I put my game related things in this thread

[Zorafim]

Animation dump for future use:
https://i.imgur.com/OdRxpfP.gif
https://i.imgur.com/mDchZUp.gif
https://i.imgur.com/6jno0cF.png
https://i.imgur.com/Y316BJU.gif
https://i.imgur.com/Zztwd4V.gif
https://i.imgur.com/JCWwkvS.gif
https://i.imgur.com/VPiMIP1.gif
https://i.imgur.com/WRUfE9j.gif
https://i.imgur.com/pBhqd6K.gif
https://i.imgur.com/Hl81kx9.gif

.exe of testing area:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/e6lkfmoaqwfzekd/Home.zip

As always, criticism is welcome.

[Zorafim]

The concept for my next animation. I couldn't figure out how it should look, so I thought I should write it down first. Turned out to be a good idea.

To the left is my concept for an 8 frame animation. Since Levia will swim in a wave-like motion, I wanted to make sure I knew where each body part would be on the wave at any given time. H would be super high, h is high, l is low, L is super low.
I saw what would happen, and it looked like Levia would be going way higher and lower than I wanted. So I tried again with a 6 frame animation. This time I combined h and l to just m (midddle), and it looks much more tame. I'll be using this going forward.

https://i.imgur.com/Nfqc16X.png

You can see my actual artistic skill here.

So my next goal is to take the 6 frame animation, and draw frames 1 and 4. As the two extremes, I'll be able to draw the rest of the frames between these two. That will both save drawing time, and create a better timed animation.

[qoxolg]

Well, it might be good for you to know that I am no artistic person AT ALL. I approach drawing in a very structured way. Things like style usually come from shortcuts and habits that unconsciously slip in.

I think a more structured approach to drawing will probably work for you. Drawing is for a large part just technical (things like perspective and lighting) and knowledge. Both require 0 artistic talent. Just time and effort.

For games you also need to be the most lazy person possible. I usually spent more time up front creating multi-usage assets or generic gameplay systems that later on save me a ton of time. Good assets can be re-used in all kinds of ways you wouldn’t imagine. You can create 5 rocks with each their own textures and one side to use, or you can create 5 rocks with two usable sides and make some generic textures that you can apply to each rock, which will give you 50 rock variations, instead of 5. Usually the setup for a generic solution is harder and takes more time up front, but you can save so much time in the end.

Also, the idle animation now looks really good! Keep it up!

[Zorafim]

Also, the idle animation now looks really good! Keep it up!

Senpai noticed me ^^

So I need to find some cheat sheets, eh? I should research that.

[Zorafim]

Starting on the next animation, here's my first frame.

https://i.imgur.com/lCPAs3p.png

Oh, the sideways nature makes it more postable. Neato.
I'm not sure if anything looks funky about it or not, so hopefully I'll catch any flaws as I blend frames. Until then, I would appreciate any criticism.
And thanks for your input, Qoxolg. The back was bent too low for the last one. I straightened that out and shortened the neck, and it looked a bit better.

On a related note, I'm thanking God for this mermaid tail craze. I have so much reference now.

[Zorafim]

Yeah, it looked pretty funky. Take two?

https://i.imgur.com/nMDEFWP.png

[Zorafim]

New animation! I realized how slow I'm going by focusing too much on details, so I tried to do this one as lazily as possible. Lots of copy pasting, and I tried to do each new piece as quickly as possible. I think I still need some work done on the hair and maybe a frame on the fins, but otherwise I'm not seeing much wrong with it. I may give it a day and look back at it and see if there's anything I want changed. Until then, I could use any thoughts anyone has about it.

Now I can finally do some programming!
*googles how to change from water to land*

https://i.imgur.com/mDchZUp.gif

[spoiler-box]
https://i.imgur.com/R4mI9rI.png
https://i.imgur.com/T2USgyo.png
https://i.imgur.com/G8MvsMB.png
https://i.imgur.com/HOiLssS.png
https://i.imgur.com/4KJJTWJ.png
https://i.imgur.com/UOoVVR5.png
[/spoiler-box]

[Zorafim]

Standing sprite. I'll need this if I want to look decent on land.

https://i.imgur.com/6jno0cF.png

[qoxolg]

For the swimming other then the fins needing some extra flow, I think you might wanna look at the head? Wouldn't it be unpracticed for the head to face down a couple of times when you are going full speed ahead?

[Zorafim]

The head did look a little wonky, and the fins do seem a little stiff. Thanks for the input, I'm gonna see what I can do.

[yoshiblue]

I wonder if there's profit in MS-DOS era nostalgia?

[Zorafim]

I don't know, but that's as far as my artistic skill will take me

[Zorafim]

Okay, so, I have a problem... I can't seem to be able to face Levia in any direction besides right and down...

[qoxolg]

Explain?

[yoshiblue]

Going to assume more detail is needed and anatomy starts to come into play.

[Zorafim]

So, you know how the pixels make up the nose and chin? Well, I can only draw those at 90 degree angles, due to how the pixels are made. I tried making it look like she was looking diagonally down, but it just couldn't happen. And if she's looking straight, the proportion of her head becomes all messed up.

Also, I started working on some programming stuff. I was able to implement a couple more things to make swimming more fun, including dolphin jumping! However, for the life of me I simply cannot get basic collisions working. No matter what I do, she just falls right through the starting platform, into the water. I tried all day today to get her standing, with no luck.

[qoxolg]

haha, sounds like you have the same kinds of struggles with Unity that I have with UE4. You create this amazing function, only to get stuck for hours on something mundane, because you can't find how to do it in the engine.

[Zorafim]

It's like the #1 thing you're supposed to use the engine for!

[qoxolg]

I had same sorts of issues with making a function to reset the camera and have to rotate to face the back of the character. It took me HOURS to figure out the engine had a separate function for the rotation of the camera.

Or with menu navigation using keys, which UE4 simply doesn't have a framework for (only mouse navigation is build in).

Still, UE4 does the real hard stuff for me, like the entire 3D rendering and ease to build materials. It also comes packed with lots of default classes like characters classes you can build upon, behaviour trees for AI, physics, animation, etc. I have no experience with Unity, but I always hear people say it's easier to work with, though that might be just the programmers speaking, who prefer C# over C++. On the other hand, in UE4 I can fortunately get away with just visual scripting.

[Zorafim]

I'm a java programmer, so I had to learn C# from scratch. Still, languages are similar enough that I know what I'm looking for.

I finally figured it out. Though it was less figuring out and more changing things until it stopped not working. Still, I can stand on stuff now! I can do the bare minimum of what a game is supposed to be!
Now that I've gotten stuck on something basic for more than a day and figured it out through much tedium, does that mean I get to sit in the big boy table?

Speaking of which, how's your game coming? I haven't seen an update in a while. Does that mean you've been getting a lot of tedious work done and will have something fantastic ready for us soon?

[qoxolg]

Ha! thats indeed how it works! you build system upon system, getting smarter and smarter trough the process. It's a matter of creating solid building blocks that will transform a random scene into a game. I'd first focus on making sure moving around is the best thing ever. If core gameplay is not fun and you rely to much on systems or gimmicks, your game will fall apart very quickly. This video is a great showcase of how changing the feel of the core gameplay can change how the game is experienced dramatically
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U

My game development learning proces is an organic one. I only look on how to learn something when I need it. I need to make textures? ok, gotta learn UV and texturing software! I need to make sound effect? Lets look up how people make sound effects! I go in this with a mindset that I can learn everything to a decent level and then directly use that skill for my game. Thats why I am pretty confident I can also make the music for my own game, even though my music making skills aren't the best around, I know I can make a decent enough soundtrack myself. I don't wanna go down the route of using marketplace assets and such, simply since it wouldn't be 100% MY GAME anymore. To many indy games these days use the same lazy assets that make them a boring experience imo.

Thats why I think its great to see you make your own sprites. I mean, you always come off like you think you have no artistic talent, but your first animated sprite looks great and I am sure you will only get better at it. Of course your drawing skills are not suddenly gonna be top notch, but they will be good enough for your game.

As for my game:
There was this 4 week vacation to New Zealand and after that landing my brain back in the Netherlands. So, not super much has changed. Just been working on the first real assets for World 1 using my own concept art as a guide. As for systems, I think I've been tweaking my AI and gave it a weak and a strong attack, with hyper armor during the strong attack. Other then that QUESTING SYSTEM! I already got most of it working and am now working on the quest counter / teleported functionality and menu's. The quests work trough multiple spreadsheets, which I can simply edit in Excel. So, my levels are just empty environments, which load in enemy spawns, items, events, etc using the quest system.

After that I am gonna see if I can make cutscene/text messages and incorporate those into the quests. Client orders are also on the list. Also wanna make a water material for my levels.

[Zorafim]

but your first animated sprite looks great and I am sure you will only get better at it. Of course your drawing skills are not suddenly gonna be top notch, but they will be good enough for your game.

Senpai noticed me! Again!

Swimming is a dream. I love just swimming around. I just got standing working, so hopefully I can make that just as tight. But...I should get gamepad compatibility working before that.

I'm hoping I can get faster and faster at drawing. I'm hoping I can just make rough blobs of monsters and make them look decent enough, but I won't know until I get to that point. Until then, it's Levia animations for me. Gotta get walking done, then sprinting, then dashing, then attacking... hoo boy. Last I checked, I got three sprites in a day. That's better than one for sure, but I have a ways to go.

If you get sound design working, give me a holler. I'm stuck trying to find decent instruments that other people do, which makes it hard for me to get exactly what I want.

I'd be okay if not everything is mine. Game design is normally a team effort, and I want to focus on what makes me special. But at the same time, I also have certain things I want to implement. I could make a generic fantasy game, but then how would I add a Levia?
I'd like an artist, but until one agrees to do everything I want, I just have to do it myself. I think I have enough skill to do everything else, so just gotta buckle down and learn.
If it takes 10,000 hours to master something, then I just have to keep at it for 3.5 years and I'll be amazing!

[Zorafim]

So, I started Mario Odyssey. And then I didn't stop it. And now two weeks have passed. Not good progress.

I started the walk animation. I'm going to have to move a couple of things to give the illusion of movement, plus double the frames to make it a decent level of smoothness. But on the plus side, it looks like I can copy paste half of the work.

https://i.imgur.com/6ZrAgyC.gif

You can see the illusion of movement if you follow a foot, but if not then it looks like two frames. So this definitely needs more work. Still, good place to be at.

Any advice on how the hair and fins should move? I wanted to go for something graceful and still, so I don't think they should be bouncing around. But they shouldn't be sitting still either.

[Zorafim]

Girlfriend was busy today, so I just crammed it out. One animation done in one day! At this rate, I might make progress!

https://i.imgur.com/Y316BJU.gif

Thoughts and critiques plz

Next is a sprint and a jump animation, then I can get started on attacks.

[qoxolg]

Looking pretty good!

Try to make the upper body slightly go up in the frame where the legs are next to each other. If you can: Try also moving the arms (arms move in the opposite direction from the legs).

[Zorafim]

I kinda wanted to keep kind of a glide as she moved. Something graceful and dancer like. I know that makes the animation look more amateurish, but I wanted to keep it if I was able to make it look good. Any ideas how I might be able to do that?

And, I kinda love the folded hands on her, and want to keep that too. Does it look bad enough to need tossing, or is there something I can do to keep it?

[Zorafim]

https://i.imgur.com/ZxUmYUE.gif

I feel like I can improve on this more. I don't even know what the dorsal fins should be doing.

[qoxolg]

Flap around maybe? Other then that it looks good imo. Reminds me of ninja running

[Zorafim]

I've loved that run ever since I watched Inu Yasha. I've always imagined her running like that. I've always said that she moves on land like she's swimming through the air, and I got to that with this. I took one of the swimming frames and modified it to make this run. I'm hoping to keep it going by having special moves that use the same animations underwater and above, and having it make sense in both cases.

A friend said I should increase the frames. I thought I would be okay because of how short the animation was, but it only really has two frames. I didn't put much work into it. I can put more.

[Zorafim]

I doubled the frames, but I'm not sure it actually looks any better. If anything, it looks jankier.

https://i.imgur.com/Zztwd4V.gif

[Kondibon]

I doubled the frames, but I'm not sure it actually looks any better. If anything, it looks jankier.

https://i.imgur.com/Zztwd4V.gifI don't know much about animation, but it might look weird because of the lack of vertical movement.

[Zorafim]

What a coincidence, neither do I!

I'll look into that. Maybe adding some pixels upward might make it look better. I just received some criticism saying that she's scraping the ground with her knee, so I can kill two birds by doing that.

[Shinureal]

Cool! a thread for your game so I can follow the progress. Good luck!!

[qoxolg]

I prefer the doubled frames. Looks more flowy.

[Zorafim]

You didn't see it until now? Sorry, I thought you did. It made more sense than to use my music thread.

I just got done adding a jump, which was thankfully trivial. I turned the gravity to what I thought was a nice weight. It seems awkward without a jump animation, so now I have to figure out what I want that to look like.
Something I noticed was that many people use a crouched character that straightens out when they jump. But mine's already straight.

I also spent some time on the camera. That was fun from a purely programming perspective. I had to figure out how to slowly adjust it while maximizing the amount of space given. Lots of fun glitches with that, but it looks pretty good now. Next I need to get it to zoom out more while walking, and it should be good.

So you think it looks alright Q? Maybe I'll just move on and see if it still bothers me later. While composing I would sometimes leave a song for a while, and anything I didn't like jumped out at me when I came back. Maybe that'll happen here.

[Shinureal]

For the jumping animation, it should be composed of 3 main parts: start, middle and finish. It'll look good if you can make her fins wave on the start and the finish.

[Zorafim]

What I was going to do was have an animation play when she goes up, and switch to another when she went down. I guess that's what you would consider the start and finish, with an intermediate animation in between?

[qoxolg]

That’s how I made my jump animation for my game. It is actually 3 separate animations that get triggered by certain events the game Engine has build in:
1: lift off! Triggered by pressing a button The character first goes slightly crouched. First the legs go straight. Then while moving up the knees go up in a cycling motion. My advice is first to include the ‘going up’ in the animation itself, because that’s easier to work with. Later you can center back the animation frames.
2: falling down. Triggered when falling down. This also gets triggered when you don’t jump, but simply fall of a cliff. You can usually set this to a loop between two frames.
3: touch down! Triggered when hitting the ground. Character moves to crouched position again, with the body weight tilted forward a bit and then slowly move up to the default standing position.

you could make a 4th animation for hitting water instead of the ground.

[Zorafim]

I store my x and y velocities for math, and it's been working great for me. To chose my facing, I check to see if speedx is negative or positive. I can do the same with y to see if I should be going up or down.

When I hit water, because I already have a fast velocity, it automatically goes into a swim dash, making it look like I just finished a dive. I think it should be possible for me to create a splash when I hit a water trigger (in my case, when my y coordinate switches from positive to negative or vice versa) to mask the landing. From there it's all about having a good fall animation.

What worries me about a land animation is the variables. I want the player to keep going no matter what. When they land, they could be going fast or slow beforehand, and they could either go into a walk, a sprint, or just stand. I guess I'll just see how it looks after I get a few more animations in there and just focus on what I know I should do first. The first step is definitely an up and down animation.

[qoxolg]

You could also make a line trace to the ground and check which surface is below you while in the air. If the surface is water, you can use a diving animation with the head facing towards the water instead of the feet.

I have similar solutions for footstep sounds, by line tracing y -200 and check which material is below the character and determine the sound to play.

[Shinureal]

Like the sprite sheet I sent you about that jumping dude, the middle animation is for when he is in the air and about to go down. It creates a good transition from going up and then going down.


1
[SPOILER-BOX]https://i62.servimg.com/u/f62/15/45/51/27/210.png[/SPOILER-BOX]
2
[SPOILER-BOX]https://i62.servimg.com/u/f62/15/45/51/27/310.png[/SPOILER-BOX]
3 - His hair should be waving in this part
[SPOILER-BOX]https://i62.servimg.com/u/f62/15/45/51/27/410.png[/SPOILER-BOX]

[Zorafim]

I'm sure it'll look much less awkward if I add that. I may add two jump animations though; one if I'm moving forward, one if I'm standing still. Reason being, I have a pose that I like, but might not look good if I'm just going up. That might make a transitionary animation more difficult, but I won't know unless I try.

So, I got bored of drawing and worked on my game space a bit. I got rid of the public domain background and created my own. There's a space background that was surprisingly difficult to get working, and then a transparent water background. Because the planet's light source is in its center, the water gets brighter as you go deeper. The effect is neater than I imagined.
Of course all the animations are added as well, so it's a good way to see them in action.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/cj27l8h4whaukk2/swim.rar

Now I gotta see if I can recreate that castle Qoxolg drew for me!
... Does anyone know a good program to use for drawing geometric shapes? My usual technique of drawing one pixel at a time doesn't work with big things.

[qoxolg]

I would do it in Photoshop.

you could either start with a painting and then down-size it nearest neighbor and then clean up. Though you probably don’t have a tablet.

you can also directly start with pixels and simply use the rectangle selection and then keep filling up the selected areas.

[Shinureal]

As Q said, it'll be kinda hard without a tablet the paint such a thing. But how about creating assets, like small tiles? And then assemble them to create a whole structure?

[Zorafim]

Like leggos! Yeah, anything so that I don't have to develop a steady hand. Especially if I can express things mathematically.

[Shinureal]

You can create:
- 1 spike.
- 1 set of windows.
- 1 tile of a pillar.

Then play around with these 3 (or more) assets to create your castle.

[Zorafim]

That'll certainly be more fun than what I had in mind originally

[Zorafim]

https://i.imgur.com/aqL48my.png

I don't know if it's because I haven't added the fluff yet, but it doesn't look quite right.

[qoxolg]

Depends on which frame we are looking at

[Zorafim]

It's the general frame for the upward movement during a jump.

Looking at it in game, it's too extreme for a general jump. I may move it to be a sprint jump or a wall jump, and try again at a 20* angle instead of 45*.

[qoxolg]

I don't think, when jumping in general, your body makes much of an angle. What happens when going up, is that the legs also sweep up in sort of a cycling motion. This happens especially when jumping after running. Your legs almost naturally make that motion. From standing still its a bit more unusual for casual jumping, but when you try to jump higher, it's not that weird.

Here is how I made my jumping animation (just to let you know: I didn't use reference for it at all :wacko: so it's probably crap, but it will give you an idea)

First I go trough knees to start the jump. The good thing about 3D engines, is that animation blend into each other, so it's not a very long part.

http://jojo.sappusx.com/Schermafbeelding2018-01-24om17.33.20.png

Then we move up with one knee up

http://jojo.sappusx.com/Schermafbeelding2018-01-24om17.33.41.png

Then move the other knee up for the cycling motion

http://jojo.sappusx.com/Schermafbeelding2018-01-24om17.33.55.png

Fall down pose. Here I just let the animation loop with slight movement of the arms going up and down.

http://jojo.sappusx.com/Schermafbeelding2018-01-24om17.34.05.png

To give a feeling of weight to the character, after touching the ground, move trough the knees in one frame and go up in two (at least make going back up slower then going down.

http://jojo.sappusx.com/Schermafbeelding2018-01-24om17.34.20.png

[Zorafim]

I've been wanting to add this since the beginning, but I felt animations were more important. Now that I have most animations in place, it seemed like a good time to add it.

Look familiar Q?

https://i.imgur.com/0ktUX1b.png

[qoxolg]

Ohohoooo yes! Just like the concept art! Does this mean some of the other art I made for you will make it into the game?

[Zorafim]

Zorael is going to be a major character, so definitely him. Of all the characters you drew, the only ones left alive are the cat and the sea serpent. The serpent I may have swimming around the sea if I can spare the time, and maybe I can have the cat sleeping in the mission hub.
While the rest aren't alive, I may use their designs for enemies.

I actually had the picture up while drawing this, and tried to copy it as much as possible. You did such a great job with it, so I wanted to use it.

[Zorafim]

I finally got to it. I need to sketch the pose on Paint before I fully commit to it, I've found. There's no point spending hours drawing a pose, only to figure out at the end that it's just a bad pose.
Thanks to mentioning that the body is mostly straight, I got something that looks decent. I still need to animate it, but at least I have a good place to start. Now what I need to do is find a falling pose that I like, which I've been struggling with. Then I can start doing intermediate poses.

https://i.imgur.com/BWLLj0F.png

[qoxolg]

Thats looking like its going in the right direction!

[Zorafim]

I swear I got the same feeling one gets when their crush tells them that they're cute.

I got the fall animation done too. Surprisingly, almost all of it is unique. And I got it done quick, too. Relatively. Only a few hours.
Anyway!

https://i.imgur.com/jvrHyyr.png

There's a little bit of a style difference between jumping and falling. Hopefully I can smooth that out in the intermediate animation.

What do you think of that arm? Does that look okay? I haven't learned perspective yet.

[Zorafim]

I went ahead with the animation. Looks a bit better, but you can't really see it well ingame.

https://i.imgur.com/JCWwkvS.gif

[qoxolg]

Between the rising and falling animation I would put one frame where the knees are switched to create this cycling motion near the summit of the jump.

for the foreshortening of the arm. This could work, though it’s probably more natural if the arms face a bit more forward. Just try to move your own arms backwards. It’s not very comfortable (I hate that exercise in the gym).

[Zorafim]

That's how I got the pose, actually. I tried to figure out what my legs would do if I was in that position, and started falling. In-game, the transition from jumping to falling is pretty awkward, so it definitely needs that animation. I guess I'm working on that next.

*moves my arms backwards*
*does so easily*

I, uh, guess I've never told you guys that I've been doing flexibility training for 17 years, huh?
I want to show that Levia does have some flexibility, but at the same time the more things I do that's difficult for a human to do, the less human she looks. So striking that balance is going to be tough.
I'll keep an eye on it. Something tells me I'll be seeing a lot of this animation.

Speaking of animation!

https://i.imgur.com/VPiMIP1.gif

I got a criticism that the hair looked too rectangular. I'm not sure how to fix that at the moment, so I think I'll save it for when I have less art to worry about. I still need to do that transition animation (probably 3 frames?) and attacks to worry about... I can't wait to get to more programming. It's always done too quickly.

[qoxolg]

Ha, well programming will start to take longer when you get to more complex systems and timing in attacking mechanics and enemy AI. It does depend on how you want to solve your gameplay 'problems'. Quick and dirty solutions are easy to make, but will bite you hard in the butt when you have to push out the content. Generic and reusable solutions is what you want if you want to be able to ever finish the game. Even better is making your solutions data driven as much as possible.

To me the programming part always feels the most addicting to do. I can spend an entire Saturday from morning till night building all kinds of things and cursing real loud at my own mistakes, later followed by a cheer of joy when I eventually get it to work :wacko:

[Zorafim]

I just want to get to it because that's what I studied. And kinda what I want to improve upon the most. It's also the one that I want to test the most. What kind of cool things can I do with all the algorithms that I've learned how to do?

But I also just want a break from drawing. Damn it's exhausting.

[qoxolg]

It is???? Nooooo drawing is the most relaxing thing I can think of! My advice, if you are the same type of person as me, is to occupy your audio part of your brain with something else. Sometimes music is enough, but when I get to the more boring stuff like painting details, I switch to listening to podcasts.

[Zorafim]

Hm, I wonder if that's the issue... Whenever I learn new things, I tend to get tired much more easily. I'll try it out though. An easy fix like that would be great.

[Zorafim]

Today was slow. But still, I made some progress.

https://i.imgur.com/dC7Wkvh.png

In motion:

https://i.imgur.com/fjD7pzs.gif

[Zorafim]

I added a complete custom made background music (will be available for download once I finalize it), added some logic so you don't go flying out of the game space if you go so far, added controller support and custom controls, fixed up the controls, have basic controls with custom animations...

It looks like it's time to update the download link.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/e6lkfmoaqwfzekd/Home.zip

I played around with it a bit with the controller, and I have to say I had a blast. I can't wait to design levels around these controls. Though, unfortunately, I need more than basic functionality to make levels. And with each functionality I create, I need to create an animation. At least this one room is complete.

[Zorafim]

I had no motivation today. Eventually I got to work on my attack animation though.

https://i.imgur.com/Se82x7e.png

Just having it in the game for me to do whenever I press the attack button really feels good. But it obviously needs much more work. Hopefully I can modify it for use underwater, but this is just the start of it.

My plan is to have an intermediate frame between standing / walking and attacking, of her stepping forward. Then have three frames of this pose, with the hair moving and an image blur of the sword fading. It will still mostly be this pose, but the hair / fins / blur will be edited. Afterwards, I step back to the standing/walking pose.
Pressing the attack button again will do another animation swinging with the other hand, once again with one intermediate frame and three frames with a motion blur.

The thought of planning out those frames kinda overwhelms me, so I'm calling it until I can gather up the motivation to work on it. Hearing some thoughts on the pose would be great, in case there's something off that I missed.

[Zorafim]

A bit too early for me to celebrate, but,

https://i.imgur.com/7M0OrPd.gif

Now things get confusing. Already I'm having trouble in my game with this inclusion. And I still have to figure out how to animate going back to a standing pose, do animation locks, and how to perform a combo. But still, a start!

Oh yeah! And I want to do little water sprinkles. Any tips on how to do that?

[Zorafim]

Well... I tried. I was hoping I wouldn't have to add too much motion, since I need to do non-art stuff eventually. But this is too still.

https://i.imgur.com/gZFQIaT.gif

Any suggestions on how to improve it? Obviously I went the lazy route, but I think I went too lazy.

[Zorafim]

Bah, I don't know. It looks better, but I may need to make more changes to make it look good. Am I going to have to double the frames?

https://i.imgur.com/ypK42uu.gif

[qoxolg]

Hmm I think I prefer the first animation where you use the step in. I could show you my setup for saber slashes, but they aren’t super good. My general setup is like:
- 10 frames to move into starting position (see it like a spring compressing).
- 5 frames of extra inertia movement
- 10 frames for the first third of the slash
- 5 frames for the last two third of the slash
- 5 frames of inertia
- 15 frames to move back

using these kinds of frames give a nice weight and acceleration to the attacks.

[Zorafim]

That's a lot of frames

I'm keeping that first animation. The flow is, on one attack, you step forward once, slash once, and then step back. On multiple attacks, step forward once, do an infinite combo, then step back. So I just need to figure out a good second attack for the infinite combo and I'll be good.
Is the important part of your data the percentage of time each part of the animation is up?

I think I'm going to replace the second half of the loop with a new pose. The most important part of an attack is the way your body is moving. And so long as only the arms are moving, it's not going to look good. The two animations are also too similar, so I need something different to show movement.
That being said, I need to learn new things to get this pose done. I need Levia's front to face the camera, and do some perspective work. I'm struggling right now with the legs, hopefully I can get through it.

This is the reference image I've been using for proportions. I just figured I'd check to see if you think it's good, in case I can get something better.
It includes a nude drawn female model, so I'm going to post the link and not the image. Don't click if you're at work or whatever.
http://www.drawinghowtodraw.com/stepbystepdrawinglessons/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ideal-proportions-female.jpg

[Zorafim]

So I'm trying a new pose, and, I just wanted to share my process. It's a bit crazier than I normally do, because I have nothing to really copy and paste what with this being the first head on shot and all.
Looking at it like this, something seems wrong with the proportions. Maybe tweaking them after I'm done may help, but for now I just felt like sharing this.

https://i.imgur.com/7PtXwhY.png

Maybe some thoughts would be nice as well ^^;

[Zorafim]

Ah...shit. Did I get close? That splat of white on the crotch isn't anywhere as good looking as I thought it would be.

https://i.imgur.com/B0bYxLq.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/8hjrBdZ.png

[qoxolg]

Yeah, I meant them in percentages. 3D animation works with frames per second so the speed depends on how many FPS your animation is. 3D animation works with key frames and it calculated everything in-between to make smooth movements.

Any attack goes with slow start up > fast movement to destination. You could do this by using 2 frames for the first halve of the sword animation and one frame for the final position. Then again one frame for a slight inertia, to make it feel like there is weight behind the movement.

But yeah, its important to remember the power of most attacks come from the core of the body and it usually starts with the legs. Arms are pretty weak compared to most other muscles in the body.

[Zorafim]

Didn't I tell you that?

[Zorafim]

Crosspost from my music thread. This is in the current build of the game. I added a little fadeout at the end to make it more listenable, but otherwise it's the same.

https://soundcloud.com/michael-h-montgomery/palace-on-the-endless-sea

[Zorafim]

https://i.imgur.com/Ztj0CN9.gif

Uh...almost? Do I need more frames? Maybe I need to see this in-game...

[Zorafim]

I need a lesson in hair movement. Here's the combo here:

[spoiler-box]https://i.imgur.com/Pte2tYK.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/DxDMhSX.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/CblLJ4O.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/KUQIVPY.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/BHxTCXh.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/tdXuON1.png[/spoiler-box]

So, the head's moving all over the place, and the hair is supposed to move with it. And I'm not exactly sure how to do that.

Is the hair supposed to follow where the head was like a line? Or be halfway between where it was, and where it will be?

[qoxolg]

I would maybe add one more frame between frame 2 and 3, to make the start up slightly slower to give this feeling of acceleration and weight.

For the hair, make it lag behind the head one or two frames. Hair is always an artistic part where you can be slightly unrealistic for the sake of art.

[Zorafim]

Hm, so maybe I'll be unrealistic then and have it follow the head, and show movement. Then just edit if it looks off. Though, my falling hair still looks pretty bad, so maybe I should be a bit careful.
I'm not sure what you mean by lagging behind one or two frames. Do you mean, have it be where it should be a frame ago?

I just did some poses with my sticks. It looks like having the arm be one frame behind the body does look kinda great. I think that's what you were saying. I'll try that out and see what happens.

[Zorafim]

I added the extra frame, keeping the hand behind for one frame for a little delay. It looks more animated now.

From stand:
https://i.imgur.com/5KzCpKI.gif

Combo:
https://i.imgur.com/AlhWrBX.gif

compared to this:
https://i.imgur.com/Ztj0CN9.gif


So, I'm posting these onto facebook. I used to be able to post it in a way that everyone saw a png as a preview, and then the animation after clicking it. Now the preview is broken.
Pretty frustrating. I know nobody will care unless they can see the preview.

[Zorafim]

Hair!
https://i.imgur.com/LA552Uy.gif
https://i.imgur.com/FMwRXHj.gif

[Zorafim]

And...done?
https://i.imgur.com/WRUfE9j.gif
https://i.imgur.com/pBhqd6K.gif

[stukasa]

Looking good! A lot more fluid that the earlier versions. I like the way the sword slashes through the air, especially on the bottom one. Although, are the ankles supposed to blink blue and white like that? It looks a little off somehow, but maybe that's intentional.

[Zorafim]

Nope. That's me messing up the pixels. I spotted and fixed it after I posted, but, updating it would mean creating a new gif, and uploading it, and it's such a hassle.
I suppose it's worth it. I need honest, accurate feedback to make sure I get these animations as good as possible. On my way...

...there. Did that get it?

[stukasa]

What the heck. We both posted at the same time in each other's threads. Then, nine minutes later, we both posted our replies in our own threads. We are totally in sync tonight! :lol:

Okay, I guess you were one step ahead of me. I just wanted to point it out, since sometimes we can overlook minor details like that. ^^

Edit: Yeah, I think that fixed it.

[Zorafim]

Yeah, I need a second pair of eyes like that. I appreciate it. If there's anything small or weird like that you notice, please point it out.

[Zorafim]

Just logging my thoughts for the day.

I worked on some more programming today. I had a bug with detecting whether I was standing or falling. Basically, I started falling infinitely if I stopped touching a wall while touching the ground. Fixing that made it so I couldn't jump. Now in order for my script to be confident that I actually want to jump, I have to check to make sure I'm going away from the ground and not towards it.
Took me several hours of rabid googling, but there we have it.

I also have the beginnings of wall running working. That's exciting.

[qoxolg]

The new attack animations are looking good! What’s up next? Still gonna work on movement programming, or are you gonna start with level logic? It’s a good idea to quickly start with building a start and goal function for levels (or quests) so you have a way to ‘win’. That way you will actually start having a game instead of just a tech demo. For me that helped for motivation.

[Zorafim]

I still have a lot of animations to work on. Jump attack, dash attack, swim attack, swim dash attack, dodge, swim dash, counter, and counter attack.

My next immediate goal is the dodge. I'm thinking a back flip. It's not practical, but it's fun. Since art is still overwhelming, I'm also going to work on getting attacks to work, and getting wall running to work.

My levels are going to have simple logic. Just get to the end and kill a thing to finish the level. So I'm not too worried about that. Actually building them is a more immediate concern for me.

If I run out of programming work between taking breaks from art, I'm going to start working on the demo level. I need a room to test each feature, and the demo room would be the best place for it. Since it will be a way to show off what I have planned, and to teach the player how to play.

[qoxolg]

There is no reason to run out of programming work. You can simply expand your game with more gameplay elements. You can turn this all the way until you reach metroidvania nirvana :wacko: that’s how my game evolved from simple platformer to full blown action RPG.

[Zorafim]

Well, I guess I meant necessary programming work. I still want a more action oriented game with lighter RPG elements.

So I'm finding during land animations that the fins kinda get in the way. I knew they would, but, it's difficult to add them in and making them look both realistic and elegant.
I'm trying to make due, but it's a little bit stressful.

[qoxolg]

Pro tip: don’t worry about perfection at this point, because when you are further into development, your skills will probably have improved enough to fix stuff that currently takes a ton of time. Just churn out content that is good enough and just go with that.

[Zorafim]

I worked on this animation for a bit. I basically copy and pasted things to get it working, so it's probably not great. Just wanted to hear some thoughts before I worked on it some more. I'll probably take a little break from it before going back to it too.
I haven't worked on any details like the hair or fins. I'll probably have to change the body a bit, which'll completely ruin the rest of it. So I figure I'd look for feedback before looking at that.
The idea is that it's going to be an attack that does more damage than a ground slash due to the momentum given, but still be less dps than the ground slash combo. Once you use it in the air, you'll be stuck in that animation (the final frame) until you hit ground.

https://i.imgur.com/3Y4A7HB.gif

[Zorafim]

https://i.imgur.com/Hl81kx9.gif

I added some flow to the hair, and added some frames to the slash. It ends with motion blur, since you'll be falling at that point. Ending with a normal blade looked too weak. Now it has the power I want, but it might be too static.
I didn't bother with an ending animation because the logic to do that seems too much of a deal for the added visual effect. Making an animation for jumping and falling seems to have done almost nothing for me, and took quite a while to do.

[Zorafim]

I didn't feel like doing any more art today, so I did some more work on wall running. I got it to a spot where I think it feels good. Doing so required I changed a couple of things though.

I doubled walking speed and the camera size. Walking felt like it took forever for me, so even though the animation and speed don't match up, it still feels nicer. The camera size got way too close to the player, so now it feels nicer.
I changed my land controls to be velocity based to acceleration based. Though I prefer controlling via velocity - since it means that pressing a button means instant control - acceleration allowed me to stop the player from doing things I didn't want them to do. For instance, it was too easy to wall run up the same wall infinitely before. Now I can prevent them from doing that.

And of course, wall running now displays the proper animation. Before, Levia just flew up a wall. Now she properly ninja runs up for half a second (still enough to climb several stories). She can also infinitely wall jump between two walls as well, or use a wall climb to shoot herself into the opposite direction for a nifty looking u-turn.

I still need to add dash attacking, swim attacking, swim dash attacking, countering, and dodging. The list is growing shorter!

[stukasa]

I don't have much to say here since I don't know anything about programming. I just didn't want you to feel neglected by the lack of replies. For now all I can say is, good luck and keep up the good work! ^^

[Zorafim]

I'm honestly using it as a blog as much as I'm using it as a way to ask for help. Being able to share something with people I like and who are interested in it is great too.
I wish I had something more concrete to share, but, the going is slow. All I can say is that it's pretty fun to play.

Oh, if something sounds interesting, let me know and I'll export a build for you.

[Zorafim]

I've been lazy. That's been bad. But I finally got around to my dash attack.

https://i.imgur.com/awflqrr.gif

It's my first attempt, so... I think, the arm isn't winding up enough? I could also move the actual sprite back before the slash to create a lunge effect.

[Zorafim]

Alright, I just figured out how to make and draw rooms and levels! I think I can start designing the tutorial area now.

Which has some mapping involved. I want the tutorial to take place in here:

[spoiler-box]https://i.imgur.com/0ktUX1b.png[/spoiler-box]

So while you'll only see it one room at a time, I want the entire experience to feel like going through this huge castle.

I'll probably design the rooms first, then try to fit them together in a coherent way later. For now, I'm just happy to be able to go from room to room. Now I can properly test each of my abilities in its own designated room.

[yoshiblue]

I like how you could recycle that to be a floating glacier, a space ship, a manta ray, ect.

[Zorafim]

Oh I'm getting good at recycling

[qoxolg]

Making games the efficient way is all about recycling! Did you know I only use 4 rock walls in my game so far? Some I even use as a floor, because, why not? The smart thing to do is to make modular components that can be combined in endless ways. Sure it’s gonna get you some more drawcalls, but CPU is usually the least performance worry for your game to begin with. You can always merge some of your bigger assets together later on, if that’s ever gonna be an issue.

for the dash attack, I vote for a lunge. Also, will the dash attack make you stop running?

[Zorafim]

One problem I'm having is that my wall running animation is my normal dash animation tilted upward. Because I'm doing the rotation in code, that messes up a whole bunch of other code. So that's one case of going lazy causing more problems than it solves.
That's still giving me problems too. Now my character runs off when she jumps for some reason, despite my finally fixing it so that she jumped correctly. And it turns out she clips through the ceiling when that's done indoors, so I have to fix that in the future too.

I haven't decided exactly how I want the dash attack to work. Maybe I'll just make some notes on it now, and wait until I have some enemies before settling.
Originally, I wanted to slash through the enemy and stop behind them so I could combo them. But that seems like a lot of work for something I'm not sure will have the best gameplay. For now I'm assuming I'll want to keep running, but I'm not sure. It depends how I want to build my levels.

[Zorafim]

[spoiler-box]https://i.imgur.com/dkc0T3c.png[/spoiler-box]

Dialogue!

[qoxolg]

Haha, and thats where the gameplay part is starting to become time consuming, depending on how well documented Unity is. UE4 has lots of documentation, but the important and mundane stuff is very poorly explained. I've easily spent two hours in figuring out why the laser of my enemy seemed to go in some random direction that was not forward. Eventually I solved it with a different solution that works but isn't optimal.

Hmm dialog! you better also add face pictures to it like mine. I always preferred it when the more old school RPG's showed off the emotion of the person talking using a simple picture. But you can't really have a dialog system without a quest/objective system driving it :wacko: Mine is a beautiful type of spaghetti! But it works quite well and can be completely build using just Excel. I even got an objective function working, including a quest marker that can point you in the right direction.

I am not gonna add a mini-map/radar to my game, because I find it highly distracting in almost all games I play. With PSO2 I even reached the point where I hardly look at the graphics on the screen and simply play the game by watching the mini-map, because it's more efficient. My objective marker can only be seen when the objective gets updated for like 5 seconds and when you summon a 'navigation screen'.

My current quest structure is:
- Quests
- Quests lock/unlock the doors in the related level(s).
- Quests have one or more Objectives.
- Objectives are bound to levels and have a location in that level.
- Objectives have one or more 'events'.
- These events can be: Enemy spawns, object spawns or dialog. Enemy spawns and dialog use an overlap volume to actually trigger. What I spawn is that volume and a link to the data table that contains the enemy spawn or dialog data.
- Killing all enemies in a spawn can trigger: next objective, another spawn, object spawns and door unlocks.
- Picking up an item can trigger the next objective.
- Dialog can trigger the same stuff as killing an enemy spawn.

[Zorafim]

I think I have the data structure behind the dialogue all figured out. I'm going to have one object in each room with something to say. I just want her to have something to say to the player each room, as a way to kinda interact with her. Or to get a clue for each room. For instance, the first one will have the writing "Press A to speak with Levia", and then she'll introduce herself and tell you to go right. Then for each room after that, some writing on the wall will tell you how to do something, and speaking with her again will go into more detail or have more flavor.
The only issue with that is the room with Zorael, where I'll have actual dialogue between the two characters. That'll be a bit more complicated, but I seem to be good at stuff like that.

Of course the face will be necessary, and I'll add it when I work on art again. For now it's a bit intimidating, so I'm going to work more on making rooms and adding dialogue first. I don't know about adding different emotion. I kinda like the mysterious storybook feeling some of the early Final Fantasies had where they just have an emotionless face.
But if drawing faces isn't too hard, I may consider it. Perhaps as a form of polish.

[stukasa]

What I did in my game was draw a blank face for each character as a template, then drew the expressions last. That way you don't have to draw the entire face for each expression. You're only re-drawing the eyes, nose, and mouth. Just a thought, in case you want to save time/effort. Alternately, you could commission one of the fine artists on DA or elsewhere to draw the character portraits/expressions for you (unless the entire project must be made by you from scratch).

[Zorafim]

Nah, I'm only doing the art out of necessity. But there is one big advantage to doing it.
If I were to get an artist, I wouldn't be able to put my own flavor into the character. It would be that artist's interpretation of the character, and not my own pure interpretation.

Still. Doing new things is always intimidating. It might take me a while to get to that part.

[qoxolg]

I love learning new things. It can be a really enriching experience. Working on all aspects of my game made my respect for the pro’s even bigger. And in the end, I am a living example that any of these skills can be learned to an acceptable amateur level in quite a short time. All you need is some dedication. I still have a full time job and can manage this whole game thing quite well. Even if you decide to outsource some of the work later on, it’s still good to gain some experience yourself, so you can give better instructions to person you are working with.

[Zorafim]

I tend to prefer working on one thing at a time. I like having one game to work on for a long time instead of lots of small games. When I learn songs, it's one at a time.
So to have all these things to work on all at once, it's kind of overwhelming. Maybe that's why I stuck with art for such a long time.

If I could just focus on one thing on this game, I think I'd be happier. But at the same time, I don't want to compromise on anything I want. I want control over the animations, I want my world to look a certain way, I want control over the music, I want the movement to be a certain way...

[stukasa]

I know how you feel. I'm the same way with my creations, wanting to control every aspect of them. ^^ I guess you have to weigh that feeling versus the time it would take doing it all yourself. If you don't mind taking the time, go for it.

[qoxolg]

Well, of course you have to learn stuff one thing at a time. I didn't learn everything at once. For each core skill I easily took more than a month to just learn that one thing. At the same time I would simply work on stuff for my game I already had the skill for.

[Zorafim]

Well, this is an issue. I spent a lot of time trying to implement a wall run system, and got it working great. The issue is that I got it running (ha!) on solid blocks. But the game will be using tilemaps. It took me a while to realize, but the system I have is completely incompatible with that.

So~ hopefully I can find some answers on how to do something like this on tilemaps. It can't be that hard...right?

Also, I started work on the tutorial area. Now that I have things to test with, I can see how much my game sucks right now. I have a little platforming area to test jumping out, and I just can't make the jumps. They're either trivial or impossible. That's something I'm going to have to figure out.

[qoxolg]

So what’s the good thing about tile maps? I always thought 2D games would work the same as 3D where the 3D model and the collision volumes are separate. In UE4 the game does generate a collision volume for each model you import, but you could also disable the volumes entirely on your art assets and simply use simple box volumes to walk on/interact with. If that volume is ground or a wall would be determined by some properties.

but yeah, you are now hitting the hard part of building gamelogic, which is the fight with engine itself, which takes a long time to fully comprehend. Last week I spend more then 4 hours trying to figure out why the collision volume of my enemy wasn’t following the animation when it flies upwards. It’s those things that are the hardest to me. It’s engine functionality I don’t fully understand yet. Building the enemy behavior or the TPS gameplay was much less time consuming.

But yeah, your approach seems the same as mine. Start with some test assets and let the game simply grow, as long as you have a rough idea of what you want to achieve. There is nothing wrong with temp assets like my current character or the spaceship that looks like shit. Heck, I only made my first real map last month!

For jumping enjoyment you probably need to look into air control. While not realistic, it will make a much much more fun game.

[Shinureal]

Zora, your solution is to use invisible block for the player to collide and interact with. It's common practice on 2D platformers. First give them a global variable for visibility so you can see them while the game is running. Once you have a solid and correct gameplay, change the variable and make them invisible.



Talking about collision, I'm avoiding it in most cases of my game and using a "distance to object" function. As for the player ship and bullets, GMS lets you use the whole sprite as a box, a precise or a customized collision mask. I went with a small circle inside the center of the ship and the enemy fire to give the player a better bullet hell experience.

[Zorafim]

I'm hardly making progress with this, but at least I can show this off.


Woopsies

[qoxolg]

Well, that was almost one year ago! :o but progress is progress!

for the zoom in and out, how does that work? I would maybe try to bind it to the movement speed (so faster movement would zoom out more). In UE4 I would use the vector length of the character movement (if that’s a variable you can read in Unity).

[Zorafim]

Yeah it's tied to movement speed. I wrote a chunk of code for it to make sense. I want the game to be zoomed in when walking and enjoying the scenery and stuff, and once you start dashing and doing fast fun stuff it's zoomed out enough for you to see everything way in advance.
I took inspiration from Sonic. In that Sonic never gives you time to see what's in front of you.

Since I didn't describe it, what I was working on during this video was jumping. I started off with realistic jumping where you jump up with an initial velocity, and you're pushed back down with a constant force. I like how it feels, but it prevents you from controlling your jumps. So I did the typical Mario thing where you hold the jump button for as long as you want to go up, and once you let go or once you hold it for too long gravity starts taking you back. I also hard coded in a terminal velocity, but I may make that to an arbitrarily large number. I need to make a platforming section and see how exactly I want to handle that.
Doing that made dolphin jumping feel lame again, since the force of gravity is too high to get good jumps. So I may need to add some more conditions to make dolphin jumping work at lower gravity than normal jumping.


This is what I had before this week. There's no advanced jump physics and I didn't fix wall running yet, but it otherwise shows where the game is at.


showoff