Ghost Trail Script

[THEkatinamicrowave]

been trying to troubleshoot this songs folder script for like two hours and I can't figure out why the offsets are still way off. Someone please help me if you know what's the matter with this

Script (in songs/):

function onNoteHit(event:NoteHitEvent) {
    var char = event.character;
    var animMap:Array<String> = ["singLEFT", "singDOWN", "singUP", "singRIGHT"];
    var animName:String;

    for (node in char.xml.elements()) {
        var name = node.get("name"); // Get the "name" attribute
        if (name == animMap[event.direction]) 
            animName = Std.string(node.get("anim"));
    }
    
    if (!event.note.isSustainNote) createGhost(char, animName);
}

function createGhost(character:Character, animName:String) {
    var trail = new FunkinSprite(character.x, character.y);
    trail.frames = character.frames;
    trail.addAnim('idle', animName, 1);
    trail.playAnim('idle');
    trail.flipX = character.flipX;
    trail.antialiasing = character.antialiasing;
    trail.color = character.iconColor;
    trail.scale.set(character.scale.x, character.scale.y);
    trail.offset.set(character.offset.x, character.offset.y);
    trail.updateHitbox();
    trail.alpha = 0.5;
    insert(members.indexOf(character), trail);

    FlxTween.tween(trail, { alpha: 0 }, 0.5, { onComplete: () -> trail.destroy() });
}

[r6915ee]

"Ghost trials" are more typically called afterimages, if you're thinking of the ones such as in games like Pizza Tower or a majority of the Sonic the Hedgehog games.

As for the script, are you sure you're getting the offset after the singing animation has actually played? From my understanding, onNoteHit is typically dispatched before you actually play the singing animation, so there's a chance that you may need to use the appropriate methods in onPlayerHit and its respective opponent counterpart instead:

strumLine.onHit.dispatch(event); // PlayState.hx, line 1721
scripts.event("onNoteHit", event);

if (!event.cancelled) {
	if (!note.isSustainNote) {
		if (event.countScore) songScore += event.score;
		if (event.accuracy != null) {
			accuracyPressedNotes++;
			totalAccuracyAmount += event.accuracy;
			updateRating();
		}
		if (event.countAsCombo) combo++;

		if (event.showRating || (event.showRating == null && event.player))
		{
			displayCombo(event);
			if (event.displayRating)
				displayRating(event.rating, event);
			ratingNum += 1;
		}
	}

	if (strumLine != null) strumLine.addHealth(event.healthGain);

	if (!event.animCancelled)
		for(char in event.characters)
			if (char != null)
				char.playSingAnim(event.direction, event.animSuffix, SING, event.forceAnim);

[ItsLJcool]

Uh chat there is an entire class that does this for you

https://api.haxeflixel.com/flixel/addons/effects/FlxTrail.html

It's been a while since I've used it but also like I believe it does the same thing as doing it manually but better?

[r6915ee]

I'm now having an issue with the fact that the trails themselves have all the same animations as the character, meaning that they aren't actually being visible, since they're behind the character.

In that case, you may want to set framesEnabled on your initialized FlxTrail to false, as that boolean is responsible for making the frames update in a trail.

[THEkatinamicrowave]

I turned off framesEnabled and now this is a problem 😭
I think that it's a problem with the trails changing offset as the sprite does. Is there a way to disable this too? If there is I imagine it's a variable that's inherited from a parent class

2025-07-16.20-29-39.mp4

[r6915ee]

Ah, I assumed that you were making a new trail every note. In that case, you could try to use the resetTrail method on FlxTrail each note press.

[THEkatinamicrowave]

yeah I am making a new trail every note, it's just that yeah they're following the sprite's offsets when I don't want/need them to

[r6915ee]

I mean that you make a new trail by directly setting it to an entirely new instance through the constructor.