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Advanced Tutorials

Player Animation: Grips, Actions and Events

Crayta lets you assign a ‘grip’ to a player.  A grip defines the set of movement animations that this player will start using.  For example, setting a player’s grip to Shotgun will see the player run, jump, crouch, etc, as if they were holding a shotgun with both hands.  Switching this to Melee will switch these animation to a one-handed hold of a sword-like weapon.  It is up to your game to attach shotguns/swords/whatever to your player’s hands in conjunction with setting the grip type.

Depending on the grip that has been assigned various actions can be played.  For example, if the player is using the Shotgun grip, they can do a Fire or Reload action.  However, when using the Melee grip, there is no such thing as a reload (you can’t reload a sword!), so that doesn’t have a Reload action.

To trigger an action, for example a reload, just call self:GetEntity():PlayAction(“Reload”).  PlayAction takes an optional second parameter, which is a table of optional parameters for this animation. 

NameTypeDescription
playbackSpeednumberSets the speed to play this animation at. 2 = double speed, 0.5 = half speed.

Note: If playbackTime is also set, you’ll get a warning, and playbackTime will be preferred)
playbackTimenumberSets the time that this animation should take. 1 = 1 second, 10 = 10 seconds.

Note: If playbackSpeed is also set, you’ll get a warning, and playbackTime will be preferred)
eventsTable of lua functionsSome actions trigger events – these are functions that will be triggered in your Lua code once the animation for an action reaches a certain point.

An event can be either a standard event, or a branching event. A standard event expects your lua function to return nothing.

A branching event expects your lua function to return a bool. Events can be omitted from this table, if a branching event is omitted, the default return value for this branching event will be used. See examples of events below.

Grips, actions, and events

Grip Name: Carry

Actions

None

Grip Name: Cleaver

Actions

  • Melee – This will perform a ‘chopping’ animation
    • Standard Events:
      • ChopImpact – This will trigger at the point in the animation when the cleaver looks like it has hit the chopping surface
    • Branching Events::
      • IsChopComplete – If false, another chop will take place immediately without playing the intro of the animation again.  If true, the chop animation will play its outro sequence and complete

Grip Name: Cuff

Actions

None

Grip Name: Unarmed

Actions

None

Grip Name: Knife

Actions

  • Melee – This will perform a ‘slashing’ animation
    • Standard Events:
      • MeleeImpact – This will trigger at the point in the animation when the knife looks like it should hit its target

Grip Name: Pistol

Actions

  • Fire – This will perform a ‘shooting’ animation
  • Reload – This will perform a ‘reload’ animation
    • Standard Events:
      • AmmoAdded – This will trigger at the point in the animation when the pistol clip has been inserted into the pistol
  • Melee – This will perform a ‘pistol whip’ animation
    • Standard Events:
      • MeleeImpact – This will trigger at the point in the animation when the pistol looks like it should hit its target

Rifle

Actions

  • Fire -This will perform a ‘shooting’ animation
  • Reload – This will perform a ‘reload’ animation
    • Standard Events:
      • AmmoAdded – This will trigger at the point in the animation when the clip has been inserted into the pistol

RPG

Actions

  • Fire – This will perform a ‘rocket launch’ animation
  • Reload – This will perform a ‘reload’ animation
    • Standard Events:
      • AmmoAdded – This will trigger at the point in the animation when the rocket has been inserted into the RPG

Example

Here’s an example of a reload action for a shotgun grip being performed at double speed, with the IsReloadComplete and AmmoAdded action events implemented.  The reload animation will keep on playing until the number of self.bullets reaches self.properties.maxBullets

local animData = {}
animData.playbackSpeed = 2.0
animData.events =
    {
        IsReloadComplete = function ()
           Print("Checking if full")
           return self.bullets == self.properties.maxBullets
        end,
        AmmoAdded = function ()
            self.bullets = self.bullets + 1
            Print("Added Bullets, current ammo = " .. self.bullets )
        end
    }
    self:GetEntity():PlayAction("Reload", animData)

Global Events

OnCompleted – This applies to all actions and will trigger once the animation for the action is no longer playing