New animations

[zookeeper]

Translation: The Saurian Idling Animation that Syntax Error made and Urs would really like to see in game is not yet committed, despite being good enough, according to general consensus.

Point taken. I'll try to do something about that.

Forgot to mention that I committed this a while ago already.

[zookeeper]

Here's a first, rough, draft of a new troll whelp die anim, in the style of the old but sprite of the new. It was just bugging me that we still had the old die anim for the new troll whelp, especially since the trolls look ten times cooler now.

If you are (or someone else is) willing to spend more time on this, I'd have a wish: have him petrify, then crumble into little pieces of stone instead. During the petrification he could move into a bit of an agonized stance, and then simply crumble into pieces (small or large, whichever looks nice).

[thespaceinvader]

I honestly think the old one looks fine for the new sprite - the pose is the same, and him turning green as he does a superquick decompose works absolutely fine.

[Flametrooper]

Okay. I like the petrify idea. I don't think that using the old anim for the new sprite (turning green as he decomposes) works, but that's my personal opinion, and as such doesn't really matter.
I'll spend some more time playing around with this.

[Zhukov]

Couple questions regarding animations:

• Do we want north and south melee attack sequences? If so, do we have any current examples? (I couldn't find any.)

• Do we want directional standing/facing unit images? (Umm... in case it isn't clear, by this I just mean images of the unit facing the various directions, probably in an 'en garde' type pose.)

• Are there any particular priorities?

[Jetrel]

Couple questions regarding animations:

• Do we want north and south melee attack sequences? If so, do we have any current examples? (I couldn't find any.)

• Do we want directional standing/facing unit images? (Umm... in case it isn't clear, by this I just mean images of the unit facing the various directions, probably in an 'en garde' type pose.)

I've come to realize that we don't need as much in the directional department as I'd thought, and that actually having four unique facings for each unit would be worse, believe it or not, than having two (except in cases of long-bodied units like horsemen and wolves). The simple trick is that direct front-on and back-on facings (e.g. direct N/S) generally look stilted compared to a more dynamic pose, or a pose facing diagonally. Furthermore, as has already been demonstrated on units like the spearman, a unit can easily transition from a base frame into anything in that demi-circle of directions; e.g. from a S/SE base frame, the unit will look fine doing anything to the S/SE/SW.


So what we need is this:
- 1 SE/S standing frame. 1 NE/N standing frame.
- 1 SE/S defense animation. 1 NE/N defense animation. Preferably 2 frames for these, but can vary according to unit.


In melee:
For units with thrusting weapons:
- 1 N, 1 S, 1 NE, and 1 SE attack animation. (We've practically got all of these done, actually, we just need the base frames and defend frames to surround them. These only need to be 1-2 frames long.)

For units with sweeping/swung weapons:
- 1 SE/S attack animation. 1 NE/N attack animation. (These should be several frames long.)


In ranged:
For units with thrown (or otherwise dubious in direction, such as magic) weapons:
- 1 SE/S attack animation. 1 NE/N attack animation. (usually only 1-3 frames)

For units with very obviously directed weapons, like the thunderer:
- 1 N, 1 S, 1 NE, and 1 SEattack animation. (note - this does NOT include crossbows.)

For all units with ranged attacks:
- 1 SE/S, 1 NE/N ranged standing frame (unless their base frame works as such).
- 1 SE/S, 1 NE/N ranged defense frame.




Side notes:
- I don't know what the hell we're gonna do about bows. I know from looking at the current crossbow attacks (which I've propogated to everything already, naturally), that crossbows need only two direction-variants; SE/S, and NE/N. I am -seriously- hoping we can do this with bows as well; but whatever we do is probably going to be rather invasive for our current bow frames (unless we simply add N and S). To determine this, we'll try making directional variants for a single elf - probably the archer, and see how things fly; see what works.

- Eventually, I'd like to having standing animations, based in part due to how insanely better it makes things look, and due to how suprisingly well the animation engine handles it (so long as you don't spill out of the hex during the animation, which would cause slowdowns if several units were doing it). These would be subtle stuff like the unit breathing/bobbing, capes shifting. We're adding this first to the units that desperately/obviously need it, like those who flap their wings, or who are permanently on fire, in whole or in part (goblin pillager). The vampire bats already have this, and I'm thinking of adding it to the ghosts as I TC them.

- Idle animations don't need a NE/N facing variant. The unit will just play the south-facing animation; many other videogames have proven this looks just fine. Especially since they don't play any idle animations when right next to an enemy (which would be a strange situation to turn around during).

- The spectre of moving animations still hangs in the distance. For some units, we can get away with just two directions (bats, here's looking at you). But I'm strongly inclined to believe that we'll need four for normal units. This is generally on hold until the TC project is done, and we're well in earnest on directional facings.

[Jetrel]

• Are there any particular priorities?

Sure. Try making north-facing frames for the goblin spearman line. We've already got half of them, since we have the melee attack frames; all we need is a standing frame, and defense frames.

[Redeth]

• Are there any particular priorities?

Sure. Try making north-facing frames for the goblin spearman line. We've already got half of them, since we have the melee attack frames; all we need is a standing frame, and defense frames.

I'm nearly done with these, sorry

[Zhukov]

Sure. Try making north-facing frames for the goblin spearman line. We've already got half of them, since we have the melee attack frames; all we need is a standing frame, and defense frames.

I'm nearly done with these, sorry

Wait... so I don't need to do these?

(It's not a problem. I've only just started on them.)

[Jetrel]

I'm nearly done with these, sorry

Wait... so I don't need to do these?

(It's not a problem. I've only just started on them.)

I guess not. I didn't know if redeth was busy with the horses, first, so - let's leave the goblins to him.

Options include nearly everything, but here are a few ones that come to mind:
- The saurian skirmisher
- The dwarven guardsman
- The dwarven thunderer
- The troll whelp

[Girgistian]

And now for something completely different. I made a few extra pictures for the sky drake melee attack animation for a start, and here they are all packed up. There's also a new model canditate for the orcish assassin (not replacing, just an addition). See if it's okay and then please tell if I should draw the animations for him.

[thespaceinvader]

First off, welcome to the forums =)

The thought's nice, and your orcish assassin sprite is reasonable, but not really Wesnoth style (Wesnoth uses fairly distorted proportions, while your sprite is relatively realistically proportioned) however the sky drake animation suffers from a common beginner's mistake of only moving the active element. See this Wiki page for information on how to avoid this. Also, the Drake sprites are being reworked so that they are team coloured, so animations on the current ones are more than a little extraneous anyway.

Stick around, there's plenty to do - death, recruitment and idle animations for any unit currently without them are appreciated =) Keep up the good work.

[zookeeper]

There's also a new model canditate for the orcish assassin (not replacing, just an addition). See if it's okay and then please tell if I should draw the animations for him.

Well, as thespaceinvader pointed out, it's in a bit of a different style than the Wesnoth sprites in general. Also, it's rather redundant since (as you said) the assassin already has good sprites and animations.

Since you can clearly do sprite art, I'm sure Jetryl can point you to some specific little project that needs doing. Reworking existing finished art just isn't very useful to be honest.

Otherwise, I think (as I didn't actually do comparisons) it's a bit too big too for a lvl1 unit. You should compare it in size to the current assassin and other lvl1 units and try to work out the correct size for a sprite that way. It's perhaps also pictured a little too much directly from the side, whereas the Wesnoth perspective tends to be a little bit higher.

[Jetrel]

Girgistian: Thanks for taking a shot at things!

Couple of things I want to mention:
1] Your graphics work is not pixel art, and if we're gonna use it, you'll need to make it as pixel art. This means you're going to need to use the pencil tool to create all that stuff - your current sprites are blurry, because they're made with the "brush" tool - don't use the brush tool, stick to the pencil tool alone.

2] For the team-colored patches, not just any magenta color will do - it has to be a small set of ~16 exact shades of magenta that we've told the game to use for that. The best way to get one of these shades is just to sample it from an official game sprite, with the eyedropper tool.

3] The best thing for you to work on would be a better melee animation for the orcish assassin, since you seem to be interested in that unit. Take the one frame we've got already, and make a bunch of inbetween frames between it and the standing frame.

Like zookeeper said, we neither want nor will accept additional models for units. We need better animations for the existing ones, rather than more models that would need to be animated.

4] When you make animations, you can't get away with just moving one little part of the body - you have to move every single part of the body, because every single part of the body would be shifting independently. Every time a single part of the body moves, the rest have to react to keep things in balance.

[Girgistian]

Right, I'll start working on the assassin and see if I can come up with anything. Would you happen to have somesort of a picture which the assassin's model is based on? Drawing from a clear character would be a lot easier than just copying the pixeled details.

And since shadows are supposed to be done with 60% opacity and blurred edges, they can be done with the brush tool, right?