Hey guys! I am developing a 2.5D game with pixel graphics but the problem is that the player will be able to change the characters armor or weapons and I don’t know how to handle the animations that way. I can’t just use a sprite for that because I have no idea how would it change the weapons and armor not even mentioning the animations. If it helps, than the movement and camera is a lot like the old pokemon from gameboy advanced had.
– David
In a sprite-based game where you want to have character customization, your best bet will always be to split your sprites into multiple parts, based on how much customization you want to give. For example, in Zombie Grinder, a game two of my friends are developing, they achieved this by splitting heads/hats into a different sprite sheet altogether, rendering the body and then the head directly on top of it.
With the inclusion of weapon customization, you’ll want to go the same route. If you intend to have weapons shown on the character, you’ll simply render their “sheathed” versions in the right layer when doing character rendering. For their attack versions, you’ll probably want to handle visual customization in a similar manner, but separate from the player’s rendering.