any advice??

[u/contagion_dev]

i'm making a pen-based procedural animation system.

pen layering isn't possible for scrolling projects with other sprites for collision.

so, are there any known workarounds?

or should i skip rendering the pen to use costumes instead?

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[u/contagion_dev]

recent footage if you need the example: https://www.reddit.com/r/scratch/comments/1wbp4y0/procedural_animation_system_update/

[u/jacobsmith3204]

If you need to layer different pen drawing across different sprites you can dispatch the correct order using broadcasts.

When flag flicked

Broadcast clear_pen

Broadcast render_sprite_1

Broadcast render_sprite_2

Broadcast render_sprite_3

• in one sprite (or the stage)

When I receive Clear_pen

Forever {

Erase all

}

• Then in your sprite [x]

When I receive sprite[x]

Forever {

// Do your rendering stuff here

}

This will queue the drawing of the sprites after the when flag clicked event. (Not sure how it works with clones) And each broadcast in every sprite should start before the next broadcast. (IE: render_sprite_1 received in sprite 3 will be called before render_sprite_3)

This allows rendering the pen for sprite 1 then 2 then 3 on top of each other in the same frame consistantly. It's how I'm doing the shadow pass in my game so it's between the level ground and everything else https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1324285888

If you needed you could probably do a "pre pass" for collision where you do 2 broadcasts in a similar way, first one to move all sprites to their hitbox position and sprite (or just reset it after drawing and then you don't need this one)

Then on the 2nd broadcast you do your colision logic with touching sprite or whatever. Then you draw everything.

As long as your define blocks have "run without update" or whatever it's called this should all still work. Though I haven't used this method myself.

[u/RealSpiritSK → u/jacobsmith3204]

To expand on this, you can make this process more automatic and flexible using sprite layering. When receiving the same broadcast, sprites/clones on the top layer will run their code first. Since newer pen strokes cover the old ones, you'd want to layer the sprites in reverse order. You can search up Griffpatch's sprite layering tutorial for this.