My game allows for something along the lines of turn based combat where the players are stationary. I dont allow diagonal movement in the game either so players wouldn't normally even be able to get their dir to a diagonal state without it being set by a proc.

There are various visual effects, prompts, etc that position themselves around the player based on their dir.

I would like to be able to turn my player's icon to a different directional state in certain situations without impacting those already established functions.

Like if a player was fighting say... 3 enemies at once and was facing EAST during the combat to start with and the opponents are facing WEST. I would want the player to face NORTHEAST to face the top opponents when they're acting, face EAST to face the middle opponent, and face SOUTHEAST to face the bottom opponent.

But changing the player's dir to match those directions would throw off the positioning of a number of different game elements.

Well, I was trying to avoid that if possible, that's going to involve a massive amount of recoding for a relatively minor visual.

I guess once I get that done then, the next question would be... is there a way to return the number of directions a particular icon state has? Like... if its a 1 4 or 8 direction state?

I allow players to use custom icons and if they dont have the states in their icon, I dont want the game to try and change the direction.