can't it just use reference rectangles or atlas textures for the frames?

this way it can both have frames and be able to swap textures.

[KoBeWi]

This is what it already does, but each frame might reference a different texture, so you can't just swap all of it.

[Shadowblitz16]

exactly I propose to tie them to a single root texture so its easy to swap out

[Zireael07]

@Shadowblitz16: That kinda defeats the purpose of the animated sprite, though.

[Shadowblitz16]

no it doesn't it would do the same thing it would just allow users to swap the texture out and keep the animations.

alot of game engines allow doing this. not allowing it in godot severely limits the engine

[KoBeWi]

So uh

The sprite node allows it

Why don't you use Sprite then? It's kind of clear that the two were made for different purposes.

[Shadowblitz16]

@KoBeWi because one doesn't support animations without a animation player Also they are both sprites one is just animated it doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't support texture swapping.

[djrain]

change the texture manually for each frame by using set_frame()

Gave this a try to duplicate SpriteFrames for different player skins. But I don't see how to give it the right texture for a spritesheet. Giving it the spritesheet texture results in all frames just showing the whole sheet, and SpriteFrames.get_frame_texture() returns a CompressedTexture2D, which is useless for this.

Something definitely needs to change to make this easier / possible.

[KoBeWi]

SpriteFrames use AtlasTexture internally. Try using get_frame_texture(anim, idx).atlas = new_sprite (although the code gets more complex if you want to display multiple skins at once).

[djrain]

@KoBeWi that's what I tried, it doesn't work because get_frame_texture() returns a CompressedTexture2D, not an AtlasTexture

[KoBeWi]

Well this means that your SpriteFrames is setup incorrectly. How did you create it? I did a quick tests and it returns AtlasTexture.

[djrain]

Ah okay, maybe it was because my SpriteFrames had been imported from Godot 3 (though it was working otherwise). It works with a fresh SpriteFrames. Thanks!

Still, this workaround is quite convoluted, surely there's some room for improvement. For starters, if that will always return an AtlasTexture, that should be specified instead of just Texture2D

[KoBeWi]

It returns AtlasTexture only when you assign the spritesheet from the editor. But you can create an animation using separate textures for frames and they can be of any type.