Stomper sprites.

[Bollie]

These are the stomper sprites for a game:

The second one is from when it shakes and goes down on to the player. After a lot of tries, i can never get it to look right. Any advice?

[eishiya]

Can you show some context so that people can see how it works in the game?

If I'm imagining it right, I think the problems might be that
1. It looks rather flat, and therefore lacks weight. Maybe make it so that we can see part of its side or its top (or bottom), depending on the game's view/perspective style, to make it clear that it's a thick, heavy block,
2. It's a bit of a boring, generic shape, and communicates nothing about how it works or why it's there. Why not make it a trapezoid, since only one part of it needs to be big and flat to stomp, and the rest is just there to provide weight and a way to connect it to whatever mechanism launches it? Maybe add some visual indication of how it's put together in-world, like hooks for chains, belts, etc. You could also add some indications of what it's done in the past - is there dried blood on it, or maybe it's chipped from hitting some past adventurer's magic armour? You currently have chips all over the place, and as a result they don't tell any kind of story, and so they don't look very interesting.

[Bollie]

In game it looks like this:

I can't really make it looks thicker, because of the perspective of the game.
And i can't make it trapezoid, cause the player needs to be able to grab the top of it.
I'll think about some chain mechanisms, to put in the background, maybe.

[yaomon17]

You can add depth by just throwing more shapes on top of it.



I went a got carried away a bit but I think it gets some of the point across.

[Bollie]

Added a bit of depth and an animation before it goes down:

Should i make a chain mechanism or should it be just magic?

[Rydin]

Chain mechanism would be more impressive to be honest. 

[eishiya]

I also think that some visible mechanism would look cooler. Magic can work, but more often than not all it does is fail to give the player any interesting information about the setting. If you go with a mechanism, you can probably make a scarier stomper - have it get a little faster as it falls, as if it's gravity pulling it down. That'll help sell its weight too, if you're careful with its acceleration (heavy objects have a lot of inertia!). You might even be able to do that in-engine, depending on how you have the stompers set up. That might make stompers at different heights feel different without much extra work, but it might make balancing levels a bit more difficult if timing is an issue.

As for adding depth, I think you're actually selling this perspective short. Sure, you can't see the sides of objects that are perfectly aligned to the camera, but who said they have to be? What if the block's mechanism is imperfect and one side is released earlier? Or, for the sake of clearer visuals during the critical part of the stomper's "attack", what if it falls perfectly straight, but wobbles/tips while being lifted back up by the chains, giving us a glimpse of its other sides (e.g. top and bottom)? It would give your world much more depth to have objects that aren't perfectly aligned to the camera, especially when it doesn't sacrifice gameplay clarity.


This is off-topic, but I like that your dynamic light is pixel-perfect and that it's got some flicker to it. It looks really nice and doesn't feel "lazy" like these effects often do.

[Bollie]

Added the chains:

Still don't know how would i go about moving it so that you can see the sides.

[eishiya]

Would it be possible to add some indications of how the chains are attached to the stomper, and to the ceiling? I think that would make it feel much more grounded in the game's world. You could also add some bits flying up when it hits.

As for the animation to show its sides, I meant something like this, but perhaps a less extreme (this example is exaggerated to show what I mean) and with more frames for a smoother rotation:

You can apply the same idea to a vertical wobble (pitch backwards/forwards) or even have it wobble along multiple axes. If you wobble it vertically, you may even be able to avoid making the wobble frames go so much outside of its hitbox.

While making this, I noticed just how boring the stomper's silhouette is. You didn't think about its sides while designing it, from the look of it. They're completely flat xP I made the sides have bits that stick out in my rotated versions, but I did not change the original/middle frame. I recommend adding some parts that stick out.

[Bollie]

Thank you all for the good advice! I will finish this at a later date