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[JasonPickering]

can we see this in action. I looked through to see if you had a link but i didnt see one. do you have video of a hit, screenshots can only help so much.

[rob]

Hey, something you should remember is that velocity increases as an object moves.

You might make the frames of the fist like this:

l   l   l   l   l

While it should be like this:

l l     l        l

[DragonSix]

I had the same problem some times ago, and did everything you did. But the true issue was the attack animations.
See the golem pose in your screen shot, it is very blend and static, you want attack poses that are more extreme and powerful. Not only the melee but also the spells and shooting.

[JLJac]

I think that the effects look a bit too big and blurry. You don't want to drown the whole scene in neon colours at every hit, that is over doing it and can actually have a negative effect IMO. I would try to make the sprites smaller and a bit more defined at the edges for a crispier look. A burst of small, glowing sparks has more contrast in it than a big smooth radial gradient, and is therefor more striking to the eye.

If you are going for some retroish effects I can reccomend vibration, very quickly moving around the character's sprite randomly when hit or hitting. Keep it subtle though, it tends to look bad if the sprite vibrates more than a few pixels to either side. It also looks best in a still frame...

Are your characters really pixel grafics in that size? I'm totally impressed, it has got to take several weeks for you to finish a single animation

[TeeGee]

Maybe the anticipation plays a big role too.

Like, seeing a fist sawying way back, knowing it's going to hurt, will trick you into thinking the actual impact even stronger.

I don't know how I can explain it properly

I know what you mean. I made the Golem's wind up frames longer and added a groan sound when he prepares the punch. The anticipation indeed made the hit feel more powerful.

I think animation timing, sound, and poses are more important than anything else here. If you turn off all your fancy additive particles, screen shake, etc., your animation and sound should stand on their own. There are some great animators and sound people on these boards. If you want to improve these areas of your game, you might want to post a nice quality video and a demo so people can give you detailed suggestions. Screenshots don't give people enough information to tell what needs improving.

I think Lurk is more than up to snuff when it comes to animation. However, we're limited to only one hit sequence per character, even though the sources of damage can range from a simple punch to a falling meteor. So animation is one thing, but there's lots of trickery to making all the various spells and hits look equally good across the board.

can we see this in action. I looked through to see if you had a link but i didnt see one. do you have video of a hit, screenshots can only help so much.

Sorry, no videos at this point .

Hey, something you should remember is that velocity increases as an object moves.

You might make the frames of the fist like this:

l   l   l   l   l

While it should be like this:

l l     l        l

Mhm, I know that. We actually have a neat system that allows us to manipulate animation's frames order and delays with just few clicks, which makes basic timing pretty easy to test and implement.

Are your characters really pixel grafics in that size? I'm totally impressed, it has got to take several weeks for you to finish a single animation

If by "pixel graphics" you mean pixel art, then nope - these are Photoshop drawings. And they don't take that long for Lurk to animate. If you are interested, he posted about his techniques on my forums and ArcMagi dev thread here on TIGS.


Anyway, thanks for your ideas, everyone. They gave me lots of material to work with and there's huge improvements already.
Before this thread the game was like this:
 

now it's like this:
 

and the goal is this:
 

[letsap]

Depending on the sound track, not sure if this was mentioned yet, but adding a musical fluctuation when you hit somebody is always cool. Maybe have one bar of music (not sure of the proper term?) muted unless there's hits. A good example is in Wind Waker. Movies tend to do it a lot, and it seems to work in the games I've seen it in.

[TeeGee]

Wow, that's a really interesting idea. I'm not sure if we will be able to implement it, but I'll definitely talk about it with Rob (the composer).

[the_dannobot]

Hey dude, I think the word you're looking for is "crunchy".  Pronouncing the feeling of hit impact in fighting games = crunchy.

Yeah, looking at your first post though it looks like you've got all the peices of making a crunchy game, unfortuneately its more of an art than a science.  Without seeing the game in motion its hard to give feedback.  Prolly the best I can do is dump some articles that I have bookmarked:

gamasutra article about "combat impact"
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050428/sang_01.shtml
a series of articles by derek daniels one of the combat designers of god of war games:
http://lowfierce.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-some-games-feel-better-than-others.html
http://lowfierce.blogspot.com/2006/06/why-some-games-feel-better-than-others.html
http://lowfierce.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-some-games-feel-better-than-others.html
http://lowfierce.blogspot.com/2007/08/feel-of-games-part-4-posing.html
http://lowfierce.blogspot.com/2006/10/damage-presentation.html

[TeeGee]

Better?

I improved positioning (still looks a bit off on the screenie, I think), moved the Golem to the front layer, changed particles to something showing the general direction of the hit, added a nice swoosh line, and used the finished Golem's attack animation provided by Lurk in the mean time.
It definitely feels better in the game, but I'm curious how it looks on stills.

Also, while experimenting with screen flashes and camera shakes, I came with few neat little tricks you may find useful for your games.

Screen Flash:
The main reason I wanted to use flashes is that they make hits visible even if you are not focused on the characters/health bars. Which can be quite often in ArcMagi. So yeah, the following is a bit game-specific.

- The flash only shows on hits that dealt lots of damage (15%+) directly to one of the mages (so hitting a shield doesn't trigger it). This makes sure that the player is getting this very strong feedback only when something really important happens.

- The flash takes 2 frames to reach its highest point and 4 frames to get down from there. It's drawn using additive blending. It makes it fit the game's particles and overall style better than the classic retro one-frame white screen.

- The flash is slightly hued depending on which mage was hit. A slight blue hue is visible when you dealt lots of damage to the opponent, and a hint of red is visible when you are the one being hit. It gives some additional feedback on the subconscious level - you immediatelly know if the flash is a reward for doing well or is it a warning.


Screen Shake:
- Screen shakes are tied to specific attacks and spells as opposed to certain amounts of damage. It just works better that way.

- Each attack/spell/action can have different screen shake force.

- On each frame, the game randomly shakes the screen with amplitudes (both position and angle) depending on the force variable. The force variable is then reduced, making the whole effect start violently and get milder as it goes to the point when it's all back to normal. It feels more natural that way.

- There's a certain treshold of force below which screen shakes are not visible...

- ...but the shake force is cumulative.

So for example: walking Golem generates a tiny amount of shake, but it is not enough to cause any visible effects. Same for some weaker attacks and spells. But when these weak attacks, walking Golem and spells happen close to each other, the effects are very visible. In general -- the more happens on the screen at once, the more violent the camera behavior is. It works pretty nice -- it's not getting annoying by over-usage, but when you unleash some real hell, it's very satisfying.

Hope it's interesting for you.


And thanks for the links, the_dannobot. I haven't read that Gamasutra article before and it was pretty good.   

[Hajo]

Better?

Yes. Much more convincing, at least to my eyes.
 

[Alevice]

I prfer when the shake also has an effect on background objects. I'd use again Hugo's stage in street fighter 3 third strike as an example, but I actually thought it was a little overdone.

[gunswordfist]

Better?

I improved positioning (still looks a bit off on the screenie, I think), moved the Golem to the front layer, changed particles to something showing the general direction of the hit, added a nice swoosh line, and used the finished Golem's attack animation provided by Lurk in the mean time.
It definitely feels better in the game, but I'm curious how it looks on stills.

Also, while experimenting with screen flashes and camera shakes, I came with few neat little tricks you may find useful for your games.

Screen Flash:
The main reason I wanted to use flashes is that they make hits visible even if you are not focused on the characters/health bars. Which can be quite often in ArcMagi. So yeah, the following is a bit game-specific.

- The flash only shows on hits that dealt lots of damage (15%+) directly to one of the mages (so hitting a shield doesn't trigger it). This makes sure that the player is getting this very strong feedback only when something really important happens.

- The flash takes 2 frames to reach its highest point and 4 frames to get down from there. It's drawn using additive blending. It makes it fit the game's particles and overall style better than the classic retro one-frame white screen.

- The flash is slightly hued depending on which mage was hit. A slight blue hue is visible when you dealt lots of damage to the opponent, and a hint of red is visible when you are the one being hit. It gives some additional feedback on the subconscious level - you immediatelly know if the flash is a reward for doing well or is it a warning.


Screen Shake:
- Screen shakes are tied to specific attacks and spells as opposed to certain amounts of damage. It just works better that way.

- Each attack/spell/action can have different screen shake force.

- On each frame, the game randomly shakes the screen with amplitudes (both position and angle) depending on the force variable. The force variable is then reduced, making the whole effect start violently and get milder as it goes to the point when it's all back to normal. It feels more natural that way.

- There's a certain treshold of force below which screen shakes are not visible...

- ...but the shake force is cumulative.

So for example: walking Golem generates a tiny amount of shake, but it is not enough to cause any visible effects. Same for some weaker attacks and spells. But when these weak attacks, walking Golem and spells happen close to each other, the effects are very visible. In general -- the more happens on the screen at once, the more violent the camera behavior is. It works pretty nice -- it's not getting annoying by over-usage, but when you unleash some real hell, it's very satisfying.

Hope it's interesting for you.


And thanks for the links, the_dannobot. I haven't read that Gamasutra article before and it was pretty good.   

.....whoa. All those visual ques you added sound incredible.

As for the picture itself, I thought it was perfect but then I saw the Witch. She doesn't look like she's getting hit hard at all. It looks like she's..rain dancing. Seriously. But as for the Golem's animation, it appears to be perfect.

[Anthony Flack]

All the additional effects are nice to have, but I still firmly believe that if there is a problem, then it is a problem with the animation, motion and timing of the characters. If there wasn't, then you could take off all the effects and it would still look brutal.

I've had this problem before, and tried to fix it with frills and effects, and no matter how good I made them, I didn't really get anywhere until I went back to the characters. If you are limited to using a single recoil animation, then it might be that this is your whole problem. In which case you'd have to decide to either revise your plans and use more than one recoil animation, or accept that the limitations imposed on you means your fighting isn't going to look especially physical.

[TeeGee]

Well, each time I tweak the animations, I turn the effects off and look at it in slow motion. It's really quite good animation-wise at the moment, so adding fitting effects and extra feedback is a separate matter.
I know it's not going to be Street Fighter 4 with the limited animations we need to work with. I got over it and it was obvious since the beginning of the project. However, I still want to make it look as good as possible.

[gunswordfist]

Well, each time I tweak the animations, I turn the effects off and look at it in slow motion. It's really quite good animation-wise at the moment, so adding fitting effects and extra feedback is a separate matter.
I know it's not going to be Street Fighter 4 with the limited animations we need to work with. I got over it and it was obvious since the beginning of the project. However, I still want to make it look as good as possible.

Well nobody asking you to make Street Fighter 4 because your not even doing a fighting game. heh heh But it looks great so far.