Phaser + Spine

[vancura]

Hi,

 

There's a few topics here on Phaser + Spine, but all of them are somewhat old, so let me resurrect.

 

There's a new nice animation package with Phaser runtime: Creature (forum topic here). It looks really great, but $90 for basic version is a thing one needs to consider. I already own Spine, but it's not supported by Phaser anymore. Pixi.js now has a new Spine plugin in works, so it should be much more supported.

 

I know Phaser is going to replace Pixi.js core with its own, so is there any residual hope to have Spine support (plus mesh deformations, if possible)? If not, I would need to consider buying Creature (which obviously I am hesitating to due to its price; I would rather stick to Spine).

 

Thanks,
V.

[markus.n]

Information about Spine, or skeleton animations in general, would indeed be crucial. I've tried to do my research thoroughly, there are many threads and questions about it, but almost no answers. We'd really need to know at least what's currently possible and what's not.

So: Is there ANY, no matter how hacky way to get Spine animations working in Phaser? Please anyone, share your examples if you've managed to get it working even poorly or partially! The Spine support should apparently be in Pixi, but here Rich said that it's not supported by Phaser anyway. Also there's this Pixi-Spine library which you mentioned, could it be implented in Phaser, and if, how? Even more, there is this mysterious page in Phaser documentation. I tried to get that linked example working by attaching those Pixi js files, but with no luck.

 

Another chance, we got this DragonBones example working very nicely with Phaser. However, I've never encountered a product worse documented than DragonBones, Flash development isn't an option for us, and the most convenient option (Spine->DragonBones conversion) doesn't work. When trying to open Spine files in DragonBones, there are error messages in Chinese, which according to Google Translate say "Open file failed". If it worked, it would be by far the best option after direct Spine support, since we have a functioning Spine animation available and Phaser working with DragonBones. If anyone has managed to do it, I would appreciate to heavens a description how on earth it was done. The DragonBones front page says it supports Spine, but the forums say that it hasn't supported it since early 2014...

 

Creature unfortunately also isn't an option for us, since it's currently not available for Windows. At the moment we're looking into MightyEditor (video and links about it here), hoping to get skeleton-style animations from there if nothing else succeeds.

[rsadwick]

I took a look at the documentation you referenced.  It's from Phaser 2.2.2 however when I loaded it, the Spine piece of Pixi wasn't included in the build, even though the spine runtime is in the repo.  That piece of documentation may have been auto generated.

 

The best way to get it working is to write a Phaser plugin that uses the Spine.js runtime and follow what the Pixi spine plugin is doing with it.

[markus.n]

I'm happy to report that MightyEditor was able to produce a skeleton-style animation as was necessary, and it's now working nicely. Still looking forward to having the Spine plugin available one day, maybe in Phaser 3? This is a brilliant solution for the time being anyway.

[Flake]

I'm also currently trying to get Spline animations running in a html5 game, so i'll re-resurrect the thread.

Any Tips on getting the animations running in Phaser are appreciated.

 

@Markus: Are you developing the entire game in Mighty now, or did you only animate in the Editor, and then export the animations for use in another Engine?

Cheers

[markus.n]

@Flake, yeah this is what we came up with MightyEditor, works generally very nice! https://github.com/villeilkkala/charCreator

However, unfortunately it is quite heavy performance-wise even with one character, and especially more than one characters at once. On desktops it's fine, but on portable devices not so much. In the end we're making compromises and reverting to normal atlas animations now.

If you haven't noticed, Phaser 3 will support Creature natively though!

[kestrelm]

@markus:

 

Hello,

 

I am the dev of Creature here. Quite a bit of work has gone into Creature recently in terms of feature additions.

The Windows version is also out:

http://creature.kestrelmoon.com/

 

Windows Trailer:

 

You can see some examples of Creature animations running in Phaser right here.

 

Phaser Demos

Check this out:

http://www.kestrelmoon.com/creature/demo_raptor.html

 

And this:

http://www.kestrelmoon.com/creature/demo_ice_demon.html

 

Other Demos

In terms of what it can achieve, here it is running in other engines:

 

 

 

I believe you should find these animations high quality enough for most purposes

The animations were all authored with Creature using its procedural physics and animation motor system. That is how most of the motion is achieved.

 

Let me know of you have any questions.

 

Cheers!

[pahund]

There's a free plugin out that adds Spine support to Phaser, looks good, has anyone tried this?

http://www.html5gamedevs.com/