~So you want to make a Shimeji
MIGHT AS WELL but first ultramega ok recording
Pokémon - Fight! Wild Pokémon (Johto)/Fight! Wild Pokémon (Ruby/Sapphire) OOPS
Pokémon - Fight! Aqua-Magma Gang!
Pokémon - Champion Road
Pokémon - Fight! Elite Four
k-wix - Super Metroid - Unknown Origin
The Protomen - The Hounds
The Protomen - Light Up the Night
accidentally dropped something on the board at one point OOPS
also one of the CD players was messing with me, you can hear me trying to fill for time after the first song/s
argh mistakes arrrgh
Anyway might as well write this up WHY NOT
This is basically how I do it personally. I assume most of this can be adjusted to whatever you've got on you, or whatever you want to do, BUT THIS IS HOW I DO IT SO
hopefully it'll be helpful
Anyway I basically use two programs to make Shimejis with. They are:
Macromedia Flash MX 2004
Adobe Photoshop Elements 2
I'm assuming that most of the steps here are so simple that you can substitute any version of Flash or almost any digital editing program for Elements and still have things work. But Flash is an important component of this for several reasons, which I'll get into later.
If you don't have Flash, you can still make a Shimeji of course. But Flash does make things easier and cleaner. You'll see as we go along.
SO YOU WANT TO MAKE A SHIMEJI: THE BASICS
Great! Presumably you have an idea for a shimeji that you'd like to make, or have some mental plans for one. Making a shimeji is a time-consuming process (depending on how much you're willing to put into it) but on the whole, isn't extraordinarily difficult exactly.
The first thing you need to do is download a Shimeji to use as your base. Generally you'll want to use a characterShimeji rather than the default one, since the animations are a bit easier to puzzle out, but I'll get more into detail on those in a bit.
If you're not sure which Shimeji you want to use as your base, you can look through the gallery here for some examples of different Shimejis. If this is your first one and you don't feel like wrangling with japanese code, I'd recommend using one that hasn't been heavily customized (for example, I wouldn't use Drifloon, unless you're doing a balloon or something.)
I mentioned before that the one I usually use is Big Boss, since he was the first one I downloaded. Clock also used BB for Venom. You don't have to exactly match your base, so this isn't a world breaking decision. But it's useful to have one so you have an idea of what's going on.
Anyway, get dat shimeji and open up the folder where you put it.
Here's what a shimeji folder will normally look like when you get it.
/conf/ holds the configuration files. Unless you're going to personally tweak your shimeji (which I'll get into later) you shouldn't mess with these.
/lib/ idk lol
/img/ is the important one that we'll be working with. Pop that sucker open.
And here we have the 46 images that give a shimeji life. Replacing these 46 images with your own is how you make your own version. That's all there is to it! Essentially. BUT you need to know which images go where. Some of them are fairly straightforward, but some of them are arranged very weirdly. There are simple lists breaking this down here and there, but none that go into a lot of detail. Here I'm going to explain exactly how each one works, since that'll make it easier to avoid mistakes or confusion, I think.
shime1 - The neutral standing pose. You will see this a lot. This is probably the first image you should do, since you can then use it as reference for the others. This is also the frame that will show up when you pick up a shimeji, and when it's trying to wiggle free out of your grip. Unless you change it to a special hanging frame, which I'll get into when we hit conf editing.
This frame is also the center frame when your shimeji is walking. Unless you customize it differently. That goes for like all of these, haha. If you're willing to do the work, this is all very flexible. But if you're just making a straightforward shimeji, this is how these work.
shime2-3 - walking frames. Generally, shime2 has the left foot forward, and shime3 has the right one forward. The walk cycle for a default shimeji goes 1-2-1-3, if that helps you visualize how this will look.
shime4 - the falling frame. This will show up whenever the shimeji is falling from anywhere. Coincidentally, it is not hard at all to add new frames to this, although more on that later.
shime5-6 - I didn't figure out what these two were for the longest time, haha. But basically, if you pick up a shimeji and just hold it still for long enough, it will try to break free from your grip by wiggling back and forth. These two frames are the wiggle frames. The general frame order here would go 5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-1 and so on until it broke free. That is the only time you will see these frames.
Generally shime5 is left, and shime6 is right.
shime7-8-9-10 - These are frames for when you swing the shimeji back and forth, to varying degrees of intensity. Look at your base and you'll have an idea of what these should look like. 7-8 are medium swinging, and 9-10 are fast swinging.
shime11 - Sitting. You'll see this one a lot.
shime12-13-14 - Climbing a wall. Now these frames are interesting in their frame order in the programming. It goes 14-14-12-13-13-13-12-14. The default clinging pose is shime13. You can check your base for which frame should be which way, or just experiment and see which order looks the smoothest. For me, I didn't like how the animation seemed to go left-right-center, instead of left-center-right, for example, so I changed the frame order in the conf files for my shimejis.
But basically, it should probably go 12-neutral, 13-down, 14-up. Remember that 13 will be the default pose that your shimeji loiters at, unless you edit this later.
These frames, and the ceiling climbing frames, are when it becomes REALLY useful to have a base. These frames are meant to overlap with the window they're climbing, and their center point has been differently defined in the code. That's why they're centered in the image instead of on the side of it. The base here is important because it lets you know exactly where to line up your Shimeji so they're clinging to the wall and not to nothing.
A lot of shimejis kind of cheap out on this, in that they don't have any limbs behind the window so they don't have to match it precisely to where the window is, or they don't actually grip the window's sides. Even the default one does. I went in and did some very close matching with mine, so here's Smoker as reference. She will cling almost exactly to a wall.
You see where her back arm/leg cuts off abruptly, and where her hand is gripping? That's where the window is/will be. You can use her as a ref for your shimeji if you need to know exactly where the window is when they're climbing. It's hard to find a shimeji base that gets precise with that kind of thing, haha.
Now we hit the the most confusing animation. This particular animation randomly plays when your shimeji is staring at your mouse, and originally had the shimeji spin its head around. Sometimes they do this on their own, but the easiest way to see it is to call them to you. But the thing is that the frame order for this animation is incredibly non-intuitive, and this is something that a lot of shimeji makers don't notice/care about, since you can double frames for this without much problem. Even I didn't notice the real frame order with Hunter, since I hadn't thought to look up how it's called in the coding.
BUT this is how the program will call this animation. IN THIS SPECIFIC ORDER
shime26-15-27-16-28-17-29-11
Yes, I know. And they will be called just like this, in this order.
What this means is that this is a six frame animation (11 doesn't really count, that's just the shimeji going back to the default sitting pose, and 26 is the frame for your shimeji watching your mouse). Now, since this frame order is stupid, a lot of people just use the same frame for, say, 27 and 16, or 28 and 17, and thus inadvertantly lower it to a four frame animation. Most shimejis you download will do this. Heck, Hunter even kind of does. And you can do that too if you want! It's fine. But if you have a grand vision in mind, you have six frames here to work with, not four.
This animation also fires pretty rapidly. You'll see when you test it. You can of course tweak that later with conf editing.
shime18 - When the shimeji hits the floor after being dropped.
shime19 - the shimeji picking itself up. When you drop a shimeji, or it hits the floor, it will generally go 18-19. Also sometimes when it trips, it'll go 19-18. Check your base and see how they did it for an idea of what these should look like.
shime20-21 - crawling on the ground. Occasionally your shimeji will lie flat and scoot around like a worm. The original frame ordering for this in the coding always looked weird to me, so I tweaked it myself (and I've since noticed other shimeji editors doing the same, haha), but I'll get into that later. Check your base and see which frame is reaching out to move, and which one is flat.
shime22 - leaping. Usually leaping for the side of your monitor, or an IE window. Sometimes also from the top of a window to the bottom. This goes by pretty quickly, but you should see it fairly often.
shime23-24-25 - Climbing on top of your monitor, or clinging to the bottom of a window. The frame order here goes 25-25-23-24-24-24-23-25. Your default pose will be shime23. This one actually makes a bit more sense than the sideclimbing one, and you can probably make it shime23-neutral pose, shime24-leftforward, shime25-leftback without having any weirdness or needing to edit anything. Check your base and see how they did it.
Like the sideclimbing one, this is when it's useful to have a base so you can line up your shimeji correctly with the underside of a window. It's not something you'll see as often, or at least I don't since most of my windows are usually fullscreen. You can use the frames from my Hunter/Smoker one as a reference if you want.
They should match up pretty precisely.
(If it helps, while most shimeji's center point is set to 64x128 for other frames, for these frames it's 64x48).
shime26 - For when your shimeji is watching your mouse.
shime30 - When a shimeji is sitting on top of a window, or rarely when on your desktop, they'll do a little legkicking animation. This frame is the set-up frame, usually when a shimeji will adjust itself to set up for the next animation. For example, Big Boss takes out his cigar. Check your base and see what they did for an idea.
shime31-33 - This is their looping animation, originally meant to be the shimeji kicking its legs on top of a window. You can change this to anything you want, but keep in mind that this animation will loop for a while, and the order of it goes 31-32-31-33. It will also linger on frame 31 while moving out of the animation. For example, I changed this to Hunter calling for Smoker, and vice versa.
You'll notice that these frames (and 30) aren't on the bottom of the image. This is because they're meant to overlap the window they're sitting on, and thus their point of reference is different in the code. What this means for you is that this is when a base becomes really useful. Take note of where the base shimeji's butt is, and make sure your shimeji is sitting at that same level. When you check the animation, you can move it up or down if you have to. If it helps, the coordinates here are 64x112 instead of 64x128.
shime34-35-36 - This is when a Shimeji is carrying your window off screen. This animation loops (34-35-34-36) until they actually throw it. It'll play at different speeds, depending on if they're running or not. Generally, it's meant to be a walking cycle (34-neutral, 35-left, 36-right) but you can do different things for it. Venom, for example, does a spinny combo to knock it away, and Hunter claws at it. You can experiment with this if you like. Again, use your base to tell where the window is, and where your shimeji should be gripping.
shime37 - This final frame shows up for a few seconds after the shimeji throws the window and it's sailing off your screen. You can interpret this in different ways - Hunter, for example, looks very satisfied with herself, while Smoker instead has a frame that looks like she just threw it.
However way you think your shimeji would react after throwing away a window is up to you. Just keep in mind that this frame will lead back into the standing frame when they go back to wandering around.
shime38-39-40-41 - Now we've hit the last two animations. This is the first spawning animation. Most shimejis have things coming out of boxes, but don't feel boxed in by that har har har. This animation progresses logically (38-39-40-41) and will play once.
NOTES ABOUT THIS:
38, unless edited, will only play for a brief second. Most of the time, the frames you're going to see will be 39, 40, and 41.
This animation is fairly slow, so you'll have time to see each frame go by. Except 38.
When the animation completes, the original shimeji and its clone will fly off in different directions.
shime42-43-44-45-46 - The last spawning animation. Like the one above, it plays in order. However, unlike the above...
This animation plays QUICKLY. Most frames are only visible for a brief second. It plays fast. Also often plays more than once in a row while your shimeji clones itself like crazy. When a shimeji wants to multiply fast, it will spam this animation at you.
When this animation completes, both shimejis will fall down beside each other. Unlike the one above, no one is sent flying.
Most shimejis have the shimeji pulling a new clone out of its hair, or splitting in half or something. You can interpret this however you want though. Just keep in mind that it's fast, and they don't move very far.
icon - this is the icon that will appear in your taskbar when the shimeji is running. It's 16x16, so it's a very small space to work with. But try and be creative, it helps if someone has a ton of shimejis running around, haha.
Also, if you make the background transparent for this, it looks much better than having a white block around your icon. Just as a note.
LET'S BEGIN
So now that we know roughly what each image corresponds to, we can replace them with what we like! Let's actually get cracking.
First copy your base's folder (the WHOLE thing, conf/lib/img and all), and paste a new one for your shimeji. Rename the new copy folder whatever you want (shimeji_[name] is popular). This way you'll have a backup of your base in case something crazy happens.
Open up Flash, and set yourself up a new document. It doesn't really matter what the dimensions are.
Essentially I work with with four different layers while doing these:
A base layer, where I import the frame from the base shimeji as a point of reference
A stick figure layer, where I plan out the basic motion
A sketch layer, where I do a rough version of the whole new frame
A final layer, where I have the final finished frame
I already touched on how Flash works a bit here, so I'll just briefly cover the things you are going to be working with. Primarily, onion skin. But first
Import the images you want to use. You can import all the images in the folder, or just do it one at a time as you go through, whatever.
Pop that sucker on the stage.
Now, given that I freehand all of my frames, I don't trace over this frame. But what I DO use this layer for a lot of the time is to see what's going on (left foot forward, right foot forward, that kind of thing) and to keep track of how big the frame is. Most shimeji frames are 128x128. The easy way to make sure that your new frame stays in the boundaries...
Is to flip on the transparency (that colored square by the layer's name) which will outline the image with whatever color is set. Here the edges of it are set in green. Now I can lock the base image layer, and then use those green edges to make sure that I don't make the frame too big when I redraw it.
Let's go through doing a single frame, like sitting, standing, or leaping. Here the leaping one. I've got the base image imported and set on the stage on layer 16. If you're tracing your shimeji from a base, you might not need to go through these steps, but if you're drawing each of these from scratch, this is how I do it. I want to do a new pose for this from scratch, but having the base image here reminds me of what I'm doing, how big it should be, that kind of thing.
Here on layer 9, I've drawn the basic stick figure as an idea of what pose I want. This can be super rough, since you'll delete this layer later.
Since I have my stick figure, I don't need the base image anymore, so I hit the colored box to change it to outlines, so I can stay within 128x128. Thus the red lines there on layer 16.
On layer 5, I've done a rough sketch of the basic pose and figure. There are overlapping lines and the details are fudged, but this is mostly to get a feel for what I want.
And here on layer 8, I've done the final basic linework for the frame.
Now, this is a good place for you to test your animation. Since there's no way to force a shimeji to do a specific action (aside from editing conf files or using shimeji-ee) it can take a while for your shimeji to do what you want. But first we need to get this linework out so we can use it.
This is where Flash really pays off with this kind of work. If you've ever done anything in Flash, you've noticed it's very smooth, hard-edged, vector lines. Now, the shimeji program has a problem with soft edges/transparency. It tends to put pixelated edges around them, which can look ugly or not be what you're looking for. Unfortunately, a lot of brushes in photoshop can have this effect.
But the cool thing about Flash, for anything with a transparent background but especially for Shimejis, is that it will export absolutely clean lineart with hard edges, EXACTLY what shimeji wants. This will let you test animations before coloring them, as you won't get ugly edges.
HOWEVER as far as I've experimented, the clean edges will ONLY work with black lines. Exporting blue or orange lines or whatever might cause fuzziness. But with black lines, you are set. So make sure that your shimeji has black lines.
But how do we get this lineart out?
First, delete your sketch layers. Delete your base image layer, your stick figure layer, and your sketch layer, which will only leave your inked layer.
Then, go to Export under the file menu, and select Export Image. This will let you save the file as a png file.
The easiest way to keep track of these for me is to save them in the shimeji img folder, but under a separate filename for now. So since this is the leaping frame, shime22, I'll save this linework as shime22-1.
Now we hop over to Photoshop. Open shime22 and shime22-1.
Now that we've got the two images, it's time to line up our new art with the old art.
This is a simple cut and paste job. Once you have it lined up, delete the original art layer, leaving your linework. Save it as shime22. Then run your shimeji and wait for your shimeji to do the action.
One reason to check animations at this point is to make sure that they're consistent with the other frames. You don't want to go through all the work of coloring a frame only to realize halfway through that the head is too big, or the legs don't match, or the animation is too jerky, or any number of problems.
Once you've determined that the frame is what you want, go back into flash. THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT:
Make sure to UNDO YOUR LAST STEPS, UNTIL ALL YOUR DELETED LAYERS ARE BACK. Usually three hits of ctrl z will do this. But MAKE SURE you restore your deleted layers before you do any editing. Otherwise, you'll have to recreate those layers later, which is just a pain in the butt. Just make sure to undelete them before doing any edits.
Anyway, another advantage that Flash has is that its vector lines are very easy to color with the fill bucket. If your drawing style also closes all its lines, then you're in even more luck! I have to go and make sure to close my lines before coloring stuff, durr hurr.
But basically, just fillbucket away.
This shouldn't take you too long, unless your character is super complicated. Flat colors will work for now - you can shade them later.
Once you have your colored version, export it much like you did with the linework - delete your sketch layers, export image. I generally save the colored version and the lineart as two different files, just in case. So in this case, it would be shime22-1 and shime22-1c.
The reason I number them is sometimes I'll get a whole frame done, but then later be dissatisfied and redo it. The redone frame will be shime22-2, and so on and so on. I like saving everything separately. :B
Anyway, just copy-paste your colored version over your lineart version, and test it again. If it looks right, then voila! One frame down, 45 more to go!
Now, let's say you want to do an animation.
I preface this by saying I've taken no animation classes ever, this is all just stuff I muddled through on my own.
First, import all the frames your animation is going to take. This gets very annoying for the headspin animation, as mentioned above. Here, I'm going to use the looped smoking animation.
You can see the four keyframes (okay five but ignore that, that's first frame of the next animation) on layer 16, the four frames of this animation.
This where stick figures are very useful. Loosely block out the basic idea of what you want the shimeji to do. Here, I sketched out Hunter crying out.
This is also where Flash is very useful for this - you can move back and forth on the timeline to different frames, and match them to each other. This is easier than having them all as layers in one image in Photoshop, for example.
Draw the basic outlines for your animation as stick figures, and run the timeline back and forth (by clicking and dragging that pink bar at the top) and see how it looks. Is there enough movement? Too little? Too much? Will it fit in the timespan you want? Do you need to add or remove frames?
This part is meant to help you visualize what you'll eventually be doing, and plan it out.
Remember, when animating, you want to keep proportions and sizes roughly consistent. This is where onion skinning can also help you, as well as the timeline itself.
Here is the sketch of the first frame. I want to keep Hunter's legs and arms roughly in the same place, and her head the same shape from frame to frame. Hitting that button I circled there turns on onion skin, which...
Will show faint outlines of the frames around it. You can click and drag the brackets up at the top to show more or fewer frames, if you want.
Sketch out one frame, then move to the next.
Here, you have both the onion skin as a faint outline, and your stick figure frame, to help you plan out where exactly the next frame should be. Sketch out the next frame, look back and forth between it and the last frame, then repeat until you have all the frames for your animation laid out.
Ink, export, test all your frames. Watch your shimeji carefully when it does the animation. Does it jerk around too much? Is it too fast? Is there not enough motion? Is the head too small or too big when compared to the neutral standing pose? If so, go back into Flash, edit the frames, export and test again. Once the animation looks right, go back, color, export, and test again. If it's fine, then you're down one animation!
Yes, this can be a long process.
If you're doing a frame that relies on a window, it can be helpful to put down a box on a sketch layer you can delete later, so you have an idea of where all the edges are.
MISCELLANEOUS ANIMATING ADVICE:
Your neutral standing frame (shime1) is crucial, because you should use that as a reference point for every other frame. How many heads tall is your shimeji? How long are its legs and arms? How big is its head? You want to try and keep these consistent across all animations, as that helps keep them looking natural. Although even as I say this, I had trouble keeping Smoker's legs the same length for her. You can fudge things sometimes, if you really like how it looks. But generally, if there's a glaring inconsistency somewhere, and you see that animation a lot, you're going to notice it. And if you're like me it will kind of drive you crazy.
A good way to try and keep things consistent is, when you're doing a new animation that has your shimeji standing, is to copy paste your shime1 into a layer somewhere nearby, so you can flick back and forth between them and make sure that they're consistent. The sitting pose (shime11) is also important, since you can reference that to the sitting animations, like kickinglegs or when its staring at your mouse. Keep a copy of your sitting pose nearby, and flick between it and your new frames to make sure they're the same size, around the same position, that sort of thing.
Another way to make animations smoother is to copy and paste the beginning and ending frames around the new animation, to bookend it. For example, the kickingleg animation. You can put the shime11 frame before it, and after it. Then, you can make sure that the transition into the animation is smooth, and that it smoothly goes back to the original pose at the end, by keeping the original sitting pose in mind.
However, shimejis don't have a LOT of frames, so some jerkiness is understandable. Each transition can't be super smooth. But it can make a difference.
A lot of shimejis shortcut the walking cycle, and it's tempting to do it. Basically, you can have the head and body on one layer, and just move the arms and legs. If you want to do that, here's something that will make it look a lot better without needing a lot of extra work.
When a person walks, their head doesn't just stay stationary, and neither does their body. When the shimeji puts its foot out, move the head and body down a pixel. When it moves its foot back in to the neutral pose, move the head/body back up. Even just this slight bobbing motion can make a shimeji look less stiff while walking.
This kind of thing can apply to many different animations that the shimeji has. You may have noticed that some shimejis look stiff while climbing - that's because the only thing that moves are their arms and legs. That kind of thing looks strange (to me, anyway). Again, this can easily be changed around simply by shifting the shimeji up or down just slightly with each frame. When the shimeji scoots around, just move them a pixel to the left or right. When you're swinging the shimeji around, you can tilt their body one way or the other, instead of just having their arms and legs move.
More motion makes your shimeji feel more "alive", or at least, to me. But that doesn't necessarily mean you should redraw every single frame, even if they're just blinking. That's a lot of work, but also it's almost impossible to draw each frame exactly identically to the last one, especially if nothing is moving. If you want your shimeji to wave, and you redraw their entire body for each frame, you're probably going to see that each line isn't exactly the same when it animates. And sometimes, that can again make it feel more "alive", but other times it can look sloppy. Even with the onion skin, it's hard to do things like that perfectly.
But on the other hand, even small movements can make a big difference. For example, a walking cycle - having their hair bounce just slightly can make things look that much more real. Look at the motion they're doing, think about how your whole body would move while doing that, and move things accordingly. For example, the waving thing above - if they wave using their whole upper body, they can sway slightly from left to right, their other non-waving arm may move back and forth, their hair may move, even if their legs don't.
THE FRAMES ARE DONE!
So let's say you pushed through it all and did all your new frames. Hurray! But now your shimeji is flat colored, and you want it to be shaded. Here's where photoshop comes in.
Open up your frame in photoshop. Here's the one for Smoker falling. You'll notice she's got a bunch of layers there.
The problem with flatcoloring in flash is that it makes it very hard to separate your inks from your colors, which can be a problem when you want to shade things. But there are a few ways around it. This one (gradient shading) works for me.
Make a new layer above your original layer. Now, hold down alt, and hover on the line between layer1 and layer2. A symbol like two circles interlapping should appear. Click, and the top layer should indent above the lower one, like in the image up there.
What this does is that it makes everything on layer2 ONLY show up on layer1. This is convenient because you do not want loose pixels in your frames. They will show up when the shimeji is walking around and look bad.
Set layer2 to multiply.
Use the lasso to select the area that you want to shade. Here I've loosely selected her arm.
Set your gradient to foreground->transparent. Generally, since this layer is on multiply, you can use the base color of what you're shading. For example, here I could use the base red of Smoker's overshirt, or if I was doing her hair, the base brown. Multiply will make it darker accordingly.
The reason this layer is set to multiply is because that means that the color won't show up on your linework. Feel free to try this yourself -
Because layer2 is masked over layer1, you can select broadly like this and it won't matter - the color will ALWAYS only show up on layer1, and not on the background.
HOWEVER if layer2 is not set to multiply, when you select a dark red to shade this area with...
The color will go OVER your inks. And this is bad because as I mentioned above, shimeji does not like colored outlines and wants everything outlined in black.
Setting things to multiply, however, will only make your blacks darker. Which is acceptable.
So that's why I set layer2 to multiply. Anyway. Choose a base color, and then use the gradient tool to set in some shading on layer2. Use the lasso to select each area, and then use the right colors to shade around a bit.
Now, highlights are a bit trickier. Make a new layer and mask it over layer1 (and 2, i guess). There is no real way to make a highlight NOT go over your outlines. Setting layer3 to Screen is no good.
So basically when doing highlights, just remember to not touch the edges of anything. The highlights on Smoker's hair, or Hunter's hair, for example, never touch the outlines. But you can still get your highlights that way, you just have to watch your black lines.
Repeat until you go insane you finish every frame. VOILA!!!!
When you want to pack your shimeji up, just erase all your extra files from the img folder and put it in a rar. You want a rar because a zip file will rename the two conf files, and thus make the shimeji not work. Then throw it up somewhere and you're set!
ADVANCED EDITING
So lets say you want your shimeji to go beyond the pale, or at least want it to have a hanging frame. Welcome to the world of conf editing!
There are two files in the conf folder that are important - 動作.xml and 行動.xml.
These basically break down into
動作 - the frames that make a shimeji's animation (Movement)
行動 - when and where these animations are called (Behavior)
This part involves a bit of code wrangling, particularly japanese code if you're not using the shimeji-ee files (and I haven't really worked with those, so), so be prepared to have Google translator open A LOT. Thankfully it works pretty well with these.
I really don't know a lot about code, but I know enough to make some edits here and there. I'll start with simple edits, and go on from there.
This probably goes without saying, but you should make backups of these files before tweaking them in case you screw up.
I WANT A HANGING FRAME
Hey, who doesn't? First, you need to draw one. You can add all the new frames you want to the img folder, it doesn't care. For the sake of argument, let's name it shime47.
Once you have the frame, open up 動作.conf in notepad or whatever text editing program you want.
This all looks pretty intimidating, but it's fairly straightforward. If you want, just run the entire thing through google translator, and you'll see how it works soon enough. But basically, what you are looking for is this line of code:
<動作 名前="つままれる" 種類="組み込み" クラス="com.group_finity.mascot.action.Dragged">
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX < mascot.environment.cursor.x-50}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime9.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX < mascot.environment.cursor.x-30}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime7.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX < mascot.environment.cursor.x+30}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX < mascot.environment.cursor.x+50}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime8.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX >= mascot.environment.cursor.x+30}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime10.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
This is the code for when you pick up a shimeji and spin it around. You'll notice that in the center there, between 7-9 and 8-10, there is shime1. That's your standing frame, and that's why you see it when you pick it up.
All you need to do is simply replace shime1.png with shime47.png. Save the file, start your shimeji, and pick it up. Is the hanging frame there? Success!
There is another place you may want to replace shime1 with shime47.
<動作 名前="抵抗する" 種類="組み込み" クラス="com.group_finity.mascot.action.Regist">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="50" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="100" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
This is the wigglefree animation. Notice the shime1 in there? Simply replace that with shime47, and you're set!
Now as you can see here, you can replace frames in these without much hassle. Already this opens up a lot of possibilities.
WHAT ARE THOSE TIMING EDITS YOU MENTIONED??
There are a few bits of code in this that I thought were weirdly written, so I tweaked them, haha.
<動作 名前="ずりずり" 種類="移動" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime21.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="28" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime21.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime20.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime20.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-1,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime20.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="24" />
This is the tweaked crawling animation. Normally the 21 frames and 20 frames are reversed in the original code, but that looks really weird to me. This simple change will fix that.
<動作 名前="壁を登る" 種類="移動" 枠="壁">
<アニメーション 条件="#{目的地Y < mascot.anchor.y}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime13.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime13.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-2" 長さ="4" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{目的地Y >= mascot.anchor.y}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime13.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime13.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,1" 長さ="4" />
Like I mentioned above, the side climbing animation didn't add up correctly. Here, I just swapped 13 and 12, thus making it go left center right instead of left right center.
These are simple changes, and not at all hard to do. And they do make things look better I think.
THIS ANIMATION IS TOO FAST!!
A fairly easy thing to fix. Let's say you want to slow down frame 38 in the spawning animation.
<動作 名前="引っこ抜く1" 種類="組み込み" クラス="com.group_finity.mascot.action.Breed"
生まれる場所X="-32" 生まれる場所Y="96" 生まれた時の行動="引っこ抜かれる">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime38.png" 基準座標="96,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime39.png" 基準座標="96,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="40" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime40.png" 基準座標="96,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="40" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime41.png" 基準座標="96,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="40" />
The tag you are looking for is 長さ="16", at the end of each called frame. That value (16, in this example) is how long a frame lasts. Notice here that 39, 40, and 41 all last 40... whatever increment of time that is, and shime38 only lasts 4. This is why you barely see shime38.
This is an easy matter of simply changing the value. Change 長さ="16" to "40" or "20" or "350" or whatever you want. You can do this with any frame in any animation to control the timing of it. Just make sure it's in quotation marks.
Usually this will fix your problem, but sometimes things will get a bit more complicated, usually if the animation is only supposed to be a set length. If this animation is hardcoded to only last 140, then it will only last 140. But you can change that as well.
The first part of the text file is filled with code like above, each calling whatever frames. You'll notice that each animation block starts with something like 動作 名前="抵抗する". This names the animation, in this example the animation is called "抵抗する". Run it through google translator, and you'll see each action has a name that's fairly straightforward. "抵抗する" means Resist, and is the name of the wigglefree animation.
Why are these actions named? Because the latter half of the file strings them together. For example, here's the code that makes up the entire swinginglegs animation.
<動作 名前="座って足をぶらぶらさせる" 種類="複合" 繰り返し="false">
<動作参照 名前="楽に座る" 長さ="10" />
<動作参照 名前="足を下ろして座る" 長さ="${100+Math.random()*100}" />
<動作参照 名前="足をぶらぶらさせる" 長さ="${500+Math.random()*100}" />
<動作参照 名前="足を下ろして座る" 長さ="${100+Math.random()*100}" />
<動作参照 名前="楽に座る" 長さ="10" />
Or when roughly translated...
[Operation name = "Let the legs hanging out sitting" type = "multipart" repeat = "false"]
[Operation name = see "sit comfortably" length = "10" /]
[Operation name = see "sit down" foot length = "$ {100 + Math.random () * 100}" /]
[Operation name = see "Let the legs hanging out" length = "$ {500 + Math.random () * 100}" /]
[Operation name = see "sit down" foot length = "$ {100 + Math.random () * 100}" /]
[Operation name = see "sit comfortably" length = "10" /]
[/ Operation]
You can see that it calls each separate action, and strings them together to make an animation. However, you can also see that each action has a set length. The last sit animation, for example, only lasts for 10.
If you tell an animation to go slower, and then it starts cutting off entirely, then this is probably your problem. Generally, this has not happened to me a lot, but it may happen to you. Use find to find the action by name, see what animation block it's a part of, and lengthen or shorten it.
Walking cycles don't seem affected by this, to my knowledge. Speaking of which...
I WANT SEPARATE RUNNING/JOGGING ANIMATIONS
This is super easy. The first couple blocks of code in the file have to do with walk cycles.
The first block is the neutral standing pose. The second block "歩く" is walking slowly. The third "走る" is running, and the fourth "猛ダッシュ" is dashing to your mouse. The dash will only show up when you call them. The run and walk show up randomly.
However, since these are conveniently already broken up for you, making new animations for these is easy. Draw your new frames (let's say, shime48, 49, and 50), and simply replace the images in the code. Adjust the timing to match what you've drawn, and you're set.
Smoker, for example, goes like so.
<動作 名前="歩く" 種類="移動" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="6" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="7" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="5" />
<動作 名前="走る" 種類="移動" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-4,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-4,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-4,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-4,0" 長さ="2" />
<動作 名前="猛ダッシュ" 種類="移動" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-8,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-8,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-8,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-8,0" 長さ="3" />
You can see that her default walk has uneven timing, since she's supposed to limp. Her dash and run however are faster, since it's less noticable when she's moving so quickly.
By replacing the images in the walk cycles, you don't have to limit yourself to using shime1 as your neutral pose. By making two new frames for when each foot is moving back/forward, you can make a walk look much more natural, and still only take four frames. But if you want more...
I WANT TO ADD NEW FRAMES TO SOMETHING!!
This is fairly easy. Find the animation you want to expand, and do some selective copy-pasting. Smoker, for example again, has her tongue flip around when she's standing.
<動作 名前="立つ" 種類="静止" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="125" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-a.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-a.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="25" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-d.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="25" />
Just copy the base bit of code (<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="125" />), and paste a new line. Replace the img with your new one, and adjust the timing of it. Since this was supposed to be an idle animation of sorts, I gave her a fairly long delay on her first frame.
You can add frames to almost anything this way, but some animations work differently than others. For example, staring at the mouse won't let you add frames, I don't think. I don't get all of it, admittedly, but experiment and see what works. Most animations, like walking, climbing, crawling, sitting, can have frames added to them.
I WANT TO SEE AN ANIMATION MORE FREQUENTLY!!
A common complaint, especially when you've just drawn a bunch of frames for something and want to test them. Since Shimejis behave randomly, it can be annoying to wait for them. You can use shimeji-ee if you want to force the behavior, or you can do this.
Find the animation that you want to test. Generally, easy to do by tracking down the frames you just did. Let's say you want to test the shimeji throwing your window. That's frames 34-38. Use find or scroll til you find it.
Here, we see that the action is called "IEを持って歩く". Do a find for it. It's part of two animations, one for walking off with your window and one for running off with it.
<動作 名前="IEを右に投げる" 種類="複合" 繰り返し="false">
<動作参照 名前="ジャンプ" 目的地X="${mascot.environment.activeIE.left}" 目的地Y="${mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom+64}" />
<動作参照 名前="IEを持って落ちる" />
<動作参照 名前="IEを持って歩く" 目的地X="#{mascot.environment.workArea.right-400}" />
<動作参照 名前="IEを投げる" />
<動作参照 名前="立つ" 長さ="${50+Math.random()*50}" />
<動作参照 名前="振り向く" />
<動作参照 名前="立つ" 長さ="${50+Math.random()*50}" />
You only really need to worry about one. Copy the name of the animation, in this case "IEを右に投げる". Now open the other conf file that we haven't touched so far, 行動.conf. This file is much shorter than the other one, you'll notice. This is because it calls all the complete animations from the other file, rather than the individual frames.
<条件 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.visible}">
<行動 名前="IEの左に飛びつく" 頻度="50" 条件="#{mascot.anchor.x < mascot.environment.activeIE.left &&
Math.abs(mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom-mascot.anchor.y)
<行動 名前="IEの右に飛びつく" 頻度="50" 条件="#{mascot.anchor.x > mascot.environment.activeIE.right &&
Math.abs(mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom-mascot.anchor.y)
<行動 名前="IEを右に投げる" 頻度="20" 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom < mascot.anchor.y-64 &&
mascot.anchor.x < mascot.environment.activeIE.left}" />
<行動 名前="IEを左に投げる" 頻度="20" 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom < mascot.anchor.y-64 &&
mascot.anchor.x > mascot.environment.activeIE.right}" />
<行動 名前="走ってIEを右に投げる" 頻度="20" 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom < mascot.anchor.y-64 &&
mascot.anchor.x < mascot.environment.activeIE.left}" />
<行動 名前="走ってIEを左に投げる" 頻度="20" 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom < mascot.anchor.y-64 &&
mascot.anchor.x > mascot.environment.activeIE.right}" />
This may all look mystifying, but the only thing you want to worry about here is the 頻度="20" tag. That controls how frequently you see the animation. All you'd do here is find the animation you want to see, and then change 20 to, say, 500, save it, and then run your shimeji. The odds of your shimeji doing what you want to test will shoot up astronomically. Once you've tested it to your satisfaction, change it back to 20. Or whatever frequency you want.
I WANT TO MAKE A NEW ANIMATION!
This is where things start getting tricky.
If you've been following along so far, you have a basic idea of how the animations for a shimeji are put together.
First, the frames are put together and timed in an action. For example, sit comfortably.
Then further below in the same conf file, the actions are called in sequence to create a whole animation. For example, sit, sit comfortably, swing legs, sit comfortably, sit, all strung together to create an animation called "swinginglegs"
Then, in the other conf file, the full animation "swinginglegs" is called depending on the frequency and other factors, like where the shimeji is and other stuff I don't quite get.
You will need to put together these three building blocks to create your new animation. It can be easy to mess up here, but the only thing you'll essentially need to do is copy paste creatively, and have some understanding of what exactly it is you're copy pasting.
First, plan out your animation. This isn't just imagining the animation in your head, you need to break it into pieces to be called. Does any part of your animation loop? Do any parts repeat? Any loop or repeating part will need to be a separate action.
Let's look at Hunter as an example. She has two animations that related to each other - falling asleep and having a nightmare.
Of course, first you need to draw out all your frames for these.
One convenient thing about doin this is that you can write your new animation names in english, and it'll read em just fine. It can help you keep track of what you added and what was there originally.
Anyway, what you want to do is find a base animation that you can copy and gut for your own purposes. Since "sleeping" was meant to loop, I went and found the legkicking animation (since that loops) and copypasted the whole thing, from <動作 名前 to . MAKE SURE YOU GET THE WHOLE THING, THAT'S PRETTY IMPORTANT. Those closing tags are vital.
Anyway, once I copied it, I replaced the frames and changed the timing of them to my liking.
"wakeup" was meant to be a single frame, so that was easy enough. I stole the neutral standing action for that. "yawn" is another looping one, so more copypasting ahoy.
Here are the last three I added for her nightmare. Dreambubble is a single frame, nightmareflail loops, and nightmarewake plays only once. When you have an animation that's meant to play once, make sure to keep track of how long it lasts.
Now we have our building blocks. For your animation, you'll need to break up your whole thing into blocks like so. There ARE long animations, like the headspin one, that only play once, but if you want loops or whatever like so, it'll be easier to break them up into pieces.
(Actually, if your new animation just plays in a solid single block, you can skip some of this I think. But more on that in a second)
Now we need to put these blocks together. Let's scroll down the file.
Here's where it's all put together. What you need to do is find an animation block that's close to what you're trying to do (for me, I used the kicking leg one) and then change it to what you need.
NOTE HERE THAT THE ANIMATION'S NAME IS NOT THE SAME AS THE PIECES. I made this mistake at first, having a piece called nightmare and the whole thing called nightmare, and this will break your shimeji. MAKE SURE YOUR WHOLE ANIMATION HAS A UNIQUE NAME.
You can see that I have some japanese snips in here. Those basically call the sitting animation. Use find to find what sitting/standing is called, or snag it from other put-together animations down there, and plop them wherever you want. A bit of a transition can help.
The first animation has her sit, wake up (this title is a bit misleading, it's a pose where she can either be waking up or going to sleep), then she sleeps for a random period of time - ${500+Math.random()*100}. You can change 500 to another value like 30 or 12 to control it a bit further. She then wakes up, yawns, has a neutral pose for a moment, then goes back to sitting.
Again, make sure the length here matches the length designated up above. Nightmarewake was meant to play once, for example, and has two frames that add up to 60 length in total. Make sure it also lasts 60 here, otherwise it might cut off or loop.
Her nightmare starts much the same way, but you can see it gets interrupted and the new animations play. You can build off existing blocks this way.
If you have an animation that will consist of blocks like so, you need to put them together into a whole down here.
Now, let's open the other and shorter conf file, 行動.
This is where google translate is very useful, and you will probably need to run it through to have an idea of what's going on. Each segment in this file is broken up basically by when and where something is called. There are sections for when the shimeji is on the ground, on the ceiling, or on the wall, etc etc. I've detailed my troubles with the walls before, but the ground is fairly simple enough.
You need to add your new animation into this file, so the shimeji knows to call it. The frequency for these at the top is lowered to 10. This is because the block they are in is animations that play when a shimeji is called to your mouse - 100 is watching your mouse, 1 is kicking their legs, and the new ones set to 10. You can set the frequency to whatever you want. It can be kind of useful to add new stuff here though for testing since it's easy to call a shimeji to your mouse and thus trigger these.
These are things that trigger when the shimeji is on the floor, as you can tell from the bits of english at the top there. However, the new animations there are tucked into an existing block. That existing block has the original "kicking leg" animation, which is why I decided to put stuff there. If I'm correct, that block is something like a conditional... IF the shimeji is sitting, then THESE animations are available.
The ones with frequency marked 0 I think make it so sitting animations don't trigger when the shimeji is standing. I think.
This is all a matter of finding the code you want to emulate, finding where it should go, copy pasting it, and changing the frequency and name to what you specify. There's a lot about this file that I don't understand (wall climbing aaaaa), but doing this will work, so that's enough for me.
Basically, add your new code, save, and try and run your shimeji. If it doesn't appear, you broke it. Check your new code against existing code, and MAKE SURE you aren't missing a slash (Hunter got broken for like an hour because I missed a / in one line) or bit of code somewhere. Fix, try again. If the shimeji shows up, hurray! You didn't break it, but that doesn't necessarily mean the animation will play. Set the frequency up super high and wait. If it works, hurrah! You did it!
If the animation won't stop... you broke it. In a weird way I'm not sure how to explain. I've done it myself, and basically when that happens I just take out the code entirely and break it into more pieces and start again. I am really at a loss for what causes that or how to fix it, exactly.
There are more specific places you can put animations, like on top of an IE window, or something, and you can see them all listed in sections in the file, but I haven't really messed with those. I'm actually not sure if Hunter can sleep on an IE window, I didn't check. BUT EITHER WAY this will add new animations when they are wandering on the bottom of your screen. Good enough for me.
Of course, if your animation does NOT require sitting, then you don't have to put it in the sitting block. Just add it with the other standing animations.
ALSO if your new animation is a solid block of animation, which did not need to put together into pieces, I think you can actually just call it directly. The best example I can think of for this is Masada, who had two new animations called while he's standing I think...
And then these are directly called in the behavior file...
And they play perfectly fine, as far as I'm aware. :O
This is a lot of trial and error, but again the sky's the limit here. If you're willing to put in the work, you can add tons of new animations. For the one I'm currently working on, I've already done a lot of specialized tweaking just by fiddling with stuff. I've already got over 80 frames because I have a problem. I guess experience/determination will probably make this easier. :O
AND OH MY GOD THIS IS SO LONG but I think this is pretty much all I know at this point. If you have any more questions let me know, and I'll try and answer them.
Pokémon - Fight! Wild Pokémon (Johto)/Fight! Wild Pokémon (Ruby/Sapphire) OOPS
Pokémon - Fight! Aqua-Magma Gang!
Pokémon - Champion Road
Pokémon - Fight! Elite Four
k-wix - Super Metroid - Unknown Origin
The Protomen - The Hounds
The Protomen - Light Up the Night
accidentally dropped something on the board at one point OOPS
also one of the CD players was messing with me, you can hear me trying to fill for time after the first song/s
argh mistakes arrrgh
Anyway might as well write this up WHY NOT
This is basically how I do it personally. I assume most of this can be adjusted to whatever you've got on you, or whatever you want to do, BUT THIS IS HOW I DO IT SO
hopefully it'll be helpful
Anyway I basically use two programs to make Shimejis with. They are:
Macromedia Flash MX 2004
Adobe Photoshop Elements 2
I'm assuming that most of the steps here are so simple that you can substitute any version of Flash or almost any digital editing program for Elements and still have things work. But Flash is an important component of this for several reasons, which I'll get into later.
If you don't have Flash, you can still make a Shimeji of course. But Flash does make things easier and cleaner. You'll see as we go along.
SO YOU WANT TO MAKE A SHIMEJI: THE BASICS
Great! Presumably you have an idea for a shimeji that you'd like to make, or have some mental plans for one. Making a shimeji is a time-consuming process (depending on how much you're willing to put into it) but on the whole, isn't extraordinarily difficult exactly.
The first thing you need to do is download a Shimeji to use as your base. Generally you'll want to use a characterShimeji rather than the default one, since the animations are a bit easier to puzzle out, but I'll get more into detail on those in a bit.
If you're not sure which Shimeji you want to use as your base, you can look through the gallery here for some examples of different Shimejis. If this is your first one and you don't feel like wrangling with japanese code, I'd recommend using one that hasn't been heavily customized (for example, I wouldn't use Drifloon, unless you're doing a balloon or something.)
I mentioned before that the one I usually use is Big Boss, since he was the first one I downloaded. Clock also used BB for Venom. You don't have to exactly match your base, so this isn't a world breaking decision. But it's useful to have one so you have an idea of what's going on.
Anyway, get dat shimeji and open up the folder where you put it.
Here's what a shimeji folder will normally look like when you get it.
/conf/ holds the configuration files. Unless you're going to personally tweak your shimeji (which I'll get into later) you shouldn't mess with these.
/lib/ idk lol
/img/ is the important one that we'll be working with. Pop that sucker open.
And here we have the 46 images that give a shimeji life. Replacing these 46 images with your own is how you make your own version. That's all there is to it! Essentially. BUT you need to know which images go where. Some of them are fairly straightforward, but some of them are arranged very weirdly. There are simple lists breaking this down here and there, but none that go into a lot of detail. Here I'm going to explain exactly how each one works, since that'll make it easier to avoid mistakes or confusion, I think.
shime1 - The neutral standing pose. You will see this a lot. This is probably the first image you should do, since you can then use it as reference for the others. This is also the frame that will show up when you pick up a shimeji, and when it's trying to wiggle free out of your grip. Unless you change it to a special hanging frame, which I'll get into when we hit conf editing.
This frame is also the center frame when your shimeji is walking. Unless you customize it differently. That goes for like all of these, haha. If you're willing to do the work, this is all very flexible. But if you're just making a straightforward shimeji, this is how these work.
shime2-3 - walking frames. Generally, shime2 has the left foot forward, and shime3 has the right one forward. The walk cycle for a default shimeji goes 1-2-1-3, if that helps you visualize how this will look.
shime4 - the falling frame. This will show up whenever the shimeji is falling from anywhere. Coincidentally, it is not hard at all to add new frames to this, although more on that later.
shime5-6 - I didn't figure out what these two were for the longest time, haha. But basically, if you pick up a shimeji and just hold it still for long enough, it will try to break free from your grip by wiggling back and forth. These two frames are the wiggle frames. The general frame order here would go 5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-1 and so on until it broke free. That is the only time you will see these frames.
Generally shime5 is left, and shime6 is right.
shime7-8-9-10 - These are frames for when you swing the shimeji back and forth, to varying degrees of intensity. Look at your base and you'll have an idea of what these should look like. 7-8 are medium swinging, and 9-10 are fast swinging.
shime11 - Sitting. You'll see this one a lot.
shime12-13-14 - Climbing a wall. Now these frames are interesting in their frame order in the programming. It goes 14-14-12-13-13-13-12-14. The default clinging pose is shime13. You can check your base for which frame should be which way, or just experiment and see which order looks the smoothest. For me, I didn't like how the animation seemed to go left-right-center, instead of left-center-right, for example, so I changed the frame order in the conf files for my shimejis.
But basically, it should probably go 12-neutral, 13-down, 14-up. Remember that 13 will be the default pose that your shimeji loiters at, unless you edit this later.
These frames, and the ceiling climbing frames, are when it becomes REALLY useful to have a base. These frames are meant to overlap with the window they're climbing, and their center point has been differently defined in the code. That's why they're centered in the image instead of on the side of it. The base here is important because it lets you know exactly where to line up your Shimeji so they're clinging to the wall and not to nothing.
A lot of shimejis kind of cheap out on this, in that they don't have any limbs behind the window so they don't have to match it precisely to where the window is, or they don't actually grip the window's sides. Even the default one does. I went in and did some very close matching with mine, so here's Smoker as reference. She will cling almost exactly to a wall.
You see where her back arm/leg cuts off abruptly, and where her hand is gripping? That's where the window is/will be. You can use her as a ref for your shimeji if you need to know exactly where the window is when they're climbing. It's hard to find a shimeji base that gets precise with that kind of thing, haha.
Now we hit the the most confusing animation. This particular animation randomly plays when your shimeji is staring at your mouse, and originally had the shimeji spin its head around. Sometimes they do this on their own, but the easiest way to see it is to call them to you. But the thing is that the frame order for this animation is incredibly non-intuitive, and this is something that a lot of shimeji makers don't notice/care about, since you can double frames for this without much problem. Even I didn't notice the real frame order with Hunter, since I hadn't thought to look up how it's called in the coding.
BUT this is how the program will call this animation. IN THIS SPECIFIC ORDER
shime26-15-27-16-28-17-29-11
Yes, I know. And they will be called just like this, in this order.
What this means is that this is a six frame animation (11 doesn't really count, that's just the shimeji going back to the default sitting pose, and 26 is the frame for your shimeji watching your mouse). Now, since this frame order is stupid, a lot of people just use the same frame for, say, 27 and 16, or 28 and 17, and thus inadvertantly lower it to a four frame animation. Most shimejis you download will do this. Heck, Hunter even kind of does. And you can do that too if you want! It's fine. But if you have a grand vision in mind, you have six frames here to work with, not four.
This animation also fires pretty rapidly. You'll see when you test it. You can of course tweak that later with conf editing.
shime18 - When the shimeji hits the floor after being dropped.
shime19 - the shimeji picking itself up. When you drop a shimeji, or it hits the floor, it will generally go 18-19. Also sometimes when it trips, it'll go 19-18. Check your base and see how they did it for an idea of what these should look like.
shime20-21 - crawling on the ground. Occasionally your shimeji will lie flat and scoot around like a worm. The original frame ordering for this in the coding always looked weird to me, so I tweaked it myself (and I've since noticed other shimeji editors doing the same, haha), but I'll get into that later. Check your base and see which frame is reaching out to move, and which one is flat.
shime22 - leaping. Usually leaping for the side of your monitor, or an IE window. Sometimes also from the top of a window to the bottom. This goes by pretty quickly, but you should see it fairly often.
shime23-24-25 - Climbing on top of your monitor, or clinging to the bottom of a window. The frame order here goes 25-25-23-24-24-24-23-25. Your default pose will be shime23. This one actually makes a bit more sense than the sideclimbing one, and you can probably make it shime23-neutral pose, shime24-leftforward, shime25-leftback without having any weirdness or needing to edit anything. Check your base and see how they did it.
Like the sideclimbing one, this is when it's useful to have a base so you can line up your shimeji correctly with the underside of a window. It's not something you'll see as often, or at least I don't since most of my windows are usually fullscreen. You can use the frames from my Hunter/Smoker one as a reference if you want.
They should match up pretty precisely.
(If it helps, while most shimeji's center point is set to 64x128 for other frames, for these frames it's 64x48).
shime26 - For when your shimeji is watching your mouse.
shime30 - When a shimeji is sitting on top of a window, or rarely when on your desktop, they'll do a little legkicking animation. This frame is the set-up frame, usually when a shimeji will adjust itself to set up for the next animation. For example, Big Boss takes out his cigar. Check your base and see what they did for an idea.
shime31-33 - This is their looping animation, originally meant to be the shimeji kicking its legs on top of a window. You can change this to anything you want, but keep in mind that this animation will loop for a while, and the order of it goes 31-32-31-33. It will also linger on frame 31 while moving out of the animation. For example, I changed this to Hunter calling for Smoker, and vice versa.
You'll notice that these frames (and 30) aren't on the bottom of the image. This is because they're meant to overlap the window they're sitting on, and thus their point of reference is different in the code. What this means for you is that this is when a base becomes really useful. Take note of where the base shimeji's butt is, and make sure your shimeji is sitting at that same level. When you check the animation, you can move it up or down if you have to. If it helps, the coordinates here are 64x112 instead of 64x128.
shime34-35-36 - This is when a Shimeji is carrying your window off screen. This animation loops (34-35-34-36) until they actually throw it. It'll play at different speeds, depending on if they're running or not. Generally, it's meant to be a walking cycle (34-neutral, 35-left, 36-right) but you can do different things for it. Venom, for example, does a spinny combo to knock it away, and Hunter claws at it. You can experiment with this if you like. Again, use your base to tell where the window is, and where your shimeji should be gripping.
shime37 - This final frame shows up for a few seconds after the shimeji throws the window and it's sailing off your screen. You can interpret this in different ways - Hunter, for example, looks very satisfied with herself, while Smoker instead has a frame that looks like she just threw it.
However way you think your shimeji would react after throwing away a window is up to you. Just keep in mind that this frame will lead back into the standing frame when they go back to wandering around.
shime38-39-40-41 - Now we've hit the last two animations. This is the first spawning animation. Most shimejis have things coming out of boxes, but don't feel boxed in by that har har har. This animation progresses logically (38-39-40-41) and will play once.
NOTES ABOUT THIS:
38, unless edited, will only play for a brief second. Most of the time, the frames you're going to see will be 39, 40, and 41.
This animation is fairly slow, so you'll have time to see each frame go by. Except 38.
When the animation completes, the original shimeji and its clone will fly off in different directions.
shime42-43-44-45-46 - The last spawning animation. Like the one above, it plays in order. However, unlike the above...
This animation plays QUICKLY. Most frames are only visible for a brief second. It plays fast. Also often plays more than once in a row while your shimeji clones itself like crazy. When a shimeji wants to multiply fast, it will spam this animation at you.
When this animation completes, both shimejis will fall down beside each other. Unlike the one above, no one is sent flying.
Most shimejis have the shimeji pulling a new clone out of its hair, or splitting in half or something. You can interpret this however you want though. Just keep in mind that it's fast, and they don't move very far.
icon - this is the icon that will appear in your taskbar when the shimeji is running. It's 16x16, so it's a very small space to work with. But try and be creative, it helps if someone has a ton of shimejis running around, haha.
Also, if you make the background transparent for this, it looks much better than having a white block around your icon. Just as a note.
LET'S BEGIN
So now that we know roughly what each image corresponds to, we can replace them with what we like! Let's actually get cracking.
First copy your base's folder (the WHOLE thing, conf/lib/img and all), and paste a new one for your shimeji. Rename the new copy folder whatever you want (shimeji_[name] is popular). This way you'll have a backup of your base in case something crazy happens.
Open up Flash, and set yourself up a new document. It doesn't really matter what the dimensions are.
Essentially I work with with four different layers while doing these:
A base layer, where I import the frame from the base shimeji as a point of reference
A stick figure layer, where I plan out the basic motion
A sketch layer, where I do a rough version of the whole new frame
A final layer, where I have the final finished frame
I already touched on how Flash works a bit here, so I'll just briefly cover the things you are going to be working with. Primarily, onion skin. But first
Import the images you want to use. You can import all the images in the folder, or just do it one at a time as you go through, whatever.
Pop that sucker on the stage.
Now, given that I freehand all of my frames, I don't trace over this frame. But what I DO use this layer for a lot of the time is to see what's going on (left foot forward, right foot forward, that kind of thing) and to keep track of how big the frame is. Most shimeji frames are 128x128. The easy way to make sure that your new frame stays in the boundaries...
Is to flip on the transparency (that colored square by the layer's name) which will outline the image with whatever color is set. Here the edges of it are set in green. Now I can lock the base image layer, and then use those green edges to make sure that I don't make the frame too big when I redraw it.
Let's go through doing a single frame, like sitting, standing, or leaping. Here the leaping one. I've got the base image imported and set on the stage on layer 16. If you're tracing your shimeji from a base, you might not need to go through these steps, but if you're drawing each of these from scratch, this is how I do it. I want to do a new pose for this from scratch, but having the base image here reminds me of what I'm doing, how big it should be, that kind of thing.
Here on layer 9, I've drawn the basic stick figure as an idea of what pose I want. This can be super rough, since you'll delete this layer later.
Since I have my stick figure, I don't need the base image anymore, so I hit the colored box to change it to outlines, so I can stay within 128x128. Thus the red lines there on layer 16.
On layer 5, I've done a rough sketch of the basic pose and figure. There are overlapping lines and the details are fudged, but this is mostly to get a feel for what I want.
And here on layer 8, I've done the final basic linework for the frame.
Now, this is a good place for you to test your animation. Since there's no way to force a shimeji to do a specific action (aside from editing conf files or using shimeji-ee) it can take a while for your shimeji to do what you want. But first we need to get this linework out so we can use it.
This is where Flash really pays off with this kind of work. If you've ever done anything in Flash, you've noticed it's very smooth, hard-edged, vector lines. Now, the shimeji program has a problem with soft edges/transparency. It tends to put pixelated edges around them, which can look ugly or not be what you're looking for. Unfortunately, a lot of brushes in photoshop can have this effect.
But the cool thing about Flash, for anything with a transparent background but especially for Shimejis, is that it will export absolutely clean lineart with hard edges, EXACTLY what shimeji wants. This will let you test animations before coloring them, as you won't get ugly edges.
HOWEVER as far as I've experimented, the clean edges will ONLY work with black lines. Exporting blue or orange lines or whatever might cause fuzziness. But with black lines, you are set. So make sure that your shimeji has black lines.
But how do we get this lineart out?
First, delete your sketch layers. Delete your base image layer, your stick figure layer, and your sketch layer, which will only leave your inked layer.
Then, go to Export under the file menu, and select Export Image. This will let you save the file as a png file.
The easiest way to keep track of these for me is to save them in the shimeji img folder, but under a separate filename for now. So since this is the leaping frame, shime22, I'll save this linework as shime22-1.
Now we hop over to Photoshop. Open shime22 and shime22-1.
Now that we've got the two images, it's time to line up our new art with the old art.
This is a simple cut and paste job. Once you have it lined up, delete the original art layer, leaving your linework. Save it as shime22. Then run your shimeji and wait for your shimeji to do the action.
One reason to check animations at this point is to make sure that they're consistent with the other frames. You don't want to go through all the work of coloring a frame only to realize halfway through that the head is too big, or the legs don't match, or the animation is too jerky, or any number of problems.
Once you've determined that the frame is what you want, go back into flash. THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT:
Make sure to UNDO YOUR LAST STEPS, UNTIL ALL YOUR DELETED LAYERS ARE BACK. Usually three hits of ctrl z will do this. But MAKE SURE you restore your deleted layers before you do any editing. Otherwise, you'll have to recreate those layers later, which is just a pain in the butt. Just make sure to undelete them before doing any edits.
Anyway, another advantage that Flash has is that its vector lines are very easy to color with the fill bucket. If your drawing style also closes all its lines, then you're in even more luck! I have to go and make sure to close my lines before coloring stuff, durr hurr.
But basically, just fillbucket away.
This shouldn't take you too long, unless your character is super complicated. Flat colors will work for now - you can shade them later.
Once you have your colored version, export it much like you did with the linework - delete your sketch layers, export image. I generally save the colored version and the lineart as two different files, just in case. So in this case, it would be shime22-1 and shime22-1c.
The reason I number them is sometimes I'll get a whole frame done, but then later be dissatisfied and redo it. The redone frame will be shime22-2, and so on and so on. I like saving everything separately. :B
Anyway, just copy-paste your colored version over your lineart version, and test it again. If it looks right, then voila! One frame down, 45 more to go!
Now, let's say you want to do an animation.
I preface this by saying I've taken no animation classes ever, this is all just stuff I muddled through on my own.
First, import all the frames your animation is going to take. This gets very annoying for the headspin animation, as mentioned above. Here, I'm going to use the looped smoking animation.
You can see the four keyframes (okay five but ignore that, that's first frame of the next animation) on layer 16, the four frames of this animation.
This where stick figures are very useful. Loosely block out the basic idea of what you want the shimeji to do. Here, I sketched out Hunter crying out.
This is also where Flash is very useful for this - you can move back and forth on the timeline to different frames, and match them to each other. This is easier than having them all as layers in one image in Photoshop, for example.
Draw the basic outlines for your animation as stick figures, and run the timeline back and forth (by clicking and dragging that pink bar at the top) and see how it looks. Is there enough movement? Too little? Too much? Will it fit in the timespan you want? Do you need to add or remove frames?
This part is meant to help you visualize what you'll eventually be doing, and plan it out.
Remember, when animating, you want to keep proportions and sizes roughly consistent. This is where onion skinning can also help you, as well as the timeline itself.
Here is the sketch of the first frame. I want to keep Hunter's legs and arms roughly in the same place, and her head the same shape from frame to frame. Hitting that button I circled there turns on onion skin, which...
Will show faint outlines of the frames around it. You can click and drag the brackets up at the top to show more or fewer frames, if you want.
Sketch out one frame, then move to the next.
Here, you have both the onion skin as a faint outline, and your stick figure frame, to help you plan out where exactly the next frame should be. Sketch out the next frame, look back and forth between it and the last frame, then repeat until you have all the frames for your animation laid out.
Ink, export, test all your frames. Watch your shimeji carefully when it does the animation. Does it jerk around too much? Is it too fast? Is there not enough motion? Is the head too small or too big when compared to the neutral standing pose? If so, go back into Flash, edit the frames, export and test again. Once the animation looks right, go back, color, export, and test again. If it's fine, then you're down one animation!
Yes, this can be a long process.
If you're doing a frame that relies on a window, it can be helpful to put down a box on a sketch layer you can delete later, so you have an idea of where all the edges are.
MISCELLANEOUS ANIMATING ADVICE:
Your neutral standing frame (shime1) is crucial, because you should use that as a reference point for every other frame. How many heads tall is your shimeji? How long are its legs and arms? How big is its head? You want to try and keep these consistent across all animations, as that helps keep them looking natural. Although even as I say this, I had trouble keeping Smoker's legs the same length for her. You can fudge things sometimes, if you really like how it looks. But generally, if there's a glaring inconsistency somewhere, and you see that animation a lot, you're going to notice it. And if you're like me it will kind of drive you crazy.
A good way to try and keep things consistent is, when you're doing a new animation that has your shimeji standing, is to copy paste your shime1 into a layer somewhere nearby, so you can flick back and forth between them and make sure that they're consistent. The sitting pose (shime11) is also important, since you can reference that to the sitting animations, like kickinglegs or when its staring at your mouse. Keep a copy of your sitting pose nearby, and flick between it and your new frames to make sure they're the same size, around the same position, that sort of thing.
Another way to make animations smoother is to copy and paste the beginning and ending frames around the new animation, to bookend it. For example, the kickingleg animation. You can put the shime11 frame before it, and after it. Then, you can make sure that the transition into the animation is smooth, and that it smoothly goes back to the original pose at the end, by keeping the original sitting pose in mind.
However, shimejis don't have a LOT of frames, so some jerkiness is understandable. Each transition can't be super smooth. But it can make a difference.
A lot of shimejis shortcut the walking cycle, and it's tempting to do it. Basically, you can have the head and body on one layer, and just move the arms and legs. If you want to do that, here's something that will make it look a lot better without needing a lot of extra work.
When a person walks, their head doesn't just stay stationary, and neither does their body. When the shimeji puts its foot out, move the head and body down a pixel. When it moves its foot back in to the neutral pose, move the head/body back up. Even just this slight bobbing motion can make a shimeji look less stiff while walking.
This kind of thing can apply to many different animations that the shimeji has. You may have noticed that some shimejis look stiff while climbing - that's because the only thing that moves are their arms and legs. That kind of thing looks strange (to me, anyway). Again, this can easily be changed around simply by shifting the shimeji up or down just slightly with each frame. When the shimeji scoots around, just move them a pixel to the left or right. When you're swinging the shimeji around, you can tilt their body one way or the other, instead of just having their arms and legs move.
More motion makes your shimeji feel more "alive", or at least, to me. But that doesn't necessarily mean you should redraw every single frame, even if they're just blinking. That's a lot of work, but also it's almost impossible to draw each frame exactly identically to the last one, especially if nothing is moving. If you want your shimeji to wave, and you redraw their entire body for each frame, you're probably going to see that each line isn't exactly the same when it animates. And sometimes, that can again make it feel more "alive", but other times it can look sloppy. Even with the onion skin, it's hard to do things like that perfectly.
But on the other hand, even small movements can make a big difference. For example, a walking cycle - having their hair bounce just slightly can make things look that much more real. Look at the motion they're doing, think about how your whole body would move while doing that, and move things accordingly. For example, the waving thing above - if they wave using their whole upper body, they can sway slightly from left to right, their other non-waving arm may move back and forth, their hair may move, even if their legs don't.
THE FRAMES ARE DONE!
So let's say you pushed through it all and did all your new frames. Hurray! But now your shimeji is flat colored, and you want it to be shaded. Here's where photoshop comes in.
Open up your frame in photoshop. Here's the one for Smoker falling. You'll notice she's got a bunch of layers there.
The problem with flatcoloring in flash is that it makes it very hard to separate your inks from your colors, which can be a problem when you want to shade things. But there are a few ways around it. This one (gradient shading) works for me.
Make a new layer above your original layer. Now, hold down alt, and hover on the line between layer1 and layer2. A symbol like two circles interlapping should appear. Click, and the top layer should indent above the lower one, like in the image up there.
What this does is that it makes everything on layer2 ONLY show up on layer1. This is convenient because you do not want loose pixels in your frames. They will show up when the shimeji is walking around and look bad.
Set layer2 to multiply.
Use the lasso to select the area that you want to shade. Here I've loosely selected her arm.
Set your gradient to foreground->transparent. Generally, since this layer is on multiply, you can use the base color of what you're shading. For example, here I could use the base red of Smoker's overshirt, or if I was doing her hair, the base brown. Multiply will make it darker accordingly.
The reason this layer is set to multiply is because that means that the color won't show up on your linework. Feel free to try this yourself -
Because layer2 is masked over layer1, you can select broadly like this and it won't matter - the color will ALWAYS only show up on layer1, and not on the background.
HOWEVER if layer2 is not set to multiply, when you select a dark red to shade this area with...
The color will go OVER your inks. And this is bad because as I mentioned above, shimeji does not like colored outlines and wants everything outlined in black.
Setting things to multiply, however, will only make your blacks darker. Which is acceptable.
So that's why I set layer2 to multiply. Anyway. Choose a base color, and then use the gradient tool to set in some shading on layer2. Use the lasso to select each area, and then use the right colors to shade around a bit.
Now, highlights are a bit trickier. Make a new layer and mask it over layer1 (and 2, i guess). There is no real way to make a highlight NOT go over your outlines. Setting layer3 to Screen is no good.
So basically when doing highlights, just remember to not touch the edges of anything. The highlights on Smoker's hair, or Hunter's hair, for example, never touch the outlines. But you can still get your highlights that way, you just have to watch your black lines.
Repeat until you go insane you finish every frame. VOILA!!!!
When you want to pack your shimeji up, just erase all your extra files from the img folder and put it in a rar. You want a rar because a zip file will rename the two conf files, and thus make the shimeji not work. Then throw it up somewhere and you're set!
ADVANCED EDITING
So lets say you want your shimeji to go beyond the pale, or at least want it to have a hanging frame. Welcome to the world of conf editing!
There are two files in the conf folder that are important - 動作.xml and 行動.xml.
These basically break down into
動作 - the frames that make a shimeji's animation (Movement)
行動 - when and where these animations are called (Behavior)
This part involves a bit of code wrangling, particularly japanese code if you're not using the shimeji-ee files (and I haven't really worked with those, so), so be prepared to have Google translator open A LOT. Thankfully it works pretty well with these.
I really don't know a lot about code, but I know enough to make some edits here and there. I'll start with simple edits, and go on from there.
This probably goes without saying, but you should make backups of these files before tweaking them in case you screw up.
I WANT A HANGING FRAME
Hey, who doesn't? First, you need to draw one. You can add all the new frames you want to the img folder, it doesn't care. For the sake of argument, let's name it shime47.
Once you have the frame, open up 動作.conf in notepad or whatever text editing program you want.
This all looks pretty intimidating, but it's fairly straightforward. If you want, just run the entire thing through google translator, and you'll see how it works soon enough. But basically, what you are looking for is this line of code:
<動作 名前="つままれる" 種類="組み込み" クラス="com.group_finity.mascot.action.Dragged">
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX < mascot.environment.cursor.x-50}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime9.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX < mascot.environment.cursor.x-30}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime7.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX < mascot.environment.cursor.x+30}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX < mascot.environment.cursor.x+50}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime8.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{footX >= mascot.environment.cursor.x+30}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime10.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
This is the code for when you pick up a shimeji and spin it around. You'll notice that in the center there, between 7-9 and 8-10, there is shime1. That's your standing frame, and that's why you see it when you pick it up.
All you need to do is simply replace shime1.png with shime47.png. Save the file, start your shimeji, and pick it up. Is the hanging frame there? Success!
There is another place you may want to replace shime1 with shime47.
<動作 名前="抵抗する" 種類="組み込み" クラス="com.group_finity.mascot.action.Regist">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="50" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="100" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="5" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime5.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime6.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="2" />
This is the wigglefree animation. Notice the shime1 in there? Simply replace that with shime47, and you're set!
Now as you can see here, you can replace frames in these without much hassle. Already this opens up a lot of possibilities.
WHAT ARE THOSE TIMING EDITS YOU MENTIONED??
There are a few bits of code in this that I thought were weirdly written, so I tweaked them, haha.
<動作 名前="ずりずり" 種類="移動" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime21.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="28" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime21.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime20.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime20.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-1,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime20.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="24" />
This is the tweaked crawling animation. Normally the 21 frames and 20 frames are reversed in the original code, but that looks really weird to me. This simple change will fix that.
<動作 名前="壁を登る" 種類="移動" 枠="壁">
<アニメーション 条件="#{目的地Y < mascot.anchor.y}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime13.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime13.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,-2" 長さ="4" />
<アニメーション 条件="#{目的地Y >= mascot.anchor.y}">
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime13.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,2" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime12.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime13.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,1" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime14.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,1" 長さ="4" />
Like I mentioned above, the side climbing animation didn't add up correctly. Here, I just swapped 13 and 12, thus making it go left center right instead of left right center.
These are simple changes, and not at all hard to do. And they do make things look better I think.
THIS ANIMATION IS TOO FAST!!
A fairly easy thing to fix. Let's say you want to slow down frame 38 in the spawning animation.
<動作 名前="引っこ抜く1" 種類="組み込み" クラス="com.group_finity.mascot.action.Breed"
生まれる場所X="-32" 生まれる場所Y="96" 生まれた時の行動="引っこ抜かれる">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="16" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime38.png" 基準座標="96,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime39.png" 基準座標="96,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="40" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime40.png" 基準座標="96,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="40" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime41.png" 基準座標="96,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="40" />
The tag you are looking for is 長さ="16", at the end of each called frame. That value (16, in this example) is how long a frame lasts. Notice here that 39, 40, and 41 all last 40... whatever increment of time that is, and shime38 only lasts 4. This is why you barely see shime38.
This is an easy matter of simply changing the value. Change 長さ="16" to "40" or "20" or "350" or whatever you want. You can do this with any frame in any animation to control the timing of it. Just make sure it's in quotation marks.
Usually this will fix your problem, but sometimes things will get a bit more complicated, usually if the animation is only supposed to be a set length. If this animation is hardcoded to only last 140, then it will only last 140. But you can change that as well.
The first part of the text file is filled with code like above, each calling whatever frames. You'll notice that each animation block starts with something like 動作 名前="抵抗する". This names the animation, in this example the animation is called "抵抗する". Run it through google translator, and you'll see each action has a name that's fairly straightforward. "抵抗する" means Resist, and is the name of the wigglefree animation.
Why are these actions named? Because the latter half of the file strings them together. For example, here's the code that makes up the entire swinginglegs animation.
<動作 名前="座って足をぶらぶらさせる" 種類="複合" 繰り返し="false">
<動作参照 名前="楽に座る" 長さ="10" />
<動作参照 名前="足を下ろして座る" 長さ="${100+Math.random()*100}" />
<動作参照 名前="足をぶらぶらさせる" 長さ="${500+Math.random()*100}" />
<動作参照 名前="足を下ろして座る" 長さ="${100+Math.random()*100}" />
<動作参照 名前="楽に座る" 長さ="10" />
Or when roughly translated...
[Operation name = "Let the legs hanging out sitting" type = "multipart" repeat = "false"]
[Operation name = see "sit comfortably" length = "10" /]
[Operation name = see "sit down" foot length = "$ {100 + Math.random () * 100}" /]
[Operation name = see "Let the legs hanging out" length = "$ {500 + Math.random () * 100}" /]
[Operation name = see "sit down" foot length = "$ {100 + Math.random () * 100}" /]
[Operation name = see "sit comfortably" length = "10" /]
[/ Operation]
You can see that it calls each separate action, and strings them together to make an animation. However, you can also see that each action has a set length. The last sit animation, for example, only lasts for 10.
If you tell an animation to go slower, and then it starts cutting off entirely, then this is probably your problem. Generally, this has not happened to me a lot, but it may happen to you. Use find to find the action by name, see what animation block it's a part of, and lengthen or shorten it.
Walking cycles don't seem affected by this, to my knowledge. Speaking of which...
I WANT SEPARATE RUNNING/JOGGING ANIMATIONS
This is super easy. The first couple blocks of code in the file have to do with walk cycles.
The first block is the neutral standing pose. The second block "歩く" is walking slowly. The third "走る" is running, and the fourth "猛ダッシュ" is dashing to your mouse. The dash will only show up when you call them. The run and walk show up randomly.
However, since these are conveniently already broken up for you, making new animations for these is easy. Draw your new frames (let's say, shime48, 49, and 50), and simply replace the images in the code. Adjust the timing to match what you've drawn, and you're set.
Smoker, for example, goes like so.
<動作 名前="歩く" 種類="移動" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="6" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="7" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-2,0" 長さ="5" />
<動作 名前="走る" 種類="移動" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-4,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-4,0" 長さ="2" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-4,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-4,0" 長さ="2" />
<動作 名前="猛ダッシュ" 種類="移動" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-8,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime2c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-8,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-8,0" 長さ="3" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime3c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="-8,0" 長さ="3" />
You can see that her default walk has uneven timing, since she's supposed to limp. Her dash and run however are faster, since it's less noticable when she's moving so quickly.
By replacing the images in the walk cycles, you don't have to limit yourself to using shime1 as your neutral pose. By making two new frames for when each foot is moving back/forward, you can make a walk look much more natural, and still only take four frames. But if you want more...
I WANT TO ADD NEW FRAMES TO SOMETHING!!
This is fairly easy. Find the animation you want to expand, and do some selective copy-pasting. Smoker, for example again, has her tongue flip around when she's standing.
<動作 名前="立つ" 種類="静止" 枠="地面">
<アニメーション>
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="125" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-a.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-b.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-a.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="25" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-d.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="4" />
<ポーズ 画像="/shime1t-c.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="25" />
Just copy the base bit of code (<ポーズ 画像="/shime1.png" 基準座標="64,128" 移動速度="0,0" 長さ="125" />), and paste a new line. Replace the img with your new one, and adjust the timing of it. Since this was supposed to be an idle animation of sorts, I gave her a fairly long delay on her first frame.
You can add frames to almost anything this way, but some animations work differently than others. For example, staring at the mouse won't let you add frames, I don't think. I don't get all of it, admittedly, but experiment and see what works. Most animations, like walking, climbing, crawling, sitting, can have frames added to them.
I WANT TO SEE AN ANIMATION MORE FREQUENTLY!!
A common complaint, especially when you've just drawn a bunch of frames for something and want to test them. Since Shimejis behave randomly, it can be annoying to wait for them. You can use shimeji-ee if you want to force the behavior, or you can do this.
Find the animation that you want to test. Generally, easy to do by tracking down the frames you just did. Let's say you want to test the shimeji throwing your window. That's frames 34-38. Use find or scroll til you find it.
Here, we see that the action is called "IEを持って歩く". Do a find for it. It's part of two animations, one for walking off with your window and one for running off with it.
<動作 名前="IEを右に投げる" 種類="複合" 繰り返し="false">
<動作参照 名前="ジャンプ" 目的地X="${mascot.environment.activeIE.left}" 目的地Y="${mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom+64}" />
<動作参照 名前="IEを持って落ちる" />
<動作参照 名前="IEを持って歩く" 目的地X="#{mascot.environment.workArea.right-400}" />
<動作参照 名前="IEを投げる" />
<動作参照 名前="立つ" 長さ="${50+Math.random()*50}" />
<動作参照 名前="振り向く" />
<動作参照 名前="立つ" 長さ="${50+Math.random()*50}" />
You only really need to worry about one. Copy the name of the animation, in this case "IEを右に投げる". Now open the other conf file that we haven't touched so far, 行動.conf. This file is much shorter than the other one, you'll notice. This is because it calls all the complete animations from the other file, rather than the individual frames.
<条件 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.visible}">
<行動 名前="IEの左に飛びつく" 頻度="50" 条件="#{mascot.anchor.x < mascot.environment.activeIE.left &&
Math.abs(mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom-mascot.anchor.y)
<行動 名前="IEの右に飛びつく" 頻度="50" 条件="#{mascot.anchor.x > mascot.environment.activeIE.right &&
Math.abs(mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom-mascot.anchor.y)
<行動 名前="IEを右に投げる" 頻度="20" 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom < mascot.anchor.y-64 &&
mascot.anchor.x < mascot.environment.activeIE.left}" />
<行動 名前="IEを左に投げる" 頻度="20" 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom < mascot.anchor.y-64 &&
mascot.anchor.x > mascot.environment.activeIE.right}" />
<行動 名前="走ってIEを右に投げる" 頻度="20" 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom < mascot.anchor.y-64 &&
mascot.anchor.x < mascot.environment.activeIE.left}" />
<行動 名前="走ってIEを左に投げる" 頻度="20" 条件="#{mascot.environment.activeIE.bottom < mascot.anchor.y-64 &&
mascot.anchor.x > mascot.environment.activeIE.right}" />
This may all look mystifying, but the only thing you want to worry about here is the 頻度="20" tag. That controls how frequently you see the animation. All you'd do here is find the animation you want to see, and then change 20 to, say, 500, save it, and then run your shimeji. The odds of your shimeji doing what you want to test will shoot up astronomically. Once you've tested it to your satisfaction, change it back to 20. Or whatever frequency you want.
I WANT TO MAKE A NEW ANIMATION!
This is where things start getting tricky.
If you've been following along so far, you have a basic idea of how the animations for a shimeji are put together.
First, the frames are put together and timed in an action. For example, sit comfortably.
Then further below in the same conf file, the actions are called in sequence to create a whole animation. For example, sit, sit comfortably, swing legs, sit comfortably, sit, all strung together to create an animation called "swinginglegs"
Then, in the other conf file, the full animation "swinginglegs" is called depending on the frequency and other factors, like where the shimeji is and other stuff I don't quite get.
You will need to put together these three building blocks to create your new animation. It can be easy to mess up here, but the only thing you'll essentially need to do is copy paste creatively, and have some understanding of what exactly it is you're copy pasting.
First, plan out your animation. This isn't just imagining the animation in your head, you need to break it into pieces to be called. Does any part of your animation loop? Do any parts repeat? Any loop or repeating part will need to be a separate action.
Let's look at Hunter as an example. She has two animations that related to each other - falling asleep and having a nightmare.
Of course, first you need to draw out all your frames for these.
One convenient thing about doin this is that you can write your new animation names in english, and it'll read em just fine. It can help you keep track of what you added and what was there originally.
Anyway, what you want to do is find a base animation that you can copy and gut for your own purposes. Since "sleeping" was meant to loop, I went and found the legkicking animation (since that loops) and copypasted the whole thing, from <動作 名前 to . MAKE SURE YOU GET THE WHOLE THING, THAT'S PRETTY IMPORTANT. Those closing tags are vital.
Anyway, once I copied it, I replaced the frames and changed the timing of them to my liking.
"wakeup" was meant to be a single frame, so that was easy enough. I stole the neutral standing action for that. "yawn" is another looping one, so more copypasting ahoy.
Here are the last three I added for her nightmare. Dreambubble is a single frame, nightmareflail loops, and nightmarewake plays only once. When you have an animation that's meant to play once, make sure to keep track of how long it lasts.
Now we have our building blocks. For your animation, you'll need to break up your whole thing into blocks like so. There ARE long animations, like the headspin one, that only play once, but if you want loops or whatever like so, it'll be easier to break them up into pieces.
(Actually, if your new animation just plays in a solid single block, you can skip some of this I think. But more on that in a second)
Now we need to put these blocks together. Let's scroll down the file.
Here's where it's all put together. What you need to do is find an animation block that's close to what you're trying to do (for me, I used the kicking leg one) and then change it to what you need.
NOTE HERE THAT THE ANIMATION'S NAME IS NOT THE SAME AS THE PIECES. I made this mistake at first, having a piece called nightmare and the whole thing called nightmare, and this will break your shimeji. MAKE SURE YOUR WHOLE ANIMATION HAS A UNIQUE NAME.
You can see that I have some japanese snips in here. Those basically call the sitting animation. Use find to find what sitting/standing is called, or snag it from other put-together animations down there, and plop them wherever you want. A bit of a transition can help.
The first animation has her sit, wake up (this title is a bit misleading, it's a pose where she can either be waking up or going to sleep), then she sleeps for a random period of time - ${500+Math.random()*100}. You can change 500 to another value like 30 or 12 to control it a bit further. She then wakes up, yawns, has a neutral pose for a moment, then goes back to sitting.
Again, make sure the length here matches the length designated up above. Nightmarewake was meant to play once, for example, and has two frames that add up to 60 length in total. Make sure it also lasts 60 here, otherwise it might cut off or loop.
Her nightmare starts much the same way, but you can see it gets interrupted and the new animations play. You can build off existing blocks this way.
If you have an animation that will consist of blocks like so, you need to put them together into a whole down here.
Now, let's open the other and shorter conf file, 行動.
This is where google translate is very useful, and you will probably need to run it through to have an idea of what's going on. Each segment in this file is broken up basically by when and where something is called. There are sections for when the shimeji is on the ground, on the ceiling, or on the wall, etc etc. I've detailed my troubles with the walls before, but the ground is fairly simple enough.
You need to add your new animation into this file, so the shimeji knows to call it. The frequency for these at the top is lowered to 10. This is because the block they are in is animations that play when a shimeji is called to your mouse - 100 is watching your mouse, 1 is kicking their legs, and the new ones set to 10. You can set the frequency to whatever you want. It can be kind of useful to add new stuff here though for testing since it's easy to call a shimeji to your mouse and thus trigger these.
These are things that trigger when the shimeji is on the floor, as you can tell from the bits of english at the top there. However, the new animations there are tucked into an existing block. That existing block has the original "kicking leg" animation, which is why I decided to put stuff there. If I'm correct, that block is something like a conditional... IF the shimeji is sitting, then THESE animations are available.
The ones with frequency marked 0 I think make it so sitting animations don't trigger when the shimeji is standing. I think.
This is all a matter of finding the code you want to emulate, finding where it should go, copy pasting it, and changing the frequency and name to what you specify. There's a lot about this file that I don't understand (wall climbing aaaaa), but doing this will work, so that's enough for me.
Basically, add your new code, save, and try and run your shimeji. If it doesn't appear, you broke it. Check your new code against existing code, and MAKE SURE you aren't missing a slash (Hunter got broken for like an hour because I missed a / in one line) or bit of code somewhere. Fix, try again. If the shimeji shows up, hurray! You didn't break it, but that doesn't necessarily mean the animation will play. Set the frequency up super high and wait. If it works, hurrah! You did it!
If the animation won't stop... you broke it. In a weird way I'm not sure how to explain. I've done it myself, and basically when that happens I just take out the code entirely and break it into more pieces and start again. I am really at a loss for what causes that or how to fix it, exactly.
There are more specific places you can put animations, like on top of an IE window, or something, and you can see them all listed in sections in the file, but I haven't really messed with those. I'm actually not sure if Hunter can sleep on an IE window, I didn't check. BUT EITHER WAY this will add new animations when they are wandering on the bottom of your screen. Good enough for me.
Of course, if your animation does NOT require sitting, then you don't have to put it in the sitting block. Just add it with the other standing animations.
ALSO if your new animation is a solid block of animation, which did not need to put together into pieces, I think you can actually just call it directly. The best example I can think of for this is Masada, who had two new animations called while he's standing I think...
And then these are directly called in the behavior file...
And they play perfectly fine, as far as I'm aware. :O
This is a lot of trial and error, but again the sky's the limit here. If you're willing to put in the work, you can add tons of new animations. For the one I'm currently working on, I've already done a lot of specialized tweaking just by fiddling with stuff. I've already got over 80 frames because I have a problem. I guess experience/determination will probably make this easier. :O
AND OH MY GOD THIS IS SO LONG but I think this is pretty much all I know at this point. If you have any more questions let me know, and I'll try and answer them.