2d character?

[Architex]

Hello all,

Quick question here -- First off, I'm thinking of working on 2 projects.  Before I begin my 2nd project, does anyone know if it is at all possible to use an animated sprite as a character ( Im thinking of a sidescroller type of game here ), like an animated gif or something?  I dont know too much about gamecore and 2d stuff, etc.  Or does it have to be an actual 3d model?  Ehhh, I suppose I could use a 3d model if I had too, but I think it would be cool to give it more of a anime/cartoon style look though.  Anyone have any thoughts?

[pixel_legolas]

well I made a small sample with fire. It was 16 different small images in one image. They where evenly spaced and with a "shader" it shows them in a sequence. So you could apply that to a plane and make in alsways show to camera.

I guess you could show different textures according to orientation, like paper mario

[gekido]

we do have a simple cel-shader that can be applied to surfaces, if you had a 3d model that had pretty simple geometry it could be used to produce a 2d looking character probably.

We do have a full sprite system that could be used, but doing a multi-frame animation like a character would probably be too complicated for it's own good.  Using the 2d sprites for something like a side-scrolling flight game however would be fairly straightforward.

You could even use the fx system to do something simple - just make an fx with a single billboarded particle with infinite life, attach it to the marble ball, set marble ball surface to 100% transparent and voila - sprite based vehicle.