Jumping Sprites?

[Azuyre]

I've been working on some graphics for a platform game for a while now and I've somewhat gotten the hang of doing walking sprites, but I realized recently that I don't really have a clue on how to go about making jumping sprites. It seemed like a simple enough thing to do when I first thought about it, and it very well might be, but since I started trying to make them I've had a bit of trouble.

I looked around for tutorials on the subject and couldn't seem to find any, the only times I saw it mentioned was when someone was going for something more realistic with a buildup and a landing for an actual animation rather then a game. When it comes to most of the older platformers they usually were pretty limited when it came to jumping sprites, a lot of the big platformers only used a few, usually one for jumping and one for falling, or sometimes even just one rotated fours times for a flip.


Lately I've been looking at X's jumping from Mega Man X, which seems like a good smooth example, it has about 7 sprites for jumping, it animates through sprites 1 and 2 and stops at 3 while rising, then when you begin to fall it goes through 4 and stops at 5 and when you hit the ground it plays 6 and 7 and then its back to your idle pose. I'm not sure if I should aim for something similar of possibly go with a bit less then that. My walking animation is 8 frames so I should probably go with something smooth to match it but I'm not exactly sure how many frames is enough and how many ends up being too much.

Besides length I'm also having a bit of trouble figuring out the positions the character should go through during the jump, the rest of the team I'm on and myself have been trying to mimic different jumps from games to get some ideas but for the most part the jumping done in platformers is pretty unrealistic since the character has to be able to quickly jump and land without stopping.


TL;DR: I'm basically wondering how to determine the amount of frames in the jump animation and how to decide on jumping positions that are realistic but don't slow down the game's flow with a long buildup or landing. If anyone knows of any tutorials or topics that discuss this it would be a great help.

Thanks in advance to anyone that replies.

[Conzeit]

platformer games jumps are indeed quite abstract.

What I would worry about the most is wether the character will shift directions and how much while in jumping.

You say you've read several tutorials  that describe actual mechanics of jumping (I would be interested in reading those if you can pass them on :p ) which has a lot of build up in taking impulse, this is what often gets reduced the most in platformers because we expect them to react quickly.

Look at the original  prince of persia, tomb raider, flashback for examples that sacrified gameplay for proper buildup.

Most normal platformer games just have the character fake impulse by raising either their legs or their arms or both, then trasition to heroic rising pose, then transition to heroic falling pose and a very quick crouching moment as they land (again to keep gameplay flowing).

This is pretty much all that is "required" but try to bring real mechanics of jumping if your platformer doesnt have too much wild shifting of directions, and try to accomodate the posing to your character´s particular personality. Other than this if you want more realism you can have different jumps for jumping backwards, jumping vertically and jumping forwards.

http://www.zweifuss.ca/
you can check this page with SF3 sprites (click on a character, go to movement 1 and check jump u, jump uf, jump ub) to see how different a jump can be depending on each character's personality. This is also an example of the more involved aproach of doing a different jump for backwards forwards and vertical jumping. Do not feel required to have as many frames as these jumps, SF3 is famous for having crazy smooth animation

[Azuyre]

platformer games jumps are indeed quite abstract.

What I would worry about the most is wether the character will shift directions and how much while in jumping.

You say you've read several tutorials  that describe actual mechanics of jumping (I would be interested in reading those if you can pass them on :p ) which has a lot of build up in taking impulse, this is what often gets reduced the most in platformers because we expect them to react quickly.

Look at the original  prince of persia, tomb raider, flashback for examples that sacrified gameplay for proper buildup.

I may have misworded part of what I said, I didn't come across any tutorials, I just happened to notice a few short mentions of realistic jumping in unrelated topics, nothing exactly worthwhile though.

At the moment I'm trying to figure out the jumping for a characters that's generally similar to Mega Man in gameplay, though I have a total of 8 characters that I need to figure out. For a few of them I'm planning something along the lines of the flips found in Contra and Metroid though so those should be generally a bit easier.

I don't think I've played Flashback before but I have seen a few people mention it around here before. I have played the old Prince of Persia though, I remember seeing an interesting show on tv a long time back with the developer talking about how he recorded his brother acting out the jumps and such in person before making sprites out of it, they even showed a few of the recorded scenes.

Most normal platformer games just have the character fake impulse by raising either their legs or their arms or both, then trasition to heroic rising pose, then transition to heroic falling pose and a very quick crouching moment as they land (again to keep gameplay flowing).

This is pretty much all that is "required" but try to bring real mechanics of jumping if your platformer doesnt have too much wild shifting of directions, and try to accomodate the posing to your character´s particular personality. Other than this if you want more realism you can have different jumps for jumping backwards, jumping vertically and jumping forwards.

Those are some very helpful tips. Thanks!

Giving a character a more realistic jumping style might be interesting but it might be hard to balance out that character with others that have normal "game" style jumping, it's something to think about though. I'm generally going for a classic platformer with some ideas from a lot of the big ones like Mario and Mega Man.

I actually just tried a game recently that has some nice looking somewhat more realistic looking jump animations, the character has a vertical jump sprite and a horizontal one and it works pretty well. When you jump it uses just one rising sprite but at the height of the jump it transitions into a long animation for the fall, a lot of the time you don't see the full falling animation but as you fall further you see more and it kinda makes you feel like its a much bigger fall for the character. If you're interested the game can be found here, i'm a big fan of the graphics in general, they look great.

http://www.zweifuss.ca/q/q.htm
you can check this page with SF3 sprites (click on a character, go to movement 1 and check jump u, jump uf, jump ub) to see how different a jump can be depending on each character's personality. This is also an example of the more involved aproach of doing a different jump for backwards forwards and vertical jumping. Do not feel required to have as many frames as these jumps, SF3 is famous for having crazy smooth animation

That is an awesome site! That should definitely help out a lot, lately I've been playing Smash Bros in training mode with the speed at its lowest and watching how different characters jump and move to get some ideas, having something similar to that on the computer is a big help. Do you know if there's a feature on the site to watch the animations at a slower speed at all?

[Conzeit]

EDIT: ack, I meant to just link you to the main SF3 page there, not directly to Q's =/ sorry.

eh, I was about to link you to a tool to watch gifs online frame by frame made by a pixelation regular, but then I found it was offline. This is the topic where it was originaly posted maybe expressing to him that there's still some interest in the tool may get him to release the tool for download or put it back up?

right now, I can only reccomend that you watch the gifs online and if you need to analyze a specific one you download it and watch it in your prefered pixelart editing software. Graphics Gale allows you to watch at several different speeds or frame by frame.

oh Konjak's Iconoclasts. The guy used to be a pixelation regular :p. that is pretty much just shifting arms and legs a bit, although the vertical and forward jump are two diferent animations.

see, if you're worried about obstructing gameplay you just need to keep the taking off and the landing fast, you can do as little or as much as you want with the rest. Just keep in mind that your poses allow your character to execute whatever actions he must do on air (slash, shoot, whatever) and try to make it fit his personality.

You should just do something bare bones and post it online for critique...too much analysis can cripple you, the more you watch the more qualities you'll want your animation to have and some qualities are incompatible with eachother, so you might want to jump into action before you're expecting too much out of yourself...believe me, I'm prone to over-analysis and this happens to me very easily if I dont watch myself :p

[rikfuzz]

Yeah, as said you can't have the anticipation section of a normal jump animation in a game, but I do use a 'landing' animation in the game I'm working on - but it's 'interruptable' (Only plays the first frame if you keep on walking etc).  More effective, is a little dust cloud, I have a small one when you jump and a few different fx for landing (depending on fall height). 

[Azuyre]

Sorry I forgot to reply earlier, I really appreciate the help you guys! I'm working on some stuff right now so when I have something concrete I'll probably post it.

Out of curiosity, why'd you edit out the example from your post Rikfuzz?

Edit: I posted some of the stuff I've been working on, I figured it might be better to start a different topic since this one is in the wrong section for asking for critique and such. I made the first two jumping sprites a while back and the third one was made yesterday.

[Carnivac]

Yeah, as said you can't have the anticipation section of a normal jump animation in a game, but I do use a 'landing' animation in the game I'm working on - but it's 'interruptable' (Only plays the first frame if you keep on walking etc).  More effective, is a little dust cloud, I have a small one when you jump and a few different fx for landing (depending on fall height).

I often reuse the character's 'crouch' frame quickly after a land in addition to a bit of dust cloud.  Sometimes I use the crouch before the jump too (again very quickly so you still jump almost instantly) especially if the manual actual action of crouching then leads onto to a higher jump as seen in some games.

[PypeBros]

You say you've read several tutorials  that describe actual mechanics of jumping (...) which has a lot of build up in taking impulse, this is what often gets reduced the most in platformers because we expect them to react quickly.

I'd name "Fantasia" on Genesis as the example of a platformer game with "realistic" jump, and it is truly a nightmare to play, because everything that involves a *timed jump* won't work.

Look at the original  prince of persia, tomb raider, flashback for examples that sacrified gameplay for proper buildup.

But none of these are platformer games. They are mostly action games (shooter for tomb raider, but I haven't played TR a lot compared to PoP and FB) with some platforming action. I don't think I've ever encountered something as "hop from one moving platform to the next one" as you'd see in platformers (Mario, Sonic, Megaman, etc.)
PoP and FB even do have more controlled animations, but they also feature a grid-ruled world where you never step by less than one tile, so your input is strongly discretised (vs. Mario where you could stand anywhere on a block).

"jump straight vertically" in those games is never used e.g. to avoid getting hit. It's a way to trigger something or to climb up, and jumping forward is delayed by the character moving first to the edge of the current tile anyway, so you input it in advance and know it will be correctly timed with the gameplay.

Most normal platformer games just have the character fake impulse by raising either their legs or their arms or both, then trasition to heroic rising pose, then transition to heroic falling pose and a very quick crouching moment as they land (again to keep gameplay flowing).

Yup. Direct translation of user input on the controller into avatar action is a key element of both immersion in the game's world and intuitiveness of controls.

If your character couldn't afford getting the "super-power" of jumping with no impulse, think about making him jump to a lower height, but raising legs higher (like a 110 metres hurdles runner) as your default jump. He needs no impulse but still could leap over a goomba.

[Helm]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRVm4davuf8 I don't know, Fantasia's jumping lag doesn't seem that bad. What is it? 0.3 seconds or something? Many modern 3d twitch-based games have longer that that and it's not due to a stable animation needing to play before the character jumps every time but due to latency introduced by the code/hardware.

[rikfuzz]

It does look a little bit frustrating.  Mainly because all momentum stops dead before you jump and when you land.  But yeah, maybe you can get away with a very quick anticipation - it doesn't really seem to be improving the fluidity in this example though. 

[PypeBros]

http://youtu.be/5I7pukuy8sQ?t=15m25s is the reaction of the player to that over-animated jumps (and other issues with the game, I do admit). Note that in this game, jumping on ennemies is the primary way to defeat them, and leaping over them is the primary way to avoid them (as one would expect from a platformer).

Many modern 3d twitch-based games have longer that that

.
I'd say it is a reasonable delay if the action isn't required to avoid contact with ennemies. I wouldn't mind such a reaction time in Contra, for instance.
If I had to jump half a second before it's required so that the eyetoy can detect the move (I'm thinking at the kind of "you're on the adventure river, jump to grab bonuses and bend to steer your raft, here) and make my avatar jump timely, then the gameplay is (imho) just flawed, and the game will look heavy and sluggish. Definitely not a virtual-reality experience.

That may still be okay if it's "never seen before" (or allows to play against a distant friend), but to be honest, it's the very reason why I'd avoid most games on (old, button-based) mobile phones (including PoP ports) because the character becomes impossible to control and you need to over-compensate that by learning the whole level where quick reading and dexterity should have been enough to get out of nasty situations. Such a device is no match against a good ol' gameboy with 1/30th reaction time, imho, no matter the resolution/color depth and similar things.

And definitely, introducing it artificially for the sake of "realism" in a world that is made up anyway (strength of the character, ability to recover from severe injuries, etc) is mostly misunderstanding the core gameplay of platformers.

[Helm]

I agree it's no good when the main method of evasion and attack is all jumps and I know how much in love most players are with instant response to their keypresses but then again games like Flashback and Dark Souls are my favourite and there's a degreee of strategy and forethought to the commands you give to the player. I would not be adverse to a platform game where there's no air-control, for example (Ghouls N' Ghosts comes to mind) and I'm not fundamentally against a wind-up jump animation. It's a matter of game design. The original poster should describe what sort of game they mean to make and then the solutions to his jumping issue can be informed of that.

[Ymedron]

As a small note, as I glanced over briefly the thread:
Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus use the anticipation brilliantly for their game. However, it's not a platformer so it's not necessarily relevant.
Edit: Let me be more precise: It's not megaman-style platformer. Sorry.
Delayed jumps allow for an extremely scary stressful time when you are sneaking, running away and trying to avoid getting caught. It also makes your mindset while playing different - you like to plan jumps and be careful about how you go about it. However, it has a different jump while running that is far less delayed, so it lets you have your cake and eat it too in a sense. Still, the running jumps (esp. when chased as is often the case) need some practice.

[Helm]

Flashback operates on the same merits. Plus, several frames from its turnning and jumping animations (and climbing upwards) are invincibility frames and necessary to learn to play the game on a high level. Flashback is very fondly remembered but not very fondly *played* at such level, so there's merit to both sides of the argument, i.e. you can make a platformer with animation priority but don't expect most people to learn to play it well.

[PypeBros]

Flashback operates on the same merits. Plus, several frames from its turnning and jumping animations (and climbing upwards) are invincibility frames and necessary to learn to play the game on a high level.

Clever to make it possible, but a clear violation of "form-fits-function" that makes the game learnable without assistance from reverse engineers or slow-motion capture, imvho.

[Helm]

Well I figured it out just by playing it, so...

When an enemy suits at you at such a deterministic game such as Flashback and miraculously you don't get hit because you were in the middle of your turning animation, you ask yourself "is this game glitchy, or is there some game rule I've yet to realise?" and you go by there.

PypeBros, in general you seem very certain when you talk about game design and I don't know if that's helpful. There's ways to make counterintuitive concepts work in videogames if one really wants to. If the person that started this thread wants proper jump anticipation for their platformer, I am certain they can achieve it. It won't be loved by everybody, but it can belong in a good game design, I would bet on that.

[tim]

Agreed.
I always preferred games with delayed response, no air control, and better jumping anticipation, animation & feeling.

Today, nothing has changed, and there is still two ways of designing a game. It's called "body awareness", and some people prefer FPS with instant response like Quake, UT, L4D, COD, where you feel like a floating camera, usually you don't see your feet and the ironsight is extremely fast, and some others prefer FPS with body awareness, slower ironsight, slower turn speed, progressive acceleration, games like Killzone, Arma, Mirror's Edge, etc.

So basically it's a question of game design. Is your game fast-paced, and does it relies on jumping all the time, with short reaction times and a great landing precision ? If yes, if your jumps need to be precise, then go for a free jump mechanic, allow air control, and let the player jump instantly and land exactly the pixel he needs to. The animation is purely graphical, it's not tied to the gameplay. This is typical Japanese game design. This is like Mario, Sonic, Megaman, Devil May Cry or even Uncharted. If not, then prefer a predefined jump, with anticipation, that need to timed and planned, where animation & gameplay are really linked. This is typical occidental game design. This is like Flashback, Abe's Odyssee, or the old Tomb Raiders.

Make your choice.

[Azuyre]

Oh wow, I hadn't realized everyone was replying, thanks for all your thoughts you guys!

So, at the moment the plan is to have the characters in the game have instant jumping similar to Mario or Mega Man, though their in-air controls may vary a bit. Delayed jumping like Prince of Persia and Flasback can be pretty interesting but it probably wouldn't fit well in this game. The delay in Fantasia doesn't seem too bad at all though, it could work really well for a bigger character to help make them feel just a bit heavier then the rest of the characters, there's a total of 10 characters in the game and two of them are somewhat bigger characters so I think I'll talk with some other people on the team about the idea of giving those two very slightly delayed jumps like in Fantasia. Besides that though the main plan is instant jumping.

The main thing I'm trying to figure out is the amount of frames I should use, I'm currently using 8 frame walk cycles so I'm trying to decide what would be a good average number of frames to use for the jumping to make it match. I've been thinking that 3 for rising and 3 for falling plus inbetweens when necessary should work pretty well.

I also like the idea Carnivac mentioned of using the crouching sprite during the landing, it seems like it could work pretty well.

[PypeBros]

PypeBros, in general you seem very certain when you talk about game design and I don't know if that's helpful.

Thank you for that remark. I am indeed a coding person more than an artist and I've devoted significant time to study game design over the last years, both through the Critical Gaming blog and through historical reviews made in retro-gaming press. I'm far from being a guru, but I noted how many times I did myself screw a game's design by ignoring some fundamental rules.

I guess it wouldn't hurt, though, if I toned down my comments a little bit and spice them with "imho" and "afaik" as I'd do for pixel art. You suddenly made it obvious to me, and that's why you're thanked

There's ways to make counterintuitive concepts work in videogames if one really wants to. If the person that started this thread wants proper jump anticipation for their platformer, I am certain they can achieve it. It won't be loved by everybody, but it can belong in a good game design, I would bet on that.

You're right. Breaking form-fits-function can bring interesting mixup. Breaking controller's intuitiveness and direct control may bring something that gets further away from a game and closer to a simulation (space invader vs lunar lander coming to mind). Yet, much as in (drawing) art, I think that it's important to realise that some rules guide how people "read" games (compared e.g. to perspective rules) and to make the violation of one rule a design choice that you're fully aware of (like e.g. an Escher trompe-l'oeil picture). Breaking too many rules at once, or not realising that you're doing so is something I'd definitely warn people about (please excuse the habbits taken during 10 years of teaching students on coding, here).

I'd sure love to develop, but that would be fully of-topic ... likely in a future blog post.

[PypeBros]

random thought coming up this morning: on a jump with anticipation, it would make sense that releasing the "JUMP" button would cancel the anticipation animation, possibly at the expense of reduced jump height. That would be direct, intuitive and dynamic.

[Azuyre]

random thought coming up this morning: on a jump with anticipation, it would make sense that releasing the "JUMP" button would cancel the anticipation animation, possibly at the expense of reduced jump height. That would be direct, intuitive and dynamic.

That sounds like it would be pretty interesting, I'm not sure I can think of a game that's done something like that before.

[Kasumi]

I don't think it'd be very intuitive. In most games you release the button while actually in the air to cut your jump short, so I would hold the button down during the anticipation (so that I could release it late in the air to cut my jump short) and always be punished with max anticipation unless I read about how it handled its jumps. It's not even something I'd figure out through normal gameplay.

The Smash Bros. series is the closest to what you're suggesting that I've seen. Each character has an "anticipation animation" of a certain length that always plays completely. If you let go of the button before the anticipation animation has finished playing, you get a shorter jump. I could easily see it just cutting the animation short as well. There are only two jump heights  for each character, and so the extra anticipation is sort of useless after button release. (except maybe for timing)

This works, and I'm used to it in Smash Bros., but again it's not intuitive. Very few casual players seem to know about this, again unless someone told them. (which is the only reason I know that's what happens in Smash Bros.)

[PypeBros]

I don't think it'd be very intuitive. In most games you release the button while actually in the air to cut your jump short,

Yes, and that's why I suggested "release to cancel the anticipation and get an immediate small jump" rather than "jump when button is released and use amount of time spent with button pressed while on the ground to define jump height" (that last one is very indirectl although equally dynamic).

so I would hold the button down during the anticipation (so that I could release it late in the air to cut my jump short) and always be punished with max anticipation unless I read about how it handled its jumps. It's not even something I'd figure out through normal gameplay.

I'd have hoped that "release before anticipation is complete" would be the intuitive extension of that mid-air button release. That would only work fine when non-anticipated jumps allow the player to hop over a small obstacle on the ground, like a rat or a rolling hazard. If forms of the hazard suggests that you'll be able to avoid it with just quickly lifting your feet (rather than trying to gain height), then a quick tap could be a nice complement to the "anticipated jump to grab that branch and climb up that tree.

Again, I wouldn't recommend "my" cancel approach for any platformer, but rather for action games where jumps are a secondary move required to explore other parts of the environment (thus usually anticipated, and performed after the environment was made safe enough), and where the designer wish to extend the use of that JUMP button to offer some counter moves.

The Smash Bros. series is the closest to what you're suggesting that I've seen. Each character has an "anticipation animation" of a certain length that always plays completely. If you let go of the button before the anticipation animation has finished playing, you get a shorter jump.

Not surprised her: Cancels are something that is involved in many fighter games, as their core gameplay lies in "more delay => stronger blow at the expense of longer exposition to opponent's blows".