Death Animations

[XJaPaN]

Why don't we start a death animations thread? The purpose of this thread is posting death animations, maybe if we get enough they will be implented (looks strange if just a handful units will get death animations).

I am going to start with a death animation for the young ogre... 2 frames!

[mage.of.light]

I like the idea! I think mostly it would be like higher lvl units though?
and is there game code to handle this?
edit: btw before you get started on a lot, it looks like those have a white BG not transparent?

[MadMax]

XJaPaN, you sure you want to go ahead?

This would take literally hundreds of new images, which would be a massive drain on the artists, and add a megabyte or two to the already-bloated ?30MB that Wesnoth takes up. This would probably require a lot of code changes, and could slow a game down if there are enough deaths in a turn.

[turin]

YES! YES! CONTINUE!


This is a really good idea, IMHO. It will not take up a whole lot of extra space because the images are only 72*72. The main part of that download is probably portraits, story images and music. One story image is equal to probably 20 animations.

As for slowing down the game, doubtful. This would just take the place of the 'fade to red' effect.

[Elvish_Pillager]

'fade to red'

It's not red. Where'd you get that idea?

[Jetrel]

DO IT.

I am, of course, busy, but PLEASE feel free to do as much work as you want on this.
This would quite significantly improve the look of the game, and given the triviality of adding support for such an animation, I'm sure dave would be happy to code it.


Really - Death animations are one of the short - but - deep list of things I'd like to have done, things that will take a crazy amount of work, but will make the game look great as a result.

They are the things that separate us from Chrono Trigger, or Secret of Mana. One of the other biggest items I have is walking frames, in all three cardinal directions (up, down, sideways). Right now, I'm trying like crazy to bump all of our core sprites into "final, version 1.0" form. I'm trying to do it quickly, because I don't want to have to say what is below this text to a potential sprite artist:

Plus, I want to get back to making NEW things, rather than refurbishing old things. The former is a lot more fun.
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A couple notes, though. Don't do the following:
a] The elves will be getting revised, and anything done to them will likely be wasted.
b] Several of the core human foot-soldiers are getting size tweaks or otherwise, so the same applies.

But feel free to do these:
c] The orcs are mostly in finished, final form.
d] The undead are also finished.
e] The miscellaneous monsters are finished, too.
f] What naga we have are done.

and god only knows what's up with the drakes... If neo comes back, he would likely be more qualified than anyone else to do the job, but, uh...[/b]

[Darth Fool]

The best way to get this implimented is to have enough death animations done that people start taking it seriously. Then, either a Dev might get interested and impliment it, or some other coder might make a patch. I don't think that it would either be a lot of code, or a lot of memory, but it will be a lot of art work. Still, there have been very few aesthetic features that artists have demonstrated a willingness to complete that haven't been ultimately implimented. There have been lots of ideas that no artist have ever really committed to, that , while perhaps good, have died lonely deaths....

edit: re: size tweaks, reasonable death animations should be impervious to small size tweaks...

[Rhuvaen]

I concur with those voices that claim this is a good and noble cause!

Concerning the images you posted: not bad, but I think the first thing dying units should do is drop their weapons... that ogre continues to hold that club or cleaver menacingly, so it's not really clear that he's dying

[MadMax]

also, PLEASE try to have a minimum of gore, because we do want this to be appealing to as wide of an age group as possible. (BTW, XJaPaN's images are good in this regard)

[turin]

I call skeleton animations. I'll probably have them done this weekend.

[turin]

preliminary sketches...


(I tried to do something like that done in HoMM3, not sure if I succeeded).

[mage.of.light]

Yeah I definitly don't think this would take up too much room or would be too hard to implement... 'tis a very good idea instead of fade to clear (ahem) IMHO...
if anyone wants me to work on something I can, otherwise I might pick something up randomly this weekend... I have never really done any wesnoth graphics, except make a baby yeti for my campaign I roughly started... how do you upload them anyway?
also, orcs are definitly final jetryl? they are like the oldest apart from elves right? I think some of them could use some vamping, like the warrior (last I looked, like 3 versions ago) who looks not too similar to the assasin? but this is for another thread... anyways. yeah I am open this weekend, and I always wanted something to start on. maybe I'll animate some of neo's old stuff...

[turin]

To upload, select "add an attachment", then browse your computer for the file to upload, then hit upload...

[XJaPaN]

[mage.of.light]

oh thats rught turin, it was just whenever I hit add attachment no box opened up below like it was supposed to... =(
the bat looks cool, but we should keep in mind this will be coming off of a defend pose. it might look odd to have them defend, then go back to normal, then fall over dead.
for all units not just bat