I tried making the animation a little more jerky... it's kind of difficult. I can see how it should look in my brain, but making the skeleton do it is a whole new story lol.

I'll try moving the torso a bit too, but this is what I've got so far.




-Pickle

ok, so pneumonia was kinda done when I said it was done lol... been tired lately, but I'm getting there

Here's a rough draft of a skeleton running... I realize that he needs to move his arms and torso a bit, and that I should face his head forwards... but it's a start





-Pickle

lol... bow-chicka-wow-wow!

Hey guys,

pneumonia finally done... man am I glad that's finally over lol

Be expecting more updates this upcoming week


-Pickle

Hehe... I'll let you know when the time is right

in the mean time... ACK A SKELETON!!



ok... fever of 102... back to bed for me.

-Pickle

I tried doing that, but I'm at the point where image quality suffers if I shrink any further... plus we were thinking about having a stealth mode later on where the character would be in a crouched walk position (think rouges in world of warcraft).

-Pickle

Thanks matheus... I am taking it pretty easy. It's been pretty easy since my kids in school, and these past couple days he's taken a nap on the way home from school, so I've been able to get plenty of rest.

Other than that, being sick is really really boring lol. So it's been a good opportunity to work on the game animations.

One problem we recently came across is that the character is taller than the ground tiles, so her head kind of sticks into the roof of the caves when running... to fix that, I'm making animations for her to crouch, then walk in a crouched position.

Here's the rough draft:


* I realize her left leg looks kind of weird around frame 5... I'll fix that later.
* Oh, and the reason why her arms are like that is because she's suppose to be holding a 2 handed weapon like a spear.... i just forgot to show it lol



-Pickle
Edit: Added one-handed crouching animation

It's an interesting idea...

For me, I usually daydream about every aspect of the game before starting, and when I start I daydream of millions of fans and unicorns and beautiful women all saying "zomg I love your game pickle, will you marry me?"....and then it rains money.

I call it "sanity off".


-Pickle

Sorry for the lack of updates guys... I've been really under the weather and it turns out that I have pneumonia... 2013 isn't going well for me lol.


-Pickle

Lol, I thought the exact same thing... the issue is that she's suppose to be holding a shield in this animation... since I didn't animate the shield, I tried to position her hand where her shield would be lol.



-Pickle

Colored in the female get up animation.



I think I need to work on the "getting up" part a bit more, but I'm going to clean it up a bit, and slap it onto the sprite sheet so I can move on.


-Pickle

Lol... I'm not that awesome    ... I'm just a nerd that enjoys nerdy things.


-Pickle

Non-sense! That grass tile looks fantastic

-Pickle

Lol... I thought it was pretty funny... but I can't disable the ad block at work.


-Pickle

The webpage scrolling is kind of annoying since I'm at work and can't control the adblocker that's been put on here...

I guess I'll have to suffer lol




-Pickle

Past:
- Only one of my friends to graduate highschool.
- First on my father's side of the family to graduate college (majored in computer science).
- Worked for NASA.
- Got married, had a son (one of my greatest accomplishments )

Short-term future:
- Get Ünembra to an alpha state.
- Help support my brother as he supports my niece who's undergoing chemo-therapy for leukemia.

Long-term Future:
- Helping my son overcome the challenges his autism has brought, and exploit the advantages it has (kids crazy smart for a 3yr old lol).
- Break my grandparents record of 57yrs married ( 49yrs to go )
- Publish a book.

That's about it for now


-Pickle

If file size isn't an issue... I'd suggest using photoshop:

1. Paint a large picture.
2. Shrink the large picture down.
3. Save as png24.
4. Use slick to incorporate the image.

I know it's not true pixel art, but it works pretty well for me


-Pickle

If fun is put aside, why am I doing this game!?

Wireframe for the "get up" animation...




I'm anxious to get all these basic animations done so I can go back to level design


-Pickle

Lol. Yeah I plan on having other fall down animations... like falling like a tree or a stagger then collapse. This one would most likely occur when you get hit with a spell like a fireball or something.

In other news, my niece is out of ICU, they removed the tumor in her chest... i guess through chemo? But I think she's got a few more days at the children's hospital before going home, but things seem to be doing well so far


-Pickle

Second draft of the knock down animation... Still some polishing left to do, but I'm not going to go too much into it since there's still more animations to go.

First draft


Second draft


-Pickle

Right now all we have stumpy are a ground and a character running/jumping lol. The programmer is going to start working on npc's here in the next few days and I've been trying to get a damage/death animation done so he can start expanding on that.

When we get something that's somewhat playable, we'll let you guys test it out


Thanks for showing interest though, it does more than you can imagine when it comes to keeping me motivated


-Pickle

Thanks Jimmt, not much else I can do

Here's my first attempt at a "knock-down" animation.






-Pickle

Hey guys,

I haven't really worked at all on this in the past few days. I found out my 9yr old niece has leukemia, so I've been going through all that crap. She's out of ICU and doing good from what I've heard, but she's just starting on a long crappy road.

I'm still intent on making the game, and I've been inspired to make her part of it, so I'll let you guys know how things develop



-Pickle

Thanks Stumpy... now I want to stop drawing sprite sheets and move onto particles lol.


-Pickle

Looks awesome Stumpy!

I'm going to have to create something like that for my game when it comes to spells and stuff...I hope it isn't too much of a beast.


-Pickle

It's true that cut scenes help steer the player in the direction the story is going, and having them go in a linear order is crucial to how well the story unfolds.

There's also other storylines in space than just aliens. Here's a few that might help:

Affecting Humanity:
1.) (Asteroid/comet/rogue planet) headed to earth.
2.) Earths gravity shifting to where it:
  a.) Tears earth into pieces that are drifting apart.
  b.) Sends people into space due to lack of gravity or reversed gravity.

Affecting the hero/crew of the ship:
1.) There's an oxygen leak.
2.) There's a strange illness.
3.) There's a mysterious passenger.
4.) The ship has ran out of fuel, or the ship is damaged.
5.) The ship's mass is to great that unless they unload some cargo, they will all crash into a planet or won't be able to leave a planet.
6.) A crew member must sacrifice themself in order for the rest to achieve their goal (i.e. we only have enough food or oxygen for 4 people to return home).

Plot devices:
1.) Newly discovered alien device that:
  a.) Does something amazing like turning kittylitter into gold.
  b.) Comes with the terrible cost of removing a year from your lifespan.
  c.) Causes you to become some threat to the aliens that created it.
2.) New technology that enables humans:
  a.) Travel to anywhere in the universe.
  b.) But ravages the planet every time it's used.


Using these in combination you could get something like:

A newly discovered techology allows a crew of 10 to travel to a distant alien planet where they discover a device that will turn kittylitter to gold. The use of this technology came with a devestating cost of shifting the earths gravity and thus tearing the earth into giant floating pieces that are slowly drifting apart. Upon returning the ship was badly damaged and few crew members were sacrificed so the remaining crew could re-enter the fractured worlds atmosphere and turn the worlds kitty-litter into gold thus funding a device that would save humanity (because nothing is free apparently).


Just a rediculous suggestion that hopefully gives you some ideas on how to formulate a story


-Pickle

Before starting my game I got 150 pages into a fictional book, for which my game is loosely based on... during that time I did a lot of research on plot developement.... to sumarize this is basically what you need to think about:

Characters:
1.) Create a protagonist (good guy).
2.) Create an Antagonist (bad guy)... this bad guy doesn't have to be a person, it can be one of the following:
  a.) An entity (example: Any person, animal, alien, etc...)
  b.) The world (example: The world is tired of our pollution, and set out to destroy us all, and only the protagonist can convince the world that we're worth saving)
  c.) Time (example: The protagonist's (wife, daughter, father, etc.) is going to die if the clock strikes midnight)
  d.) The protagonist himself (example: The hero thinks he's too weak/scared/ugly etc... that he must overcome in order to complete his/her task.).

Plot:
1.) Why is the antagonist trying to do this bad thing?
2.) Why does the protagonist want to stop the antagonist?
3.) Why is it that only the protagonist can stop the antagonist?

Conclusion:
1.) forumulate how the story should end.


After you've done the above... simply connect the dots from start to finish... include supporting characters, have the protagonist learn something or overcome an obsticle.


Finally, and most importantly...

Don't think you need to write the next ny-times best sellers though...One of the best indi-games of 2012 was "Journey", and it had the basic plot line of "follow the light".


Good luck on writing your story... hope some of my advice helped


-Pickle

Man it's crazy, I haven't thought of that game in a long time!

Sorry for the lack of updates... my kid has been sick the past couple days, and loa-and-behold I got sick...

-Pickle

Yup, it was because I was saving the image as png 8 (which reduced the file size) and as such didn't save the alpha values

Thanks again Sproingie! You saved me a ton of time


-Pickle

I use dropbox for general stuff like images... github I found had a little bit of a learning curve, so I just stuck with svn. xp-dev.com lets you set up svn pretty easy and tracking changes isn't too bad either.


-Pickle

I'm not sure even how to check if I did. I'll look into it though...

Thanks Sproingie


-Pickle