Legends of Yore 2

[kevglass]

I've been playing about for an evening or so on some ideas I had for making my retro sprites more lively. I was looking at cube world and difference of resolution between characters and environment - started me thinking about animation in my scaled up retro sprites.

Added in some skeletal animation (hacked this up, yep aware of Spine, maybe..)



Kinda gives a nice effect:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/g3fyEo1j0vA?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/g3fyEo1j0vA?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Cheers,

Kev

[Nate]

Cool! Skeletal animation FTW.

[namrog84]

I do enjoy this quite a lot. I was considering doing something like this myself for some upcoming things.

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[Herjan]

Cool, but have you made separate images, or is it able to detect things like helmet and stuff? Does it also automagically make your images bigger? Looks great, maybe I have to fix something like that too, (in one evening, wthack ur fast)

[kevglass]

I cut it into separate pieces - it scales up it self (since it's needs to maintain the animation scaling).

Here's the requested comparison thingy:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/PXBcZ-K3ZO4?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/PXBcZ-K3ZO4?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Cheers,

Kev

[kevglass]

More video, when you flip the characters round item stay in the right hands - is that a good thing or a bad thing?

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/A1QjHqbV9sY?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/A1QjHqbV9sY?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

[Nate]

It's a good thing, though most players probably wouldn't notice if you didn't take the time to create twice as many animations. Might be a problem on the punch animation (doesn't reach far enough, jab turns into a cross).

The sword animation looks like it only has 2 keyframes, the start pose and the hit pose. Your animation will look more fluid if you offset the keyframes for different parts. Eg, so the head, body, and sword don't all stop moving at the same time. The walk cycles look nice!

[jonjava]

Cool stuff. The animations are really fluid which gives it a nice style. The "true sides"  (made up term) is uncommon and looks good but either way is fine. Like Nate mentioned, the punches and swings look shorter when they are facing left.

[wessles]

Way cool! I can only imagine how you implement skeleton bodies into pixelated sprites..
I love how fluid it looks. No idea why, but it kind of looks like meatboy animation. Don't ask why, B/c I don't even know. Best guess is the smoothness.

Keep up the good work!

[kevglass]

Thanks for the feedback folks. I love that we're talking about the animations - I just put them in the best I could

I've just added an option that doesn't flip an animation when they're turn, so punch for instance will stay at the back.

I wrote a blog entry about it in case anyone is interested:

http://www.cokeandcode.com/main/sub-pixel-animation-for-retro-sprites/

Cheers,

Kev

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[teletubo]

this is extremelly cool. When will you share this with us?

How are the animations stored? Is it libgdx based ?

[kevglass]

I'm not sure you'd want the source right now However, I can push out a demo so you can play if you like. I'm thinking about it as an option for the next "real" game I do.

Animations are stored in XML with just key frames. Characters too, with skins attached. Also some skeleton definition (two at the moment, human and giant).

The editor is Java2D based, the game rendering is all libgdx (love it ). The renderer just takes a implementation of SkinRenderer which can render a scaled tile at a position and rotation.

Been playing with adding some NPC type characters ready for a real game:



That's meant to be a miner with a torch

Cheers,

Kev

[teletubo]

Don't worry about the demo, I still have to write a game to make use it

I was just curious to see how it works, since I was myself thinking about doing a similar tool (like a Spine Jr.).

Keep up the excelent work!

[Nate]

No, the world only needs one Spine, kthnxbai!

Kev, give Spine a try! Tweaking animations will be easier with a dopesheet.

[kevglass]

Oh but I'm enjoying myself so much!

Kev

[Nate]

No joy for you! There are games to build!

[wessles]

@kevglass
If you haven't already, you should make it so that people can modify the behavior of attacking, talking, and even add their own such as running, double attacking, etc.

[kevglass]

Have been playing a little more:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/aJl86Q4y9G0?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/aJl86Q4y9G0?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

My fave is the guy with the lantern

Cheers,

Kev

[Herjan]

Wow, actually I like that the tools are always on the 'right' hand
I think the miner is really cool :O

[namrog84]

On this most recent 1.  The one thing that kinda catches my eye and I wish was slightly differently.

Is the 4-5 people with the full length staves.  

When you are walking with a staff that is full body length, you lift it up between walks and not just have it move back and forth(as you would with a shorter object)
should generate a 'circular' movement of some sort instead of a clock pendulum swinging back and forth?

http://d.wapday.com/animation/ccontennt/10565-f/wizard_walking_staff.gif?__sid=ggl&lang=en
http://ak.imgfarm.com/images/cursormania/files/24/12044a.gif

tl;dr;  2 guys with long staffs, the staffs need a little up/down movement they don't currently have?     (

[Quarry]

Great job, but in my opinion this doesn't really work for sprites. I hate when people get lazy and have sub pixel rotation and not actual scaling, then still call their games "retro"

The reason it works for Cube World is that it uses voxels as a style and doesn't market as retro (which it isn't)

[kevglass]

Guess I need to be ready to be hated ...

Kev

[Quarry]

Haters gonna' hate

[kevglass]

Last one for a while probably - need to get on to some environment for these guys to wander round. Just tried out some different sizes so I can have the bigger monsters again (and the wee ones):

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/0GLXWpe6voM?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/0GLXWpe6voM?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Cheers,

Kev

[kappa]

Nice, looks really cool. Guess you could probably use the same system for the environments e.g. wind on trees & grass, moving platforms, doors, moving light lamps, etc.

[Herjan]

Little question, how did you make the skeleton so that it looks good for all sizes?

I mean, character 1 has a head of 30 pixels high and char 2 has a head of 10 pixels high... And all chars have other hands, so they have to start at higher places relative to the body then others, some have wider/bigger body's, etc.

[kevglass]

There are multiple skeletons.

Cheers,

Kev

[kevglass]

Started working on some environment for the characters to play in:



Cheers,

Kev

[Herjan]

Animated environment? 

[kevglass]

Little bit more on the tilesets, Aria tileset starting to come together:



Cheers,

Kev