Lost Fortress - of Dwarves and alien slugs

[CFKaligula]

1 anticipation frame wouldn't hurt
I know you hear a lot of game devs talking about how actions need to be responsive and that there is no time for anticipations, actions need to happen immediately, but that just isn't true. You will always have enough time for anticipation and recovery frames.

[Skaz]

There is already one frame of anticipation, thing is if I add more, the motion will begin really late after the character is already in the air. I'll try to address the issue anyway, might require so cheating :p

[eishiya]

One way to "cheat" is to have the character automatically get down a bit whenever they're near a ledge and not moving, since you can usually expect the player to climb/jump there.
That'll also give the player a hint that they can jump up in that location, since chances are if the player is standing still near a ledge, they're not sure where to go. If the player is constantly moving, they won't see that little alternate-idle pose, but if they're in constant motion, they probably won't notice a lack of anticipation anyway.

[Skaz]

Automatic anticipation is not a possibility, the character will jump, a lot, and not always where I can predict it. It would also be quite complicated, not sure I can afford it. I was mostly thinking of a trick, to shift the sprite a little under the real hitbox, so it looks like the character is still on the ground, when he's not :p

[MysteryMeat]

Personally? I'd try it without the anticipation frames. It's very much a real problem to gameplay if the jumps take longer than immediately to start unless you're working a VERY specific formula.

Splice together the run and jump over a longer canvas to see how it flows!

[eishiya]

That'll make the game feel unresponsive just the same as not starting to jump until some frames after the input, even if it catches up within a couple of frames. I think an animation with poor/no wind-up is the better alternative in most cases. That said, if you have the time for it, try it and see what playtesters think!

[Skaz]

Yeah you were right, I stuck with the single anticipation to give the feeling of brutal extension, and I'll stick to it. Here is a gif of the in game implementation of most of the animations so far.



The idle breathing animation is very much a placeholder, I did it quickly to test the code more than anything.

Here is the isolated jump and land animation:


Keeping the arms extended may look a little odd, I didn't do it this way at first, but I realised the top corner of the player hitbox had to be easily distinguishable, since the character can grab ledges. I lost time on this, should have figured it out before doing the work. Also, I didn't made a skeletal animation first and lost time, again. Stick to your rules man!

What do you think? Next animation is going to be the garbing ledges reception, must feel pretty hard and brutal, a little desperate.

[MysteryMeat]

If you're going for desperate or brutal, I'd reccomend checking some of the animations in the tomb raider series for that. I remember them being pretty scrambly!
Alternatively have one of her hands slip before she can get up!

[eishiya]

Having the arms extended doesn't look weird to me at all, at least in context.
I quite like the climbing-up animation and camera movement, I'll have to figure out how to do that in my own code soon.

Seconding MM's suggestion of having one of the arms slip. Even the arm that doesn't slip could have a bit of a downward slide until the other arm gets back on the ledge (if the resolution allows such subtle motion, anyway).

[MysteryMeat]

If you have troubles with that kind of subtle motion there's always subpixeling techniques, but note that it might increase colorcount if you're going for any particular palette goals.