Layered Sprites And Anims

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I'm not into modding, but I believe you should check magic status effects and their eye candies. It might be possible to use the imagery of the desired equipment as an eye candy, and use a dummy effect associated with the eye candy when the character equips/unequips the item. The eye candies move with the character, no need to create complicated scripts for that. Though I have no idea whether it is possible to determine where the character is facing (some frequently-running script as part of the magic effect perhaps?). Also, there is the issue of the character laying on the ground out cold. Or different sized races and genders.