New animations

[Lu Mong]

Hey... it is good... The north shoot is imho great

[toms]

The duelist has another rapier in 1.1? good!

[JW]

zookeeper: I think they look good, but I have two comments about small details:

1) In the melee NE animation the Duelists head turns too quickly and makes his head look odd. If you added a frame or made his head look more like the ranged N animation I think it would look better.
2) In the ranged S animation the Duelists shadow grows too big. It looks awkward. If you shorten it by maybe 25% I think it would look great.

Very nice work!

[Cuyo Quiz]

Fancy.

[Cuyo Quiz]

Fancy.

I like it.

[Redeth]

In the actual frames transparencies are obviously ok, and even the northeast ranged animation looks ok in-game, although I might end up removing the spinning around eventually.

They look great to me.

Well, I've finally learned how to work with layers, so I'm adding shadows to all my animations, playing around with cfgs and testing them in game. I'll post them all together once they're finished, zipped.

I've also done the new impaler attack and I'm working on the goblin pillager death sequence... Almost done, but it's VERY hard since it's a mounted unit. 15 frames so far, looking good.

Goblin Knight should follow, and then I may add new attacks for all of these, aiming north and south.

[Jetrel]

As an official policy, assume that, for all directional animations, the unit suddenly assumes the direction he is operating in.

There are no turning animations, effectively. Even if people want to make content for that, IMO it's a bad idea, because we'd have to make some 64 animations to turn between all of our six directions. Scary.

I hope to eventually have support for warcraft/starcraft-style standing frames. The unit will have a frame for each direction it can face in, and when using that frame would make sense, the unit will use it.

When doing directional animations, make the unit from a standing frame facing in the target direction.

[zookeeper]

There are no turning animations, effectively. Even if people want to make content for that, IMO it's a bad idea, because we'd have to make some 64 animations to turn between all of our six directions. Scary.

64 animations? All you need is frames for the unit standing in various angles (I think 12 would already be enough), and then you can automate the turning in code. But sure, too more work still to make it recommendable (at least until unit graphics are done with 3D models).

As an official policy, assume that, for all directional animations, the unit suddenly assumes the direction he is operating in.
...
When doing directional animations, make the unit from a standing frame facing in the target direction.

A good practice in general, sure, but I still think a special single-swing attack can deserve some extra attention. Would the inconsistency in this case somehow be detrimental to the unit animations in general (meaning, is there a good reason for disallowing turning as part of any animation)? Because quite frankly, doing animations that will look worse in-game because the unit will have to flip around twice is somewhat less interesting.

[Jetrel]

A good practice in general, sure, but I still think a special single-swing attack can deserve some extra attention. Would the inconsistency in this case somehow be detrimental to the unit animations in general (meaning, is there a good reason for disallowing turning as part of any animation)? Because quite frankly, doing animations that will look worse in-game because the unit will have to flip around twice is somewhat less interesting.

I may have been mis-understood. Basically, it depends on the unit's general fighting stance. That stance can have their body oriented in any way, such as the elvish hero who stands with his side facing towards his opponent, looking askance at them, but they must assume a fighting stance targeted at their opponent. Do not use their current standing frame as the starting point, unless the attack is directed to the se/sw. Make a brand new starting point.

What I want to avoid is this: Right now, between every attack, if the unit is facing someone to the north, they will turn around and face to the north for their attack, but then spin back and face south afterwards during the idle and defensive phases of a combat sequence. They will repeat this multiple times in a single combat, essentially spinning around like a gimpy dervish. I've tried this out already, and it looks really bad. Mostly because they will always show an idle animation, using their standing frame, and during that time they are required to face away because we don't have code support or images yet for standing frames.

We need to facilitate a situation where the unit can just face their opponent, and stay facing them while they fight them. To do this, we need those standing images, and we need animations keyed to match.

We're not going to accept any directional animations that start from the base frame unless they are directed towards the se/sw. Ones that work for se/sw, and also ne,nw will be accepted, but that is an exception - the point is NOT to eliminate turning, which can look good, the point is to eliminate unnatural turning.

[Eleazar]

hope to eventually have support for warcraft/starcraft-style standing frames. The unit will have a frame for each direction it can face in, and when using that frame would make sense, the unit will use it.

I don't think such a thing would benefit Wesnoth, since "facing" doesn't and shouldn't effect combat. But having units stand in all 6 directions would dilute the recognisibility of units and imply that facing matters. Unless jet's saying he wants it for the inbetweens of different attacks. (Not entirely sure that the missunderstanding he corrected Zookeeper for is the same as what i think he's might be saying)

If people are wanting to make more frames, i once again bring up the concept of an "en guarde" frame that the unit uses (instead of the normal standing frame) whenever it's standing next to an enemy it can attack. Besides making the game prettier, it would also provide useful gameplay information. For instance archers would put an arrow to their bow and knights would lower the lance.

[toms]

Ok, then we could also have stationary animations for all units.
I would also like to have another frame when a fight starts.

[Redeth]

Ok, the goblin impaler is done. Death and 3 attacks (side attack looks good both ne/se). They may be far from perfect but it's the best I can do given my current animation skills (or lack of).

I've also tested them in game and therefore provide the corresponding .cfg file that should be used. Now I wish I could find a DECENT sound for the melee attacks, it would enhance the effect enormously... Oh well.

On the sad news, both the goblin spearman death and goblin rouser new attack didn't look so well in game, so I trashed them Maybe I can redo them and finish my other animations, we shall see...

The whole thing took me way longer than I thought and for a moment the little rascal really got on my nerves, so I'm not touching a pixel of it anymore. Of course you're free to improve the pics in any you want, that's one of the points of releasing them

[turin]

So, uh... if Jetryl doesn't have the time to commit all of these, someone should. There's a bunch of good animations here.



Anyway, here's a 9-frame death animation for the Troll Whelp. Opinions?

[turin]

Been having fun tonight.

Here's a skeleton death animation. He already has one (which I made), but it's two frames, and practically worthless. This one's 8 frames, and much better, I think.

[JW]

Turin: both those death animations make the units appear incredibly thinner as they die. With the skeleton this may be appropriate as he is only bones, but the ribcage and femurs would still be of a decent size I would think.

I'm not an artist though, so this is only from my eye of 23 years of un-artistic experience.

I would like to make it clear that I believe both have promise. Your wolf rider animation has proven you have the talent to make them look beautiful.