Help - Time or animation frame?!

[Petedevlin]

Help - Time or animation frame?!

Hi

I need a big help from the community. I'm trying to recreate a process and the nearest analogy I can find is Punch Out!!

In Punch Out!! when an opponent strikes they display a tell, then the strike, and then they cool down.

Now, for the purposes of portability to different run times which of the following us the most secure to prevent weird synchronisations fir when the 'hit' is landed?

1) have the 'hit' occur at the specific frame in the animation, or
2) use a countdown timer matched to the animation and work out at which point in the countdown the hit strikes and have the event attached to that?
3) separate the tell, hit and recovery into different states and each time one is finished the next starts?

My preference would be to have one complete animation (tell, hit, cool down) matched to a timer, but can anyone inform me if different runtimes could have an effect and mess up the synchronisation. I'd be talking about measuring to 100ths of a second,

Many thanks in advance!

[aylictal]

I would suggest your first idea, as that would not be fps dependent on the user playing, meaning that regardless of the FPS they're getting, when that frame triggers, it will trigger the effect (tell hit or cooldown respectively).

I'd also probably seperate them into groups. That way you can modify animations easier later on if you want the enemy to be more dynamic than having just a single animation. More work, but better flexibility down the road IMO.

[Petedevlin]

Hi

Yeah, took some testing but using a fastloops and animation frame number worked out the best solution, with the frame number in stored in an array if I want to update the animation later.

Did test out using different states but it was an absolute pain.

Thanks again