AuthorTopic: Gun, muzzle flash and bullet hit animations  (Read 3917 times)

Offline Geofied

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Gun, muzzle flash and bullet hit animations

on: June 24, 2015, 06:21:09 am
Hi all, 

Me and a buddy have been making a game for a few months now, it's a rouge like shoot em up with flares from Nuclear Throne and Rotmg.

So far,  I've been able to do most of the sprites fairly well,  but now I've come to the animations and I'm starting to hit a brick wall,  animations have always been my weakest part, and specifically, the ones I need help with now.

I've got a few guns that I want to have a muzzle flash animation.  that just flickers on and off when the gun is shot.  However,  from the pictures, you can see that they are far from anything acceptable.  I also am not sure what to do since some guns shoot faster than others.  For the fast ones, should I just have a 1 or 2 frame animation,  where as the slower guns could have a 5 or 6 frame animation?  I'm also thinking that part of the problem is because there is now there is no 'glow' from the flash, but I played around with that a little bit and couldn't end up with anything that I liked, so I scraped it.




Lastly

I'm also wanting to have a 'bullet hit' animation for when a bullet collides with any kind of object.  I think this one is a little better than the previous ones,  but I for sure want it to be better than what it is now.


Let me know what you guys think I should do, Thanks.

Offline The B.O.B.

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Re: Gun, muzzle flash and bullet hit animations

Reply #1 on: June 24, 2015, 04:27:38 pm
So far,  I've been able to do most of the sprites fairly well,  but now I've come to the animations and I'm starting to hit a brick wall,  animations have always been my weakest part, and specifically, the ones I need help with now.

I've got a few guns that I want to have a muzzle flash animation.  that just flickers on and off when the gun is shot.  However,  from the pictures, you can see that they are far from anything acceptable.  I also am not sure what to do since some guns shoot faster than others.  For the fast ones, should I just have a 1 or 2 frame animation,  where as the slower guns could have a 5 or 6 frame animation?  I'm also thinking that part of the problem is because there is now there is no 'glow' from the flash, but I played around with that a little bit and couldn't end up with anything that I liked, so I scraped it.




   Hey Geofied. Saw these and thought they don't look so bad as an animation, at least for a video game asset. Honestly, it depends on the whole size and style of the rest of the game and it's corresponding assets(animations, characters, objects, etc.) I say this because animating for games is just SLIGHTLY different than animating for other things, like cartoons, shows, commercials, or movies. Not by much, though.
   I say this because somethings don't have to mimic physics and other things in an EXACT manner. Some times accentuating certain things can be enough to translate what you're trying to say, in terms of animation(I suppose that is an actual concept in any field of animation, now that I think about it.). In this case, the muzzle flash should be kept simple. I don't really think you need the oranges or yellows in it, as a simple white flash would suffice. Again, with gun shots it's quick and explosive, but with less discharge and matter burning up inside the muzzle blast, than an actual explosion. So just like lightning, there's less color to it. Not to mention, the amount of frames in the animation will be so small, the player probably won't even notice it, in video game context. Less colors mean less work for you, if you're going to be doing it with multiple weapons.
   As an example, here's a gun goon I did for a Batman game a while ago. When you see it play, you'll notice the muzzle flash is probably larger than an actual flash, but that's fine because keeping it realistic would dull down the action of what is happening. Also, the quick flashes light up the character as well, so there is some interaction between the two in some way(which is why, I'm hesitant to critique any further unless I see how the gun effects correspond with your other character assets). Any hoo, here it is:



   You can see, the flash is really only like a 2-3 quick flicker frame animation. It's large, but doesn't drown the point. I suppose for larger, more powerful weapons(like rocket launchers/grenades/bazookas, etc.), you may have to focus more on the effects, but nothing much for a rifle or hand gun muzzle flash. So I guess in short, what I'm trying to say is, don't frustrate yourself over a simple effect like muzzle flash; just keep it simple and to the point and you'll be fine.

   If you still feel it feels too simple with such a short amount of colors and effects, here's a good sample by Pawige(from his gallery, on pixeljoint.com), with similar concepts that I mentioned earlier:



*Bonus! Here's a small MGS Snake sprite I did even further back when, with Snake firing shots with a bit of muzzle flash as well(much less flashlier):




Good luck on your game, though!!
 :)
« Last Edit: June 26, 2015, 02:09:05 pm by The B.O.B. »
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