[WIP] Partisan Tactics Battles : Animations, woah

[ndchristie]

Following this critique is going to take a lot of adjusting for me, in that I only know how to animate what people do - there's ways to attack with a spear and a thousand other ways not to, but for some reason I can only wrap my mind around the first.  Why do they both have a similar thrust?  Because that thrust kills men!  And that's all my imagination has room for atm.

Honestly i'm not sure what I'm doing technically - this seems to be proving that shared frames is a total bust - but software stuff isn't going to happen.  I don't have the skill sets let alone the desire to work in that manner.  Besides - as you pointed out - this is not an issue of frames so much as it is an issue of imagination.  Truth be told, I think that these are some of my best movements to date, so you can see how I'm struggling with the idea that you can't even see the differences .  Feels kinda like running a mile under 7:14 (personal best) during olympic tryouts .

So, this realization that animation is more than just placing limbs in the right spot is something between a mental overload and a crossing point (can you have an epiphany without being successful?), I'm going to table these again I think, and give this another long, hard thought.  Maybe play a few games.  Thanks for the advice, I'll be back around when I have an idea of how to take it . 

These are still high-frame-count animations, which are unusual in tactics situations, so perhaps when I come back i'll try 2-3 frame unique animations (not counting idle).  Idle-Setup-Attack-Continue or Recover if needed, just to get on with the form.  It's not going to help the timing but I don't think i can take on timing and form and all at the same time at this point - my head's exploding with just part of any one of those - Forgive me!

[Conzeit]

lmao....that's so cool of you to accept that!
You're good at animating, but...I dont know it just seems so weird that you dont want to put personality in it when my problem is I put so much that it tends to cripple the animation XD I think you could still go trough the correct way of using a spear, but show varying degrees of force and accuracy

I've been playing this Genesis game lately...I think it's pretty good at making low-count animations seem good, it's called ComixZone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azIZwsCGjW0

There's a Gameboy one called Star Ocean Blue, that one's really good at it too (that game is just a great example of hi-restrictions hi-quality all around)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eezy56wofc&feature=related too bad it's in japanese

Helm: I thought of posting it but I cant remember what it was called or where it was! it's actually a sprite from DraculaX that I re-animated trough only rotation and scrolling single pixels.

[ndchristie]

ok, so this is not necessarily a rough draft for partisan, and has no meat on it yet, but this is just a short animation of a simple slash, trying to get some OK primary motion for it in short frames.

[Beoran]

Juts something to help you and he other people working on your game: anyone who is making a histoical style game with combat should read this:

http://www.aemma.org/onlineResources/silver/silverHome.htm

The paradoxes of defense,and his instructions on using weapons, by George Silver, who, l ready in his time, just before 1600, had to combat the many misunderstandings there are about fighting with a hand to hand weapon. Read it, and pass it on to your programmers, I think he's correct about most of what he is saying.

Of the plethora of swords you have in concept, most is useless. If you want to go for a more realistic angle, read up more about historic weapons too.