New playerset's frames and animation

[Pauan]

Thank you for both your kind words and helpful criticism!

I agree that it would work better as a throwing animation, as in for a boomerang or similar.

I also agree that in concept Don's alternative is better. However keep in mind that that looks more like a tiny dagger being swung around madly. It will need to be tweaked so as to be usable for longer swords (as in my concept). You have to remember the game is portrayed at a 45 degree angle, so if you swung a sword, the sword itself would appear more as in my animation. A simple perspective change combined with tweaking should be enough to make Don's animation quite usable. In fact, the perspective itself doesn't need to change much, since it's already very close to 45 degrees. I can try and do some tweaks on it, if you don't mind?

[Crush]

I think it should be possible to use the same animation for swinging attacks and thrown weapons. When the animation looks a bit like throwing it is definitely another plus for it.

[Tametomo]

Ooookay guys, I was bored and decided to do some tweaking. Tell me what you think! I may even decide to do the sides and back too.

Normal / with hat and shield:



Compare with the old ones:

The animation looks great, but I don't quite like how fast the person can pull the sword back when finished. I don't think that it should require more frames, but you could run it backwards before hitting again. That should give it a little more fluidity.

EDIT: Here's a quick edit that does what I was talking about. Warning, I am not much of an animator, so there could be some better timings for what I did:

[Pauan]

The animation looks great, but I don't quite like how fast the person can pull the sword back when finished. I don't think that it should require more frames, but you could run it backwards before hitting again. That should give it a little more fluidity.

I pardon your ignorance. Every frame has it's own set time, in milliseconds. If I wanted to, I could have made it have an incredibly long starting and stopping frame. Such things are easy to do both in GIMP and in .xml files. Thanks for the kind words though.

P.S. Since the times are so easy to change, think of this as a rough mock-up. Obviously some swords in-game will swing faster than others, etc. Some will also have more or less recoil. You can change those things very easily, even if you use the exact same image for all the sword swings.

P.P.S. I don't think running it backwards would help, since it'd just feel unnatural and robotic. Instead I'd need to create 2-3 more frames for a "back-slash" animation. This shouldn't be too difficult, I don't think.

EDIT: Ah, I see now. Yes actually that does look quite a bit more natural! Thank you very much!

[Slave]

reguarding the backslash, i dont think that should exist since soeone noted that it would be stupid looking having the animations trike twice and the damage only happen once.

[Sertraline]

I think it should be possible to use the same animation for swinging attacks and thrown weapons. When the animation looks a bit like throwing it is definitely another plus for it.

I would certainly agree that it would work for swinging attacks, but I think the amount of momentum that goes into the swing would only be appropriate for a two-handed sword.

If the animation was modified for two handed swords, it wouldn't be completely backwards compatible with thrown weapons, but at least they could be close enough that it would not require much work on the artist.

[Black Don]

I think Pauan's animation is fine, especially since he tweeked it. I through out my idea because there was no apparent movement on this subject and I just wanted to give some fresh ideas so things could once again get going.

[Pauan]

reguarding the backslash, i dont think that should exist since soeone noted that it would be stupid looking having the animations trike twice and the damage only happen once.

I agree, but that is not what I am thinking of. Isn't it obvious? You hit the attack button once, and the player attacks. You hit the attack button a second time.. and.. the player attacks again. In the exact same way. Boring.

I think it'd be very nice to have two slashing animations. You attack the first time, and it shows the first animation. But if you attack a second time in rapid succession, it will show the second "backslash" animation. Nice, eh? A lot less boring, and only a few frames more. Yes, I know, it'll mean a few frames more of clothing to do too (ick), but the end result will be multiple times more enjoyable and interesting, rather than the same boring animation over and over again.

You could even mix it up a bit, for instance give it a random chance to do a backslash animation. For example, you attack first with the normal animation (normal is always first), then there's an 80% chance for it to do a backslash animation IF you hit the attack button a second time. With just a few frames more the animation becomes several times less boring.

I could probably even tweak it down to 2 frames, and reuse a lot of the current ones. I'll see what I can do. If done properly, it would only require one or two more frames, but have such a huge impact on the final result. Remember that our players are going to be attacking thousands and thousands of times.. sometimes in just one day! They don't want to see the same boring attack animation done in the exact same way.. every... single... time...

[ElvenProgrammer]

I could probably even tweak it down to 2 frames, and reuse a lot of the current ones.

We should always keep in mind we can also cross reference frames between different animations, so the ones you add could be reused for other attack types meaning no additional drawing work for clothing.

What we really need now is try to sketch all the attack sequences, evaluate common points and try to track down the necessary frames. Then we can start the refining part.

[Pauan]

Okay guys, here's my first mock attempt. Also, something very interesting to note: I didn't actually create any more frames. I reused all of the current ones. This means that (if this is acceptable) we can have much more variety and have TMW be far less boring... without actually having to do more work! I also tweaked some things in the old one too.

New version:


New version with backswing:


How it might end up looking to a player (if accepted):


Also, the hat+shield one needs to be tweaked a bit on the backswing, but that isn't a problem with the playerset.

NOTE: The backswing will only ever show up if the player repeatedly hits the attack button. So if you only hit the attack button once, it will only ever show the normal animation. However, if the player keeps hitting the attack button over and over, it will have a percentage of backswings (e.g. on the second attack, there's a 70% chance for a backswing). So it isn't that the backswing animation shows up for one attack. Instead, it fluidly changes from normal attack to backswing on the second attack.

[Crush]

The attack with an additional back swing could be a special attack.

[Pauan]

The attack with an additional back swing could be a special attack.

Quite right, it could be. But I still think it'd get boring seeing the same animation over and over again. Also, as I said, I used the same frames and only modified the weapon "blur." In fact, by changing the blur or even using the particle engine (!) you could create a variety of neat effects with just these few frames...

[Len]

Isn't Black Don's version more natural? Is it not the general principle not to over extend oneselves?




Anyway, regarding this attack sequence, the balance was definitely off. It doesn't make sense to have the torse twisted when the weapon is in front, it should twist when the weapon is at the side. Right now, it seems like the weapon is being swinged by the body, and the arm just happen to swing along without exerting any force.

Moreover, the player's waist and left feets has magically become thinner. From my understanding, in the game, object farther away doesn't get smaller, so it wouldn't make sense to have thin arm.

However, good job for improving it, it is definitely much better than the previous version (the bottom row, aww my eyes, the zombie effects - w
hen animation resemble human, but not quite right), although it is still lacking in some positions.

Balance is Irrelevant (just make it look good ) , just look at these examples from professional games (use as a reference only)



Notice they almost always step into it

[Rotonen]

As long as it looks good, it is good.

On the other hand, our current one does not.

There was a good example of a simple overhead swing posted by Saphy somewhere which actually looked good.

[Len]

As long as it looks good, it is good.

On the other hand, our current one does not.

There was a good example of a simple overhead swing posted by Saphy somewhere which actually looked good.

Here's a two-handed weapon attack animation:

That one? Its not overhead its not even over the shoulder