[WIP] Partisan Tactics Battles : Animations, woah

[Ben2theEdge]

I think whether the style of the portrait matches the sprite, is completely subjective. The in-game graphics are not 100 percent realistic, they are a representation of the characters that has been exaggerated to accomodate the gameplay. You could make a game like this with extremely realistic-looking characters but you would lose a lot of the readability since the details would have to be so incredibly small. So there is a clear advantage to making short stubby cute characters for the onscreen battle stuff.

With the portraits there is no such handicap; with the size they are, an artist is freed up to do whatever he wants. With all of that detail to work with, it enables the possibility of showing subtle nuances of the character; I would argue that this is the entire point of the portraits - to give us a much better idea of the character's appearance, personality, etc. So the advantages of making everyone look like cute anime clones suddenly vanishes. (A good example is Final Fantasy Tactics, a game that I love, but the portraits are worthless. Everyone looks exactly the same, even the exact same facial expression, so why bother?)

Short version: The characters on the map are more like icons of the characters. They represent only the basic facts like what kind of armor they're wearing, and some small details like hairstyle. The portraits because they are much larger can fill in details like age, personality, history, emotion, origin, pedigree, and the list goes on and on. This should be taken full advantage of IMO. They should be drawn in whatever style is best/most comfortable for making a detailed description of who that character is.

[ndchristie]

old gun and large spear




new gun, large spear, small spear.  third one needs better movement but there's 2 more frames to be inserted - i'm taking a poll as to where they belong (all attacks will be 8 frames)

essentially what i learned from the critique here is not to assume you can't, as actually, the changes to the spear frames do not really damage the gun animation or vice versa.  in fact, it more resembles this tracing of a contemporary illustration : http://www.geocities.com/ao1617/Arq1620.jpg . that realization in mind i did most of what was suggested...

included the bounding box so you can see my limitations.  we will be able to include a lot outside the character with animation....but the weapons themselves are cramped

[Conzeit]

too much weight shifting going on at the leg level, make him twist his torso some more. The short spear also needs more arm/torso movement, it's smaller but it's also lighter and it makes him freer, that should show in the animation.

the gun really needs to change a lot, looks too much like the spear. I think it should be higher and facing more frontally so it looks like he's actually aiming worth a damn.

EDIT: whoops sorry. dont really keep up with your topic.

 if you're so sparse for frames use computer tricks: squash/stretch, rotate, maybe scroll certain tiles a bit....squash/stretch is even considered one of the "12 animation principles" so there's no real shame in doing it wisely, specially for tweeners.

I think you should rework your frame sharing a bit so that each action remains with a little more personality, everything but the hammer just sucks. I'd have the hammer be the stock for all the wind ups of the rest of animations....while following the arc of a vertical sword slash.

The gun definitively should have a legitimate aiming frame or it'll just look like rubbish, the rest of the animation can be a mix of recoils from vertical sword slash and windup from the lance animation.

[ndchristie]

well it's hard to see, but the one-handed spear he rotates 180 degrees - hard to move much more than that!

i'll try raising the gun, and perhaps lengthening the aim time, but this is a regular attack, aka not aimed.  there are skills that involve aiming, but the regular attack won't (as is accurate to guns prior to 1800).

a little more personality, everything but the hammer just sucks.

can you be a little more specific on how i should change these?  and avoid vague flamewords if you don't mind - they don't help me identify the problem.  Fact is, I wouldn't change these at the moment even if they were not sharing frames, so we're really talking a different language so far.

How exactly would i use the hammer spin for other weapons?  I'm not sure I follow.




I'm *thinking* (correct me if i'm wrong) that you're talking about making the attacks a bit more acrobatic?  just guessing from the suggestion that every character do a 360 before every attack.  thing is, that's not how weapons are used.  this musket for instance, famous for it's kick, the firing is almost still http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJMbxZ1k9NQ&feature=related . 

[Conzeit]

Actobatic? not really, no. Sorry about the flame words.

What I was trying to say is that the hammer has a completely diferent range of movement than the rest, while the gun and lance barely seem like slight variations of eachother, as similar as the diferent sizes of lance animations.

I was suggesting that to make sure that no actions reasemble eachother as much as the gun and spear do, you should design it so that they all share more of an overall arch of movement, while the most attention grabbing frames (perhaps those with the biggest delay) of each one of them are unique to each action.

What bugs me really is that the shooting really seems like the lance animation only that instead of sticking it in, it spouts fire. You obviously know this is not right since you have refference for the exact musket you want to show, and the refference clearly shows the torso facing the target....and the musket animation you have just doesnt seem like proper shooting position at all.

The differentiation between the lance lengths seems too fuzzy to me right now, the way I would go about it is the smaller the lance, the more arm and torso freedom you see in the action, while the bigger it gets the better the thrust is and the more time it takes to build up...this way the differentiation is put in the basic look in the anim rather than the nuances.

[ndchristie]

just 2 edits for clarity, - timing in the gun and color-coding in the small spear - no real work done yet.

the torso direction issue i'll try to resolve, but I'm struggling - it would be a pain in the ass to give everyone a 100% unique frame for the gun, so until I figure out what else it can be used for, I need to keep it using shared frames.  If i can find reasons it will probably be split off from this current set, simply due to the level of criticism...if i play the cards right I may be able to do handguns, cannon-firing, and rifles with the slightly more squared torso...but i need to think about it a lot.  For the record though the torso is not the way I have it (perpendicular), but it's "clearly" not towards the target either http://dalecot.com/Musket%20EC170607.jpg .  Honestly though if anyone here fires guns and has real knowledge (rather than photo knowledge), I'm trying to remember what they told us in boyscouts but it's foggy.....

What concerns me is that there's actually very little in common between these animations, in terms of the movements, at least to my eyes...the small spear is completely different from the large spear (it's one-handed, he turns 180 degrees....there's no "nuance" about that??) So I just don't know what to do with that critique.  I'm racking my brain but I'm just not knowing what to do or say.

[Conzeit]

uhm I took a bit closer look at each of the lance/spike/spear/whatever they are attacks...and you say they are all completely different...but I only see a difference in arm placement.

Are you working with pre-set torso parts? it seems to me like you want each attack to look different because you make a different arm placement, and I just noticed it has different footing...but quite honestly it doesnt show, it doesnt have an effect on the timing or the flow of movement in the animation. however you have drawn each separate animation, they still follow the same exact flow.

seems to me, like your only problem isnt the limited amount of parts you have...but that you arent really using what little variety you CAN use to make things SEEM varied.

I looked at them a bit more closely and I can see the differences between the spear attacks is their arm placement, and in the short one the footing, but you still go trough all the same stages in all of them. you have him stand on one leg, step forward with his lance completely horizontal and then take a step back. not even the timing is too different....if you absolutely have to make them all go trough the same motions atleast make it so the timing is noticeably different...have him stab quick with the short one, and take a lot more time to draw the weapon back in the bigger the weapon gets

I just have to ask, do thes shape of these attacks have any effect on the collision detection of your game? because if there isnt a technical reason for him to go trough the exact same motion...maybe you should have him attack downwards with his spear in one, with the other one upwards...and with the long one forwards...who cares?

You need to go a little crazy, I think you should stop being so accurate, and just put anything in there that will stand out....I mean the fact you're re using so much stuff already makes it bland to go and make it bland by choice.

I'm going to insist again on implementing some kind of software trick to stretch/rotate/scroll independant parts of the sprites....it helped ragnarok characters be lively, it should help you too.

[LoTekK]

I'm going to insist again on implementing some kind of software trick to stretch/rotate/scroll independant parts of the sprites....it helped ragnarok characters be lively, it should help you too.

Except that RO's sprites were much larger, were they not? I can't imagine scaling and rotation on sprite parts that consist of only a handful of pixels would be very pretty. Probably downright ugly, in fact.

Adarias, for the musket, the firing stance right now isn't very convincing at all. While you're not typically supposed to have your body square to the target (at least for long arms), the typical shooting stance for a rifle has your body bladed (let's just say 45 degrees, give or take). They way your sprite is holding the musket wouldn't be able to deal with recoil of any sort.

[Conzeit]

uh, it's not the same by any means but it's not imposible at all, it'd only mean you rotate/stretch by 2 pixels instead of 20 also keep in mind I'm not saying make "Ragnarok: The Adrias rpoff" I'm just saying maybe if he needs to tween something it could be done trough rotating/stretching/scrolling instead of actual frames, given that he's so sparse for them.

You can look at castlevania for pixeled stuff that gets animated only by being rotated trough software. a

[Helm]

Oh I remember that skeleton dog what was it from SotN? Can you post it again? I don't know where other people stand on this one but I find that sort of animation, without EXTENSIVE reworking after it to look pretty attrocious.



I did this piece a year ago or something for a pay gig and it was based on rotating and reworking, so yes, it can work in small resolutions but you don't achieve much you wouldn't without rotating besides keeping the lengths of the limbs to correct aspects.

If Ndchristie is not going to tween at all for these animations (and for time constraint reasons I guess he will not) then he should not rotate stuff, I think. Just make sure the keyframes he does use are as good as he can get them.