New playerset's frames and animation

All development of pixel art, maps and other graphics.


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Bjørn
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Post by Bjørn »

Modanung wrote:Down anim is ready!
Image Image Image Image
Yes, the shield template may use some work... it's very wobbely in the sword anim.
I think it looks very nice.
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Post by Kineticstorm »

Wow, I haven't been here in a while...

Anyway, Modanung those are good animations.
For the people who think it looks wrong, I think Modanung knows what he is doing because as he explained before, he is creating the animations to match with the future battle system. 8)

Although it does look like he is too close to the ground, it will probably look better in-game.

Keep up the good work guys! :D

P.S. I wish I could help but I just don't have the time anymore. :cry:
I love you too. :)
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Post by strikerbcb »

hey, Nice animations Modanung. You have the full sheet of theses animations ? If you have, please, you can send me for tests in my Custom Server ?

The animations for Ranged Attack is the same of the actual client ( 0.0.22.2 ) ?

I will trying to add new combat animations, weapons, etc. And this will help so much.

Thanks
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Post by Modanung »

strikerbcb wrote:hey, Nice animations Modanung. You have the full sheet of theses animations ? If you have, please, you can send me for tests in my Custom Server ?
So far it's only down attack that's finished, without all the clothes. And I haven't put it in a nice sheet yet. I'll have to work on the other directions before it's any use.
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Post by strikerbcb »

hey, some news of the new attack animations ?

And for me, the first attack animation for the Sword is a lot better than a second, the second made the attacks in foot ... the first is more real ...

but the graphics is very beatiful ! Continue then.
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Post by Modanung »

Yea, I should get back to doing stuff for tmw. :oops:
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ker-bump!

Post by Doubi »

Building on Modanung's work:

Image


Image
  • I picked up on the point Schorhr and ziolive were making earlier, and used two less frames of body movement in favour of some weapon blurring.
  • I think we could possibly even get away with losing another frame of body movement, but I don't want to take it too far.
  • I realise the blur for the sword there would be a bit over the top for your basic Iron Sword or whatever, but we can experiment later with less over the top kinds of blurring. This is just to prove the theory, so to speak.
Thoughts please!

And if anyone would like to tinker with what I've done, everything I'm working with can be found at Modanung's repository:
http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/M ... ter=images
And mine:
http://s255.photobucket.com/albums/hh147/Doubious/TMW/
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Re: ker-bump!

Post by Len »

Doubi wrote:Building on Modanung's work:

Image


Image
  • I picked up on the point Schorhr and ziolive were making earlier, and used two less frames of body movement in favour of some weapon blurring.
  • I think we could possibly even get away with losing another frame of body movement, but I don't want to take it too far.
  • I realise the blur for the sword there would be a bit over the top for your basic Iron Sword or whatever, but we can experiment later with less over the top kinds of blurring. This is just to prove the theory, so to speak.
Thoughts please!

And if anyone would like to tinker with what I've done, everything I'm working with can be found at Modanung's repository:
http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/M ... ter=images
And mine:
http://s255.photobucket.com/albums/hh147/Doubious/TMW/
It's looking rather nice :)
Image
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Post by Crush »

Looks really great - especially with the blurring. I think the 2nd or 3rd phase could be taken out because they are quite redundant. The last phase isn't adding very much either. It would be possible to add another phase in the middle of the swing which could also be used for the stab animation. But this would maybe take out a bit of the "wham" of the animation.
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Post by Modanung »

Please don't use the animated gifs as a base, as you may have noticed the alpha channel is lost in the process. I finally installed Ubuntu again today and can access the XCFs again.
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Post by Doubi »

Groovy! I'm not XCF compatible so could you make some .png's available please?


Also, when making completely new poses, how do you recommend I go about making shades / transparency levels of the subtle pixels around the edges of the sprites so that they match the ones from the current playerset sheets? Or weren't you that precise with the anti-aliasing?

I'd prefer not to have to c&p lots of individual pixels...
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Post by Jetryl »

"You're doing it wrong." :( And unfortunately, not matter how well you render the detail on the character, this is going to look like crap because the motion isn't right. So here's what's wrong and how to fix that. The huge, cripping flaw at work here is that you're afraid to let the path of the sword cross the player's sprite; whether intentionally, or by sneaking, psychological influence, that's happening. And what it's doing is forcing you to put the swing in a completely, totally wrong position in order to meet this unwritten rule you're following - a position that looks very physically awkward, because anyone swinging a sword in that way would fall on their face, given how far he comes off-balance. Given the isometric perspective at work here, 1] even if the character is leaning forward, we should still see his legs, and 2] the sword's "swoosh" should be as high up on the character as his belt-line.

It's a common neurosis amongst advanced beginners to avoid covering up any part of a figure that's already been drawn; or to avoid having some part of the body obscured by another part as the body rotates. It gets ingrained in people really quickly, because most forms of illustration make it extremely costly to draw over something that's already there - in a pencil drawing, if you want to, say, put a big kite shield in a knight's hand, you have to completely erase everything behind it. In a pencil drawing, this is especially expensive, since everything has to be drawn from scratch. If you erase what's behind that shield, you'd better hope you're on the right track, because

This isn't so bad in a computer-based drawing, because things can be undone; either by pressing undo, or putting your changes in a new layer, etc. In fact this gets back to one of the more interesting secrets out there - so long as you've got decent input tools, like a drawing tablet, computers are actually one of the best tools for learning to draw, simply because you can make so many experiments in such a short period of time. It's completely different from a pencil based drawing, because even doing a little experiment that takes only five minutes to draw on it's own - if you have to erase something you've already drawn, can set you back by hours and hours. On a computer, you can try these experiments fearlessly, knowing that you won't screw up what you've already done. Even one of the most basic operations is hugely more efficient - if you misplace a stroke in a pencil drawing, you have to stop, grab your eraser, and then grab the pencil again; which takes some 4-10 times as long as just tapping undo (this is assuming that like me, you have your left hand permanently sitting on the undo key and modifier keys, whilst your right hand is busily drawing away.



I digress, though. For a simple study image, look at this series of animation frames for the general from Wesnoth. (If you want to see it in action, just download a copy of the development version of battle for wesnoth.) Note the path that his sword takes while swinging through the air.
Image

Try something like this - you need to do major, invasive edits to make this look right, but it's worth it, and it's good practice. Give it a whirl.
Image
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Post by Doubi »

Jetryl wrote:"You're doing it wrong." :( And unfortunately, not matter how well you render the detail on the character, this is going to look like crap because the motion isn't right.
I notice you made a few comments on the first page of this thread Jetryl, but I wonder did you catch up on the intervening banter? In any case, I assure you that it's not some fear or neurosis that's made this sprite end up this way :wink:

This thread's been inactive a long time, so a brief review, for the benefit of all:
As I said, I'm carrying on work that Modanung started. In fact, I haven't actually made anything new yet, I've only removed a couple of frames.

Modanung originally made a sprite in which the attacking arm crossed over the body no problem:
Image

But this was later changed to:
Image

The change was made for the following reason:
Modanung wrote:Reworking the sword attack animation for it to fit the future combat system. And it just looks cooler. :)
(...)
I made them FIT IN the future area of attack of the sword so they can be used for the future combat system. I think you just have to see it animated (as I still have to as well), it would look more odd if the sword didn't pass through that area. Then you would hit monsters the sword didn't pass through by far.
For a further explanation, I think it's useful to look at the weapons development page on the wiki. Please do, it really illustrates the future combat system very well. It's where that weird grid in my gifs above came from:
http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Weapons

Also to aid in the argument here, Modanung posted up an image showing how big these new sword sweeps are going to be in every direction:
Modanung wrote:Here are the bones of all frames:
Image
(Click to enlarge)
So basically, the sprites for the sword swinging, and for all other varieties of weapons, are going to show the player's weapon physically passing through its effective attack area. It's not just a spriting question here, it's tied in with the way the combat itself is carried out.

Also, I think that seeing this animation as "weird looking" is pretty subjective, comparing it as one inevitably does to the way things are done in most other 2D RPGs. But if you just started playing the game and this was already fully implemented, you'd just accept that this is what combat looks like in this game, y'know?

Furthermore, you have to remember the new combat system is going to place a lot more emphasis on the player moving and positioning themselves correctly to attack enemies based on their weapon range, in contrast to the way fighting works at the minute. So sprites where the weapon actually passes through its effective area will probably be more fitting for this. *edit* I notice that Battle for Wesnoth where you took those (very cool) sprites from is turn-based. This is just what I mean; those kinds of sprites are more suited to turn-based strategy rather than more action-based fighting where you're actively running and slashing about.

However, as someone seeing this style of attack (apparently) for the first time, Jetryl makes the point that it does look a bit unnatural. Also, I think what she said about the "isometric perspective at work here" is important too: It's not just a matter of these sprites looking weird in themselves, they're actually not in keeping with the isometric style of everything else in the game.

Personally, I've got used to the idea of the new sprites for the new combat system, and I think it'd be cool to see an RPG were your weapon actually connects for once, rather than just kind of shuffling on the spot and some far removed monster loses HP because you hit them "in theory" :P

On the other hand, I kinda reckon if you took Modanung's first and second slash animations up there and put it to a poll of players unconcerned with the development side, a lot of them would choose the first one, and I could understand why :?

SO... what to do ey?

Alternative solutions:
  • Use Modanung's first animation, BUT have an exaggerated sword swipe effect emanate and cover the effective attack area. Without the player's expansive arm movement, this would look more like an energy pulse being released from the weapon, I think.
  • Use Modanung's first animation, BUT use an effect (dynamic recolouring, or maybe an overlay like the cloud effects in the forest) to momentarily lighten either the full attack area, or the enemies affected within the area. Problem with this is you'd lose the visual correspondance between the weapon and damage.
I really don't like making posts this long... well done if you made it to the end!
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Post by Cosmostrator »

Having done a lot of fencing (sword fighting) myself I would have to agree that the animation does not quite look right, but for a slightly different reason. When you lunge with a sword you keep your back foot stationary and push forward with it. The front foot as well as the body move forward.
Image
One does get into quite awkward positions, and in fact I have seen people fall on their faces :oops:
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Post by Doubi »

Good point Cosmostrator... wow, now you say it I really see it but I doubt I'd have picked that out myself. Will make the necessary adjustments when we decide which way to take these.

Unrelated, but I think the angle of the foot in the 4th and 5th frames as I've used them above looks a little strange, so that'll be fixed too.
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