Quick Guide

• Animation - general animation page
• Animation End Event - the event that happens to an object when a sprite displays it's last subimage
• Change Sprite Action - can affect various properties of an animating sprite
• image_index - the current frame of the animation
• image_number - the number of subimages of a sprite
• image_speed - the speed at which a sprite animates
• room_speed - the image_speed will appear faster or slower at the same value depending on the room_speed.
• Sprite - general sprite page.

Subimages

A sprite can be a single image, an animated sprite that is composed of a series of images that change. Each of these images are numbered starting at 0. You can access and change the currently displayed subimage by the variable image_index

Above is a visual example of the subimages that are a part of the sprite and the final animating sprite itself. The above example assumes a 4 frame animation.

Animation Loop

The subimages of a sprite animate in a loop automatically. After the last subimage is displayed, the animation loops back to the first.

Timing

Animation Speed

In Game Maker, sprites animate at a speed according to the value of image_speed. If image_speed is set to 0 then the sprite does not animate at all. If image_speed is set to 1 then the sprite animates at 1 frame per step, which is very fast — if the room_speed of the current room is set to 30, it will animate at 30 frames per second.

Slowing Down the Sprite Animation

Setting the image_speed to a number less than 1 will slow down the animation. Setting image_speed to 0.10 will cause the sprite to animate at 1 subimage for every 10 steps. To find the ratio you need quickly, you can use this simple formula :

1 sprite frame
--------------
 no. of steps

You do not need to calculate this, as you can put the raw math right into your code. For example, if you wanted a sprite to animate at 1 sprite frame per 24 steps (for whatever reason) this code would work :

image_speed = 1 / 24;

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