AuthorTopic: Help with beach water and waves tiles...  (Read 4418 times)

Offline doomiest

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Help with beach water and waves tiles...

on: January 31, 2015, 03:13:28 am


Hello!

I'm doing these tiles to use in a beach in my game. I think I need help getting this right... What do you guys think of it, does it seems ok? I'm having trouble making the wave at the border of the sand feel right...

Inspiration is from this image - it's from where I took the colors, mainly got the photo and played around...
« Last Edit: January 31, 2015, 03:35:39 am by doomiest »

Offline Iceaxe

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Re: Help with beach water and waves tiles...

Reply #1 on: February 08, 2015, 04:46:16 pm
Animating water across tiles can be very difficult but is not impossible. Take a look at games like pokemon ruby/sapphire:



Try and allow enough frames for the eye to notice the movement of the water especially with the waves. You will notice also the water in the middle of tiles are moving in a wave-like motion but don't have to. The tiled water could follow a more Battle for Wesnoth like motion and still have waves on the shores:




Your tiles are looking decent, i would advise adding more frames to the animation of the water as the flow is disrupted. Make sure that the last frame and first frame always connect perfectly in looped animations and that the distance the water moves per frame is consistent across all frames. With the waves, again more frames and maybe avoid having the edge of the sand moving heaps. There needs to be an obvious pendulum motion of waves coming and going from the shore.

Offline doomiest

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Re: Help with beach water and waves tiles...

Reply #2 on: February 08, 2015, 08:08:51 pm
Ok, so I made my tiles without thinking further and your observations are useful. I'm going to split the gif of the pokemon tile - looks more what I'm trying to achieve.



So pokemon ruby has 6 frames to waves and the sea.

 ______-|.__  - frame[0] - Sea is at mid height. The waves get a little height at a side. 
 ___-|--.___  - frame[1] - Sea is a little up it's mid height. The waves get higher and got to middle. Beach border loses one pixel for the sea.
 __\---..___  - frame[2] - Waves collapses, and crashes on themselves and also at the beach.
 _-...._____  - frame[3] - Waves have little height, and inertia keep it moving up at the beach.
 ...________  - frame[4] - Water escapes back to the sea, beach border shows up, but it's wet. Waves are also flat, but flowing with inertia.
 ________...  - frame[5] - Waves flat and going, the waves have also retract and the beach shows up more. It's also dry/not so much wet..

I made a little ascii art to show my perception because it's seems my English knowledge is not  able to describe waves... I will sketch and comeback when I have results - it might take a while...




« Last Edit: February 08, 2015, 08:10:40 pm by doomiest »

Offline Iceaxe

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Re: Help with beach water and waves tiles...

Reply #3 on: February 08, 2015, 11:28:48 pm
Yeah that makes sense. I would advise, especially starting out with this to make sure the animation is consistent, i.e. The waves move the same distance and timing each frame. Once you have the base animation down then you can tweak those distances. Also, as far as I remember pokemon has more than just six frames where it has a couple of almost static water for a gap between waves. If you dont leave the gap then the waves will look as though they are constantly moving.