[Partial Solution] Strange Inconsistent 2D Sprite Playback Using AnimationTree

lightswitch

I'm trying to make a very simple game. I have some programming experience (mostly database and microcontroller programming in C-based languages).

What I'm experiencing is inconsistent sprite playback when input is triggered. When running the game itself, the default idle animation plays at a normal rate, but after the first input, any other animation seems random. Sometimes short, sometimes long. Frequently no animation is triggered at all.

What I have seen is that the idle animation seems ... shifted because there's a noticeable "hiccup" as it cycles through.

The first thing I thought was that animations were being interrupted by input events and causing the state machine in my Animation Tree to maybe look like it's all messed up.

For keyboard input, I have overridden a _input() method and have the event information output info to the console. According to the output, I'm not experiencing multiple keypress spam. So, each keypress is only generating one event.

From there, the player script has already pulled the animation tree and using travel() to start the animation itself. Animations are stored in an Animation Player node. Inside the animation player and the tree, the animations all play correctly.

The tree itself starts with "idle". It is connected to the other animations with an Immediate Switch Mode (with no auto advance). Once the destination animation ends, it is does go back to idle. It's switch mode is AtEnd with Auto Advance.

Aside from the inconsistent playback, everything else is fine.

I know I could probably get away with just Animation Player's play() but I kind of need the animation tree so I don't end up in state hell. Having the tree makes life so much easier because the animations will be linked into longer sequences.

The only other thing I came across was the Dead Zone setting on the Input Map screen. Not entirely sure what it is but the clear documentation for it is difficult to find.

I even threw the project on my NAS and tested on an iMac and get the same results so clearly I'm missing something that is not mentioned in any tutorials have I've seen.

Anyone have any suggestions?

lightswitch

I should add that the animations only have one or two frames right now, set using keyframes. Not sure if that could be the issue. Eventually, more frames will be added.

Should also mention that only one animation has a loop. Well, two with idle.

I added two keys to the attack animation. One at the start (enter) and one at the exit (exit). They trigger methods of the same name that output the system time in milliseconds.

The time is a steady 799-801ms even if the animation "stops" half way or doesn't get triggered at all.

fire7side

I haven't even used it yet, but I did in unity and it kind of sounds like it might be an animation blending problem. It would probably have to be set to immediate. Good luck anyway. You could maybe duplicate frames and add them as key frames to see if it was the low number of frames.

lightswitch

I know it's set to immediate.

I tried adding in more keyframes (3) to one of the non-idle animations, and suddenly, sometimes when the animation is triggered, it skips back to the idle animation in the middle of the attack animation 3 times. The more keyframes I add, the more nuts it goes.

I'm noticing artifacting when I run the animation itself with AnimationPlayer. I see the glitching sometimes in the viewport. BUT it doesn't happen when the animation is triggered from the AnimationTree state-machine transition editor thingy.

The method track is still there and firing off correctly. It's almost as if there's another AnimationPlayer forcing it to animate idle. Duelling AP so to speak...

lightswitch

I went and redid the entire animationplayer and AnimationTree from scratch. The only difference is that I'm not using a sprite sheet this time. So, in the keyframes, I'm not using frame but texture.

Hmmm.