GameMaker Tutorial: Animating Player Sprites Based on Movement

ByWalter Wimberly

This guide will teach you how to program your player character’s sprites to change based on the direction they are moving. This is an essential skill for creating dynamic and visually appealing game characters.

Watch the full video here

Changing Sprites When the Player is Moving

The first step is to write the code that will detect player input and switch the character’s sprite accordingly. This logic will be placed within the Step event of your player object, which runs continuously every frame.

  • Detect Player Movement: The core of this logic is an if statement that checks if the player is in motion. You can do this by checking if the horizontal (_hor) or vertical (_ver) movement variables are not equal to zero. If either of these conditions are true, it means the player is actively moving [00:28].
  • Use Nested if Statements: Inside the movement-detection if statement, you will use a series of nested if statements to pinpoint the exact direction of movement. This allows you to apply the correct walking animation for each direction.
    • An if statement will check for upward movement (_ver < 0).
    • An else if statement will check for downward movement (_ver > 0).
    • A subsequent else if will check for leftward movement (_hor < 0).
    • Finally, a final else if will check for rightward movement (_hor > 0) [00:55].
  • Switch the Sprite: Within each directional if statement, you will change the object’s sprite_index variable to the appropriate walking sprite. For example, if the player is moving down, you would set sprite_index = spr_player_walk_down; [02:08]. This process should be repeated for all four directions to ensure all movement animations are covered [02:26].

Changing Sprites Back to Idle

Just as important as changing sprites for movement is changing them back when the player stops. This makes your character feel more responsive and natural.

  • Add an else Statement: After your movement if statement, add an else statement. This code block will execute only when the player’s horizontal and vertical movement variables are both zero, meaning the character is not moving at all [04:20].
  • Use a Nested if Statement: Inside this else statement, you need to use another nested if statement to determine which idle sprite to use. The logic here is to check the current walking sprite of the player and then switch it to the corresponding idle sprite [04:29].
  • Switch to Idle Sprite: For example, if the current sprite is spr_player_walk_down, you would set sprite_index = spr_player_idle_down; [05:15]. You will need to repeat this logic for each of the four walking sprites [05:39].
  • Troubleshooting a Common Issue: A common mistake is for the idle sprite to not update correctly, especially for the last direction checked in the previous if statements. The video notes that a simple fix is to replace the final else statement in your movement logic with an if statement that explicitly checks for the spr_player_walk_right sprite to ensure all cases are handled properly [06:53].

By following these steps, you will have successfully implemented dynamic sprite changes for your player character, making your game more visually appealing. The next video in the series will show you how to add enemies to your game, continuing your journey into game development [07:53].

GameMaker Tutorial: Animating Player Sprites Based on Movement was originally found on Access 2 Learn

Assistant Professor

Walter Wimberly is an Assistant Professor at a regional college in Tennessee, teaching Computer Science in the Software Engineering track. He works as a student advisor, oversees curriculum changes, develops new courses, and manages the advisory panel.
Walter taught full time for about 7 years, before going back into “industry” as a full stack Software Developer for a dozen years. There he focused on web based projects coding in JavaScript/jQuery and utilizing the Bootstrap CSS Framework on the front-end, and coding in PHP, ASP/ASP.Net, SQL on the back-end.

Since he loves teaching, he taught as an adjunct web and digital media classes for eight (8) years, while working in industry, and has since returned to teaching full time.

He has been married for over 25 years, and is father to several special needs boys. As such, he is working on some projects to help others who have special needs to be self-sufficient, and support the care givers of those with special needs. Check out his Autism blog for more info.

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