Bitten by the sidescroller bug...

[ptoing]

Much better. You still have issues with the transparency tho. Hm, idea. Couldn't you render stuff twice? once render the image without alpha or whatever, and then render a 2nd pass where the model or particles are fully white and the background is black or other way round and then use that as alpha mask.

[Howard Day]

Well, ptoing, the actual rendered frames exported from MAX are fine. The only transparent issues I'm having are in regards to showing you fine folks the animated results of my work...a minor annoyance when it comes down to it.
So - first pass on the firing animation:

Thoughts?

[ptoing]

Shot looking good. For the rotors I would probably render them seperatly and have them be 50% or so transparent in game on top of the sprite, I think that would look more effective.

[CrazyMLC]

Ahhh, the rotors make much more sense now.

I think it would look much better if the hydrolic cylinder was holding the gun in place, so the awkward recoil that I see doesn't happen, and the bee just swings back a bit. I'm also thinking a smaller 'caliber' should be shot from the swarms of bees, maybe more machine gun style?

[Zoggles]

I haven't actually commented here, but have been lurking and watching the development. I seriously love the style you have got going on here particularly you mechanised enemies.

The Bumblebot: I love the overall composition and especially the design. Nice powerful sting that beast has. As for CrazyMLC's comment about the smaller caliber.. I think that would best be left to a Waspbot cousin of this one. The rotors still have slight readability issues though.. I had to look at all the various images of it to fully appreciate them. Are both rotors spinning the same direction? Just wondering if making one clockwise the other anti-clockwise would help or hinder.

The Deathbot: Beautiful movement - especially the 'taunt' animation. The only thing that I find awkward is the huge amount of flash on the hull. It seems rather excessive for the size of gun mounted on the top.  While it might give a great effect when you only have the one enemy (like you did at the time) I can't help but feel this 'huge' flash will diminish the fear induced by potentially bigger weaponry on later enemies. In fact, the guns do seem smaller than the cannon on the bumblebot yet the kick and flash are much stronger.

Buildings/Scenery: The almost toy-like appearance works so well and adds so much charm. I can almost imagine you posted scenes as a panoramic 360° scene from walking around the top one such large building.

-Z-

[Ultimaodin]

Okay I want to say how simply amazing this is!

for the bug bot I'd suggest making the wings thinner but longer. This should then improve the readability, not to mention it usually gives off a false perseptions that te blades spin faster. (due to the fact that the outer circle of the blades have a father distance to travel in the same period of time.

A for the firing, I think it would be better off with some sort of mini gun or another mini-projectile that doesn't have such a large single shot recoil. (that woul make keeping flight rather difficult.)

Plus the variety of weaponry will make the enemies more unique.

Ok so you got a spider and bee/wasp. Now if only you had a centipede.


Seriously though keep up the good work.

[rikfuzz]

Well, ptoing, the actual rendered frames exported from MAX are fine. The only transparent issues I'm having are in regards to showing you fine folks the animated results of my work...a minor annoyance when it comes down to it.

If you mean the ingame sprites are using alpha, then show the animations on a non-transparent background, so your alpha pixels don't go solid. I think you're getting a lot of crit on how the blur looks in the 1bit transparency gif rather than how it'll look ingame.

[Howard Day]

ptoing: Thanks. That may end up being what I have to do.
CrazyMLC: Thanks. As for the awkward recoil...that's kinda the effect I'm going for. I'm not expecting something called a "BumbleBot" to be particularly badass. I *like* that it looks somewhat unstable.
Zoggles: Thanks. The rotors are counter-rotating right now - that's the only thing that makes sense, given torque issues. As for your (and others) concern that the flash might be to impressive...well, that just means I need to step it up on the big bad boys later on, right? That is a challenge I think I will enjoy. As for the roof bits - I'll be making and showing some roof edges and transitions to break everything up.
Ultimaodin:Thanks. I kinda like the width of rotors as they are - that they look almost too small to actually keep it in the air, is awesome to me. Really adds in the "bumble" part of the bumblebot. As for the width of the blurred portion of the rotors, good call. I'll narrow that down pronto.
I like the Centipede idea. Maybe for a boss?

Okay, so all the transparency issues have driven me a bit nuts. I've started using another gif-making program to try and get around them. This particular program also supports APNG, so if you have a browser that supports it, you should see correct-alpha animated version of the GIFs.



How's that work for everyone?

[Photocopier]

Using opera here and it works fine, good job btw 

[Lizzrd]

Looks much better than previous versions.