Player-set 1.5

[Lizandra]

Ahahah =P no I guess

oh and i don't want to diminish the work! looks great! awesome job skipy! lots of work!

[skipy]

this is a fast demo of how easy it is to edit.......all i did here was fit frames...no real edits at all...DEMO/test

-skipy

[Derpella]

I see no frame with frontal "concentrating with joined palms" pose...

[Crush]

There are also some other frames which are problematic. You also cheated a bit by chosing an equipment piece without sleeves.

But I still support your cause: We need to motivate graphic artists to convert the existing equipment to the new playerset poses.

[skipy]

and i forgot 2 0r 3 ....i spent 4 min doing it , at 4:00am ...just wanted to see what can be done with as little work as possible.

think of it in steps.. this being a look at step 1 only.

step #1-- fit frames (this is a look at step 1)

step #2--editing,adding and removing pixels

step #3--detailing and a last look of what it needs

---skipy

[argul]

Hi,

If I count correctly I see 84 frames per gender now?
Would it be possible to assemble break down the frames into more parts, such as here http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 88#p101888
So you would have different leg movements, different torso including arms and different head movements.
These could be put together by the game engine (mana client). I would expect to have even less images needed then.

Also another question:
Is it possible once the player set is 'done' to automatically convert all current equipment?
I mean is it just number changeing in the xmls or do we even need to adapt some pixels?

The reason I am asking is the manaserv demo I am currently contributing to.
That demo should show off that manaserv is a matured by now. Later on a new
game should be started using manaserv, and therefore a nice playerset is required.

[Crush]

As someone who is both a programmer and a pixel artist I consider this whole "breaking the playerset down into parts" idea a step in the wrong direction. I know, we programmers consider any kind of redundancy a dangerous anti-pattern, but you can not directly transfer this dogma to pixel art.

By working with different parts of the playerset in separate images, you are forcing the artist to work in a very abstract way without viewing the whole result of the work. I am used to working that way when programming, but when doing art this sounds like a very hard and cumbersome way to work. And when you then expect the artists to puzzle everything together by editing xml files with a text editor, you are far outside of the confort zone of every artist who isn't also a programmer.


In my opinion, the only way to get a more "artist-friendly" playerset is to cut down on the total number of frames. There are a lot of frames in the playerset which are very similar. You should look for opportunities to remove all but one and use it in multiple animations. And then you should look into some animations which are simply unnecessary. Like the distinction between one-handed and two-handed attacks and the cast magic animation which could easily be represented by one of the standard attack animations.

[skipy]

the player set-1.5 is a hack job of the first. but is was done to work with what we have and to cut down of the number of edits/redo on equipment.
1 way to cut down on frames to to cut don't on what the player can use do to class/????/stats . (like if you use 2-handed weapons you are a Barbarian and Barbarians can only use Barbarian stuff) ...that would save a lot of work ..

as far as player set-2 i think a bigger question is not being asked......what style of perspective dose "the mana world" want??????
as of now it use 35 to 45-degree perspective ...some old 16bit games use 35o-45o perspectives or even 0o-45 (can be see in games like chrono trigger , secret of mana ,secret of evermore , and others).
or the game can locked to a perspective (like the older final fantasy games).

"By working with different parts of the playerset in separate images, you are forcing the artist to work in a very abstract way"
indeed... i use back ground layers of mock towns. artiest-A may fit the arm on different then artiest-B,artiest-C may have no idea what to do and stop before they start and we wil talk about artiest-D . so im for keeping the player in one part (not lots of parts). un less arms were the only part ,they seem to be the most problematic.

"in my opinion, the only way to get a more "artist-friendly" playerset is to cut down on the total number of frames."
i agree. there is lot of ways to make less look like more and to meny frames can make some things looks messy in game.
but , ....how meny?

@argul "just number changeing in the xmls or do we even need to adapt some pixels?"-->yes and no..some/lots new frames use doubles of old frames. is a madding things to do ..would make me crazy to try.. but finding the double-frames and building a guide of what the game uses would help in a lot of ways and save work(things like boots this would be good)...but there are lots of new frames needed as well on other stuff(like gloves).

[mistergrey]

Not to necro this topic, but it seems useful. I skipped the last few pages so if my suggestion has been said, just ignore this. A magic casting animation, while cool, is pretty unnecessary. I tried making new gloves recently, and the amount of frames needed... was very discouraging. And this is only using the frames currently used in game, I didn't even start on the other unadded animations yet. If anything is done for magic, make it simple - use an old frame, like the dagger attack, or make one frame raising an arm, maybe make the hand's outline glow for a second before the attack would hit.

This isn't to criticize - we all want new weapons, and we want the attacks to look decent. But, I very much understand how a new artist might volunteer to make one piece of equipment, get overwhelmed, and not bother. Great job on the added animations, though!

[skipy]

i get what is being said and understand/agree .. so what would be a good limit to how meny frames ? 20? 30? 40? hmmmm

oh and anyone feel free to cut and test (my ego will be fine .. unless it looks bad lol/jaja ).

[Speiros02]

I appreciate the time passed between posts here, but have the shields been considered into the display?

[Reid]

I appreciate the time passed between posts here, but have the shields been considered into the display?

The 1handed-sword animation can support shield animation, but nobody tested it afaik...