doom-like entity sprites

[short roost]

im trying to script doom-like sprites for entities (players, objects, etc.) that have multiple states depending on the viewer's position relative to the front of the entity
ive tried a couple times which all ended up catastrophically unsuccessful
i think the general idea is to get the vector between the player and the entity then use the vector to change the offset of a spritesheet on a billboard gui, but i have no clue how to translate this into studio
i know theres already a developer forum thingy up for this, but i still dont really fully understand
any help would be appreciated, thanks!!!

extra info:
i feel like i might need a module to do this, but im not sure. either way, ill be doing this with a lot of active objects (which means i might also need tables), so a module would probably work well

repost of the same question from studio help

[limpid mica]

Dot product 👍

actually no

just take the direction of a line between the player and entity (only on XZ plane), subtract it from the rotation of the entity, and then it should be pretty easy to assign sprites from there

holup

dont listen to me

[short roost]

i might be able to get the math stuff done myself
the issue im having right now is figuring out how to translate all of it into studio

[limpid mica]

do you not know lua?

or programming in general?

[short roost]

i know a bit but im relatively new and i dont really fully know how i can get scripts to interact in the way i want them to

ive tried just putting it all into a frame in a billboard gui in a part but i dont know how to get localscripts to do anything outside of the starterplayer folder, and it wouldnt work on a server script since i want this to be able to work with multiplayer

it would probably cause desync if i used a server script for an single player game, anyway

[worldly pike]

Do magnitude checks to measure how far away the sprites are and change them accoarding to that.

[worldly pike]

If you'd do this in a server script it would still work for multiplayer. Changing billboard guis on the server changes it for everyone.

[short roost]

the thing is that i dont want it to change for everyone

[ocean sparrow]

** You are now Level 2! **

[short roost]

if there are two players looking at a sprite from different angles, i want them to see the sprite of the angle that theyre viewing

meaning it needs to be client side

[worldly pike]

then do it on the client by just referencing the sprite. Like put all of your sprites in a folder inside workspace and reference that folder in a local script

[short roost]

hm

ill try it

[worldly pike]

👍

[short roost]

not gonna mark this as solved

more feedback from more people would still be nice

[worldly pike]

alr

[half arrow]

They’ll also have to do dot product checks

[limpid mica]

that was my first thought but dot product doesn't tell you the general side you're viewing

[half arrow]

What do you mean by general side?

[half arrow]

Your illustration doesn’t tell me anything

[worldly pike]

I only used the dot product once but i think you can just use the dot product of the enemy and check if the enemy is look at the player or not.

[limpid mica]

if you only want 2 sprites for direction yeah

[limpid mica]

the dot product of the red and blue vectors are the same as the dot product of the green and blue vectors despite pointing in completely opposite directions

you cant tell if you should use the sprite for the left or right side of the entity with just dot products

[worldly pike]

but couldn't you just lets say check if the dot product is 0.8 and then make the sprite look forward but in a slightly rotated way

like you see the back and the side of the enemy

[limpid mica]

?

it's a sprite

it only faces towards the player

which is why doom uses 8 sprites for each entity state to represent rotation

[worldly pike]

but im guessing he would use a invisible part and a billboard gui inside that invisible part.

[worldly pike]

Thus it can also not face towards the player

[limpid mica]

billboards are always facing the player

[worldly pike]

yeah thats why you change the sprite. Like you and I said

But i just mean that if the dot product is like lets say 0.8 of that enemy part and the player then you could change the sprite to look like its looking forward but in a slightly rotated way

[half arrow]

could you restate your problem? What I’m getting at is based off the players look vector, they sprite should rotate around?

Originally my thought of using dot product is wrong sorry.

I think I’ve thought of a new method that could possibly work.

First you take the lookvector of the camera and the lookvector of the root part, and you get the dot product between them, next you get the angle from the dot product using math.deg(math.acos()). Now you map the inverse of this angle onto the enemy

Also to see if the dot product is to the left or right, you should use VectorToObjectSpace to localize the unit direction of the humanoidRootPart and Camera lookvector and see if the x of the new vector is greater or less than 0

0 means that its to the right

and <0 means its to the left

[short roost]

hmmm
im not completely sure how to describe it with words
let me draw it i guess

hopefully this clarifies stuff

[half arrow]

what do you want to do with the numbers?

[short roost]

change the sprite of the entity that the player is viewing

on the client side

[short roost]

so i can achieve something like this

depending on the two vectors

which should be enough information to do what i want, but im not sure

[half arrow]

ohhh

ok, so just use dot product?

[short roost]

seems like it would work fine

but i dont know how to get localscripts to work outside of starterplayer

havent used studio for a while

[half arrow]

you can't use local scripts on the server

you have to use remote events for them to communicate