This week, after researching how to manipulate the frame rate, I looked into how to implement an animation into the game that is a series of individual frames. This is specifically for the thruster fire, created last week, which is just a set of frames that need to be switched between on a loop. Most other elements in the game will likely not need animating, except for moving around the screen, but if they do then I will likely use a similar methods.
It is also possible that I may need to utilise basic rigging for certain modules, if a part needs to move from side to side, or other basic movements. Rigging is where a developer can add limbs to a sprite and make specific parts of the sprite move; a good example would be the legs and arms on a person sprite, where rigging can allow them to move as individual parts. However, I do not have any complex sprites in my game and should not need to do much rigging at all.
To make Unity flip between frames, when animating a sprite like the thruster fire, I can use a built in system called sprite swap. I will need to label each frame accordingly and I can then add them to a sprite resolver component, which stores the frames so that they are ready to be swapped between. After this I need to add a custom script and, in the Update() function, force the sprite resolver to change the frame being shown to the next one the list after a certain amount of time has passed.
I found the following resources really useful in explaining how to do this: