   Animating many diffrent items along the same path in 2d
  Couldn't really think of a descriptive title =pAnyway, I'm current making a 2d RPG and was wondering what to do about attacking using diffrent weapons. Every time you attack an animation is played (with the player swinging the weapons, or shooting, whatever) but many diffrent weapons can be swaped in place of the one you already have. Which leads me to my problem, It would be inefficient, to say the least, to make the same repetitive animations with diffrent images of weapons in all 4 directions. So how could I get around making 16+ frames of animation for every single weapon. I have been thinking about just using a specific set of operations (rotations, translations, things of that nature) on the weapon when the player attacks so it LOOKS like animation but i'm not sure if this is the route to go, especially because if the weapon and player got out of sync it would look sloppy.Using OpenGL, C++thanks [smile]EDIT: o wow, what the odds of me posting such a similar post to the one RIGHT by it. O well i guess ill leave this up unless its gets requested to deleteEDIT... again: actually my problem deals more with 2d and not so much with skeletal animation   
  bumpThis problem has undoubtably been solved on many occasions.... anyone?   ;  I'd make it so there is one set of animations for each weapon type, though there is no graphical indication of a weapon. The weapon is instead a 4 frame texture on it's own (up, down, left and right) which is pasted into hardcoded (or if you decide to go with a "2d skeletal point system" like I did once) slots on the screen when the player attacks. This saves you a lot of sprite design time :)   