Factorio Forums

Hi!
I really need outside help to create a simple mod that would replace the sprite of the engineer. There are no problems with sprites (and their parameters like "shift_by_pixel" e.t.c.) and they are almost ready. The problem lies in the replacement itself, i.e. in the code.
What I want:
- This is a "standalone" mod, it does not involve the use of a "character manager". Lightness is a priority, and in general it is more for personal use.
- Simplicity.

What I have already: "date" and "character_animation". The last one is a copy of the standard file, just trying to make it work for start. The first one states the following:

local animations = require("character-animations")
local character = data.raw["character"]["character"]
local characteranimations = animations
character.icon = "__ALGI__/graphics/icons/entity/character.png"

Yes, I was able to successfully replace the engineer icon. I did not understand how to replace animations.
Will be glad of any help, grateful in advance!

Similar to how you changed the icon, you can write to character.animations. However according to the docs it takes an array of animations https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/pro ... animations.
So assuming animations is in a valid CharacterArmorAnimation format, you can do character.animations = {animations} to make it an array with one element. If you want to keep existing animations for different armors on top of your animation, that's a tiny bit more complex.

Osmo wrote: Sat Dec 27, 2025 2:16 pm Similar to how you changed the icon, you can write to character.animations. However according to the docs it takes an array of animations https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/pro ... animations.
So assuming animations is in a valid CharacterArmorAnimation format, you can do character.animations = {animations} to make it an array with one element. If you want to keep existing animations for different armors on top of your animation, that's a tiny bit more complex.

Thanks for reply. I tried this and failed. Also I tried approach with BLMs, but not succeed either.
Game gives an error: "Error while loading entity prototype "character" (character): Key "idle_with_gun" not found in property tree at ROOT.character.character.animations[0]"

But there is no "idle_with_gun" in the default animations file. It's driving me insane.

Nota bene: If I edit "character-animations.lua" directly, it responds correctly - I can change paths, parameters of the sprite and animation itself (speed, scale, e.t.c.). It's OK method. But I want make it all beautifully, you know? Make it right way, as the modders do.

It is defined in base/prototypes/entity/entities.lua on line 759. And it uses the fields from character-animations.lua, but the fields are named differently