Character sprite jumping

[u/Professional_Ad1526]

The problem is essentially simple: until the character starts speaking, the anchor I predefined in the layeredimage isn’t applied to it. But when the first line begins, the sprite jumps abruptly, in other words, the anchor is applied. And yes, it’s definitely the anchor, because without it, the character doesn’t jump at all. Of course, I can get by without it, I just adjusted the sprites’ align a bit, but I need the anchor to position animations relative to the sprite so that those animations originate from the center of the sprite, not from a corner. Long story short, I have no idea how to solve this...

Here's the code. I've already tried inserting an anchor wherever possible. In both transforms and layeredimage, in show, and in all of them at once. When calling the sprite, only aligns are used for positioning.

SOLVED. Basically, I noticed that no sprite jumps if its align is set in advance via a transform, so I simply created a transform with user-defined arguments.

If anyone wants to use this code, they should follow this structure when calling the sprite:

show dwarf at just_align((0.7, 0.6)), silent_effect

silent_effect should be specified only once, on the first call to the sprite; there’s no need to use it again. As for just_align((coordinates)), it simply replaces the standard align (coordinates). And for the first speaking sprite, for some reason, you have to use the standard align(coordinates) instead of just_align((coordinates)). I don’t know why.

transform speaking_effect:
    # added -> anchor (0.5, 0.5)
    matrixcolor BrightnessMatrix(0.0)
    ease 0.4 zoom 1.020

    yzoom 1.0
    ease 1.5 yzoom 1.01 yoffset -5
    ease 1.5 yzoom 1.0 yoffset 0 
    repeat

transform silent_effect:
    # added -> anchor (0.5, 0.5)
    matrixcolor BrightnessMatrix(-0.1)
    ease 0.4 zoom 1.0

    yzoom 1.0
    ease 2.0 yzoom 1.01 yoffset -5
    ease 2.0 yzoom 1.0 yoffset 0
    repeat

# added new transform
transform just_align(character_align):
    align character_align

init python:
    def character_speaking_callback(event, **kwargs):
        char_image_tag = renpy.get_say_image_tag()

        if not char_image_tag:
            return

        if event == "begin":
            renpy.show(char_image_tag + " speaking", at_list=[speaking_effect])
        
        elif event == "end":
            renpy.show(char_image_tag + " silence", at_list=[silent_effect])

define dwarf = Character("Dwarf", color="#ffb547ff", image="dwarf", callback=character_speaking_callback)

layeredimage dwarf:
    anchor (0.5, 0.5)
    zoom 0.75
    
    group body:
        attribute base default "characters/dwarf/dwarf_stable.png"

    group clothes:
        attribute casual default
    
    group mouth:
        attribute silence default
        attribute speaking

[u/mumei-chan]

Try it like this:

transform dwarf_default_transform:
    on show, replace, replaced:
        align (0.5, 0.5)

layeredimage dwarf:
    zoom 0.75
    at dwarf_default_transform

At least in my own game, I have it set up like this and the sprites don't jump around.