Cave Robot: Glowy Gem and Rock Worm

[jams0988]

Hey guys! Starting up my little platformer (again, for real this time, definitely.), and I made a quick mockup of it yesterday, along with getting basic controls and collision detection and such down. Did the walking and jumping animations too, and will probably post them later. Anyway, here's the cave.

Sorry it's at 3x. I blew it up before saving, so I lost the original mockup. (I still have most of the pieces, though.)

Looking for critique on the robot's design and the cave floor, mostly, along with any general thoughts you might have.
The main thing I'm thinking of is what I'm going to do with the robot. I kind of want him facing forward all the time, because I think people are going to have a hard time bonding with a little robot unless they're staring into his (her?) big robot eye (into his/her robot soul). The problem I'm having now is that I want the player to be able to shoot in any direction at any time, but sticking a turret onto the robot that spins all the way around its body makes no sense, and would look pretty weird, I think. The solution I thought up was "ah, robo-mind bullets!"

So, I don't know. I'll be working on more tiles for now. Any thoughts in the meantime would be great.

Oh, and is there any easy and quick way to turn my robot's walking and jumping animations into gifs for you guys? (On top of the cave background, I mean, not just in a white void as they are now.) If not, I'll just fraps some gameplay later tonight.

[jams0988]

Hey again, everybody. Worked on the cave some more...I think it's an improvement. I'm working at a much lower resolution now, though, and I'm having a huge amount of trouble fitting my robot into so few pixels. I've been working on just the robot for five hours now, and I'm getting nowhere. Thoughts on the cave are welcome, but I really need help on the robot; I must have thrown out twenty drawings so far. I'm not sure this design will even read at such a low resolution. =(
I took a hint from Larwick's rustbug, and got rid of two of the robot's legs; I wanted it to have a gun rotating around it in the beginning, but it doesn't make any sense with six legs - and it almost definitely wouldn't read at this resolution.

Meant to be viewed at 300%-400% size.

Completely stuck. Please help!

Edit: Maybe I'd be better off just making the character human-shaped? Even if I can make the robot barely readable at this resolution, will it even look good? I can probably get a much better silhouette by just making the character twice as tall...my head hurts. Six hours of experimenting and redrawing, with absolutely nothing to show for it, hahah!

[Wanyo]

I like the idea of a robot not necessarily being humanoid and despite the sound of your frustration, I think you're on the right course.

Have you thought of making the bot more segmented to keep him from looking so flat? This was quick but for an idea for what I mean:



Also you might get some good reference from the tank designs for Blaster Master, they have a similar low profile that you're going for.

[jams0988]

Thanks a lot for the reply, Wanyo. I really appreciate it, especially considering you went out of your way to edit the sprite.
I like the look of your edit a lot; like you said, the different design helps make the sprite look less flat/more interesting, especially at such a small scale.
I'd like to keep the sprite facing forward if possible, though, since it's going to be a twin stick shooter. I was going to just have the cannon rotate around the body, with a laser sight coming from the eye.

I actually thought about the Blaster Master tank, too, hahah. A classic "character." =)

I have a half day at work tomorrow, so I'll play around with the sprite a bit. Thanks again for the advice. I'll try different things to make the sprite look less empty and flat!
Edit: Actually, your robot is adorable. Mind if I take the idea and run with it a little? A caterpillar-bot enemy with 3-5 segments bobbing around with the cables jiggling underneath would make for a cool animation, I think!

[Wanyo]

No problem at all, always looking to help and that's what this forum is here for right? That said of course run with the idea, sometimes I find it's just nice to have another look at it that can spread out your ideas or create something new.

I was a bit uncertain how you wanted the robot set up as far as where he was facing, could always add depth by making a front facing "head" or something the separate out so he doesn't just look like a single mass. Also could go further with the Blaster Master style movement and have the head/turret switch sides when you point left or right.

[jams0988]

Worked a little today. Made a little slug guy, and a glowing gem thing. Both still wip, so looking for crits. I have no idea how to change the speed of the gifs Graphics Gale outputs, though. These are both meant to be played a bit faster than they're showing up in firefox... Both mean to be viewed 3x-4x.



Graphics Gale also changes my output colors sometimes...I don't know why it's punching holes through my water!
Any help with Graphics Gale or the sprites themselves appreciated.

Edit: Actually, there's holes in the little fireball thing too...can GraphicsGale not convert alpha transparency to Gif format? That's probably why. In game, the water will be transparent, as will the orb as it fades out.

[PixelPiledriver]

gif only supports 1 alpha color.
To convert your animation to gif without it changing you have to merge the images in each frame.

[jams0988]

Ah, awesome. Thanks, PPD! I'll do that with my next edit, then. Any way to change the timing of my entire gif quickly? I had to set each frame's delay separately, which is a little cumbersome.
Edit: Actually, did you have your blog link anywhere? There were a ton of cool tips on there, hahah! I lost the link when I reformatted a few months back, which is a shame.

[PixelPiledriver]

Here's how to do it:


png:


gif:


gif merged:


You have to do this for each frame.
This will obviously destroy layers so use Window-> Duplicate before hand.

My GG blog is http://ppdaniatlas.blogspot.com/
But I've been on hiatus for quite some time, not much new stuff.
I don't think I got to cover working with frames but I can scrap that together for you in a few.


Open the Frame Properties window to edit data for individual or all frames:


Select All Frames and set the delay to slow:


Or fast:

These are both meant to be played a bit faster than they're showing up in firefox

The fastest gif speed supported by browsers is 2 delays: