WSAS: Milestone Three

[thespaceinvader]

Don't forget that, unlike the slash animation, there will probably be some slide in the spear one, which should remove that impression.

[Girgistian]

Wow, I really like the huge momentum on the halberd - looks awesome . The tail movement's a cool detail, too. As for critique, they all (thrust, cut, and south-cut) could still do with 1 or 2 extra frames between the striking and the hitting frames. The south-chop would kind of especially require this, so there'd be an extra frame presenting the head from an angle between the original and the face-on-camera ones. Also, there seems to be some wobbling going on with his right knee-armor in both slashing attacks.

Aside from those, though, I really want to stress that these look great, and I'm glad that you're working on these fellas. Unless you've got plans for certain units, I could try to see to some of the yet-to-be-done base frames while messing with the vikings.

[thespaceinvader]

Jet assures me that the base frames are under control - either Neorice will do them, or he will.

I'll try to curtail the slight bulging in the knee, but I think extra frames are unnecessary - too may, and the snappiness of the motion is diluted. I'll do some final testing once I've twiddled a bit with that knee, but I think they probably won't be needed. KISS, after all, applies to animations as well.

[Neoskel]

Whoa, those halberd animations rock.

Thing is, that south facing helmet doesn't look like the same helmet as the normal facing. The eye holes are too close together and it's missing the lateral ridge between them.

It's really great to see these guys finally get animations. I can't wait till they're actually in the game.

[Eternal]

Those halberd swings have so much reach that the unit shouldn't move when making melee attacks for it to look good.
I think it's possible with WML, but my knowledge is limited.

Stab anims could be a bit smoother though.
Great work overall!

[thespaceinvader]

That's the plan, Eternal. Has been right from the start. It's reasonably easy to implement, too, I've done it before with the Water Serpent. People REALLY need to read the damn thread...

[thespaceinvader]

I've made some very, very minor tweaks, not worth uploading, and cut up into frames. Just doing some testing, and discussing some things with jet, then I'll (hopefully) be committing the first of the new Drakes.



EDIT: knocked together a quick defence animation.

[A-Red]

I know its unfinished and you may have caught this, but the spikes on the halberd (both on the top and rear) both grow noticeably on the frame where the halberd is fully raised.

[thespaceinvader]

The trear one is not noticeable to me, but i'll fix the top one in the morning. For now, sleep.

[melinath]

I think the rear one doesn't actually get longer - it gets thinner + thus looks longer. Looking good.

[Jetrel]

This is a prototype for how we should do all spear animations - a few frames of (hopefully!) shared windup between both SE and S, and then a few frames of the spear being thrust. Like most of our animations, to give it significant pop, there are no intermediary frames between the windup and the thrust. The sudden snap to the new position, and the motion blur gives the impression of quick movement.

[deserter]

Should the shoulder pad move downwards at some point in the defend animation?
Now it stays up there when the main body crouches a bit. Some movement would be nice IMO at least. Now it stays still when everything else moves.

EDIT: It does move in a way. It changes it's form a bit at least. i just didn't see it first.

EDIT2: Added an edited animation. The inner blob on the shoulder pad moves down one pixel. Otherwise looks like I left a hole or something in that frame (3rd).

slasher-defend.gif (5.92 KiB) Viewed 3205 times

[thespaceinvader]

Fixed that.

This should be all the files for the south and southest blade attacks and defence for the Slasher and Warden (Neorice finished the Warden sprite yesterday). I'll sort the pierce anim... some time... from the blocking Jet posted.

NOt this evening, though, I'm going out for dinner in about half an hour.

[Jetrel]

Update from Neoriceisgood; We have new base frames for the Gladiator, Enforcer, Warden, and also for the Sky Drake:

The gladiator and enforcer's helms should be much better-suited for the "headbutt" attack.

[Jetrel]

Also, I should note a tentative plan for the burners (well, actually "all firebreathing drakes").

They'll have 3 sub-animations for their fire-attack:
- The first will be one of them inhaling, rearing back, spreading their arms out, and dramatically puffing up their chest (like the "big bad wolf"). This will only place once, at the very beginning of a fight. It'll probably be 3-4 easy-to-make frames. We should only need one of this for both SE and S.
- The second animation will be one of them leaning forward and spouting flames. It'll be about 2 very similar frames, one with lighting effects on it. I don't know, but I suspect we might need separate SE and S versions of this. We'll try and make SE first and see if it works.
- The third is a ranged-defense animation. The 'trick' with this one is that it'll be halfways between standing, and the low lean-forward used for flaming. This way, it'll be useable both when the drake attacks first, and when the enemy attacks first; if it were lower than the flaming animation, it'd look odd when he suddenly snapped into upon being attacked. This should be like the flaming animation WRT directionality; we'll see.


When I have a bit of free-time, I'll try to prototype this for the burner, although my first priority is working with neoriceisgood to make sure all the base frames are done before he goes on vacation this coming saturday.