Ulta posted:

I was trying to make a sneaky rogue today, but I can't get it to express right. Any tips on getting that WoW rogue crouch sneak?

Scut posted:

Hey that's pretty good! Love the popping background. If I could offer some constructive advice, make your darks darker on the figure, try shifting them into a slightly more saturated cooler tones as well. It will make the shading work better in my opinion.

Jackard posted:

Not too familiar with that animation. How about having him lean forward with his head lowered, something like this

Travis343 posted:

When the player gets about midway through the side, a couple of tiles past those side steps, they are moved to the backyard map which is all top down. Trying to do something fancy like scale the player during the move is probably beyond the scope of RPG maker and my skills.

Ulta posted:

That helped! Whats the source on that?

.TakaM posted:

Thanks for the suggestions guys, how's this?
3x
I made the frame where he's half exploded transition smoother, added in more spark effects and added more frames to slow down the fade out at the end. - I also slowed the frames down a bit as he coils back.
I don't want to have him fade to white and explode because the blue and yellow represents him throughout the game , plus the background will fade to white.

edit-
here's a quick example of how it'll look in game

poemdexter posted:

And in game...



And I just realized I missed the little hop.

Ulta posted:

That helped! Whats the source on that?

McKilligan posted:

Loving it! But, it's a little hard to see what's going on, especially if it's smaller than that - are you planning on adding any punch effects, like, colored 'energy' impact effects when you land a hit?

swamp waste posted:

Oh okay. That seems like it might feel weird, like the hill is disappearing when you get close to it? I don't know i'd have to see it in motion. RPG Maker is pretty limiting it's true but if you want to scale the player you could do that in increments with scaled-down sprites. I feel like some 90s RPG did that.

poemdexter posted:

The sprite sheets are still a work in progress but it's a priority that things are very readable especially the punches. We'll probably have some effects a little later to help punch it up (pun intended).

Chipp Zanuff posted:

I hope the update conveys the perspective, since i'm at a loss as to what to do, especially with the chest and hips. I tried shading them to look like they're turned, but i can't escape from the fact that they look like they're being seen in a straight on view.

dizzywhip posted:

Hmm...slowing it down towards the end did give it more impact, but it might have actually made it worse overall because it's pretty stuttery. I'd either go back to the way it was before, speed it up at the beginning instead of slowing it down at the end, or ideally draw more frames to smooth it out again.

I'm being nitpicky though, it looks great, especially in game. I've seen gifs of this game posted a couple times throughout the thread and it's honestly some of my favorite 2D animation I've seen in a game.

McKilligan posted:

Loving it! But, it's a little hard to see what's going on, especially if it's smaller than that - are you planning on adding any punch effects, like, colored 'energy' impact effects when you land a hit?

Chipp Zanuff posted:

I'm still troubled by the perspective, so i've been working on it:

First is a straight on view, the middle two are the original perspectives. 1 = Update 2 = Original and the last is a side on view.



I hope the update conveys the perspective, since i'm at a loss as to what to do, especially with the chest and hips. I tried shading them to look like they're turned, but i can't escape from the fact that they look like they're being seen in a straight on view.

.TakaM posted:

I think the real problem is that you've mirrored the arms and copied the legs, it makes it kinda look like an egyptian hieroglyph.
I suggest something like this:
(edit on the right, switching in the middle)
I made parts of his legs thicker, pulled his left arm up one pixel and pulled it in closer- these changes give it more perspective and depth, I also changed the angle on his right foot.
It's a nice sprite though, I think you've got everything at a good size and it looks in proportion, but I think you're taking a very systematic approach which results in things looking a bit awkward.
Copying one limb to be the other isn't a bad way to work, especially for animations, but you can't just leave it as a perfect copy. It creates a repeating silhouette effect that is hard to ignore, you need to spend extra time to make the limb closest to the camera appear more dominant and just move pixels around on the other.

Jackard posted:

Also this shading looks quite flat (partly due to your palette) nothing appears to be in the foreground or background

Ulta posted:

I think this is better but the body feels flat to me. Also the arm could better but I don't know how

Jackard posted:

Not too familiar with that animation. How about having him lean forward with his head lowered, something like this

.TakaM posted:

I think the real problem is that you've mirrored the arms and copied the legs, it makes it kinda look like an egyptian hieroglyph.
I suggest something like this:
(edit on the right, switching in the middle)

I made parts of his legs thicker, pulled his left arm up one pixel and pulled it in closer- these changes give it more perspective and depth, I also changed the angle on his right foot.

It's a nice sprite though, I think you've got everything at a good size and it looks in proportion, but I think you're taking a very systematic approach which results in things looking a bit awkward.

Copying one limb to be the other isn't a bad way to work, especially for animations, but you can't just leave it as a perfect copy. It creates a repeating silhouette effect that is hard to ignore, you need to spend extra time to make the limb closest to the camera appear more dominant and just move pixels around on the other.
Keep it up, it's coming along very well

dupersaurus posted:

When you're at 3/4 the back shoulder isn't going to be visible, and depending on how big his chest is, a good chunk of the upper arm will be obscured, too. The hips will be the same in regards to the back leg.

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Something like this?:



Two different versions. I'm a bit hesistant to add extra pixels to the arms and legs as they (for me at least) would look odd and out of proportion but i did give it a try in both variations.

Tried taking your advice with the hips for the back leg, but couldn't make it look satisfactory.

dupersaurus posted:

#1 is spot-on. Stand in front of a mirror and stick your chest out, and you'll probably see something like that. #2's a little far forward, as if he was pushing his arm forward some (so maybe part of a walk). But yeah, doing the same with the legs might be tricky since they're so skinny, there's not much to occlude with.

Travis343 posted:

The screen fades to black on the transition so hopefully it's not so jarring, like the hill just vanishes.

I can already think of the events to switch the player to a smaller sprite as they go farther up the hill, but you'd have to either make it a short cutscene where the player loses control of the character or do some event wizardry where the sprite scales back to full-size if the player should decide to turn around and walk back towards the front yard mid-way up the hill. It's doable, but I don't think it's really worth it for something that's probably not going to come up much in the rest of the game.

.TakaM posted:

Are you just talking about the timing on the frames where he coils back? I think it looks smooth enough, I was thinking maybe a way to get more mileage out of the frames would to have him stutter back and forth as he coils back.

Definitely less smooth, but maybe more painful?

dizzywhip posted:

Yeah, to me it seemed like there was too much time between the frames when it slowed down towards the end, which made it seem a little too jerky. I really like this version though, it's unique, and it does look more painful.

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Updated walk animation:

Red Mike posted:

Perspective still doesn't work, in my opinion, the legs specifically. One leg being higher by one pixel just looks weird like that, because it's as if you're looking from slightly above the character. Otherwise, the leg would still go down to the bottom. Shoulder looks better, in that you can't see it any more, and the chest probably looks better, but my colour-anomalous eyes refuse to focus and let me see it properly, so right now his body looks like a weird sausage to me. Not generally a problem, but maybe you could include a 2x or 3x version if it's not too difficult to make for you.

Unrelatedly, the sword trail looks a bit...odd to me, in the sense that it's almost as if it appears too late somehow. It looks less like a sword trail and more of a 'shockwave' after the attack. It's not wrong necessarily, just can't put my finger on what's off about it.


The perspective is okay in this, but you might want to remove the stiffness from the upper body. When someone walks, their body doesn't just go up and down while remaining static. The chest turns slightly to the left and then to the right, and the head bobs slightly.

.TakaM posted:

Are you just talking about the timing on the frames where he coils back? I think it looks smooth enough, I was thinking maybe a way to get more mileage out of the frames would to have him stutter back and forth as he coils back.

Definitely less smooth, but maybe more painful?

_jink posted:

Tales From My Imgur Folder: here's some scraps from a little game-jam game that went so fast off the deep end into cobbled-together mess that I lost heart:


generated buildings that parallaxed past during travel. After making this gif I added little ships that flew past in the distance, smog, and clouds _{(which I'm almost tempted to re-gif as they made it much more atmospheric)}




start of a character panel. The game was about smuggling an AI to the center of the city using vaguely Oregon Trail style resource/risk management -- though it was never super fleshed out.



oh yeah I changed it to a light-cycle at some point