OK, this would be 502 frames of animation. (and this is just a rough estimate, as you might want to have more elaborate attack and/ or magic or dying anims)
Lying down = 2 frame per direction = 16 frames
Standing = 2 frame per direction = 16 frames (we want idle)
Walking = 8 frames per direction = 64 frames
Running = 8 frames per direction = 64 frames
Ready for battle (Idle battle stance) = 4 frames per direction = 32 frames
Attack (Sweeping, left to right, or other way, doesent matter) = 6 frames per direction = 48 frames
Attack (Cleaving, hands behind head holding weapon, cleave down head to toe on enemy) = 6 frames per direction = 48 frames
Attack (Thrusting, spear, thrust forward) = 6 frame per direction = 48 frames
Casting magic 1 = 6 frames per direction = 48 frames
Casting magic 2 = 6 frames per direction = 48 frames (We meant that casting magic needed two animations, we appologise for the missunderstanding.)
Dying = 6 frames per direction = 48 frames
480 frames in total.Also after this you still have to have someone who has to put clothes on them, I guess you want them as sprite overlays, but they still have to be animated and then you are quickly somewhere around 100000 frames of animation. YAY!
Ofcourse, but that is something both I (Johanna) and our current artists can do without problems.
The problem is that none of us are able to draw prope character 'blueprints', genderless, featureless characters.
If worst come to worst, we'll just have to keep trying to do it ourselves, although any help is greatly appreciated.
My suggestion would be, get someone who is good in 3d and then make hipoly 3d models of those 14 chars which can then be animated and rendered.
So you will end up with something like Diablo in terms of looks. This would be much faster, but still a mayor job.
We have already tried, using a testmodel with an absurd amount of polygons, it was still impossible to use, all features go away when scaled to the size we want. Diablo uses models a lot larger than the ones we are aiming for. But it's a good idea, and we havent abandoned it.
I have no clue why there are so many indie developers doing (or trying to do) mmorpgs. mmorpgs are about as complicated as it gets in almost every aspect.
Also i guess at some point you need creatures, as just having 14 races and no creatures to hunt, monsters to fight or big dragons to slay, would be a bit boring.
We could go indepth on how we solve the monster problem, and other aspects of the engine if you want, but we dont see how it's relevant to this topic, perhaps in a PM if you're interessted?
I wish you all the best, but as far as i know there is not one single mmorpg which has been developed without proper funding. And that's not because nobody tried. They take huge teams several years and a massive amount of funding to get done.
I guess we'll be the first then. At the moment the team is about 20+ people, we all work without any pay.
Also, there are MMORPGs developed without any funding at all, Mana dreams is just one.
As a coder I (Johanna) come across the usual: "Hi im making the bestest game evva!" posts quite often, and I'm sure you people have your share of them as well.
The FieldView project has been in developement for over a year already. We're all aware of the problems and hardship that comes with the genre.
Up until just a few days ago we werent even sure if we would have a server to run it on. Thanks to a generous sponsor, we now have that.
Do not for a second think this is a fast project, meant to put something out there in a months time. On the contrary, the entire dev. team feels we should take our time and release something we are happy with and want, instead of "going by the flow" and rlease something we would never play. Either because it's filled with bugs, the graphics suck, the music sucks, the sound fx sucks, etc.
The only reason the spriter would get payd is because we lack a spriter. It's not because spriting is harder than any other aspect of the game. I'm (Johanna) not saying it's easy, I'm saying it's just as hard as the rest.
And don't think just because something is sprites makes it easier to do than 3d. With this amount of animation it is not.
We dont.
Anyway, good luck, just wanted to put things into perspective.
Thanks, and perspective is always good.
For now I'd suggest trying to get someone to do just one or two races for now and leave it open ended for others later.
Ofcourse there was never any intention of having a one man army. We're sorry if the first post came across as such.
If you only want to do the humans, feel free to do so.
A price I usually go with is 2.50 per frame as I know many other artists charge by the frame and you have a lot of frames there.
Even if the frame consist of nothing more than a filled in outline?
How about
~30cents per frame, or USD150 per spritesheet? (480 frames)
If you're looking for quality over quantity I'd seriously consider cutting down the amount of frames.
We're looking for quality and quantity, something which is quite possible.
I know lots of 2d games that don't use even close to that many frames and are still very beautiful games.
Ofcourse, it's just not what we want.
By the way are you planning on having interchangeable clothes for each race or is it static?
Yes, read up.
An additional note: the sprites would have no color limits, you would be able to use the full spectrum of
24bit colors, without problems.
If you think ~30cents per frame, or USD150 per spritesheet is way to little for character outlines, please tell. Don't rant.
Regards,
C. Strand
J. Pihl
R. A. Juel Mønnike