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[ANtY]

Your a great artist, I love your work.

You can change the boar concept's vibe by redrawing the eye (but u already know that)

[Aquanoctis]

This looks interesting. And that boar looks bad-ass and cute at the same time. Quite an accomplishment

[tchassin]

I feel pure awesomeness ahead, keep going !

[Mef]

Visuals remind me a lot of Superbrothers' Dot Matrix Revolution.

And that guy on the left one badass photocopier transformer!

[Dhomochevsky]

thank you guys!

did some more mockups
trying to figure out how the character will react to the enviroment

here are 4 hypotetical moves: small step, slightly higher step, little climb, and wall climb (4+ tiles high)




here i encountered some problems:



1) with such small hitbox some elements (sword) may cut through the tiles
   solution 1: enlarge hitbox - don't like it
   solution 2: deal with the problem in level design, avoid 1 tile wide walls
   solution 3: who cares, minor glitch


2) platform too small to stand on, unpredictable behavior (and looks awkward)
   solution: again, deal with the problem in level design, avoid 1 tile wide platforms (during knight sections) ?


3) common problem in platforms
   solution 1: make him fall down after half body is over the edge - rough
   solution 2: do a "step/jump down" animation, when you approach the end of a platform - better



now the tile size is 10X10, instead of the usual 16X16
will it cause problems? is too small, considering character size?

ah decisions, decisions... 

[laxwolf]

Great stuff so far.

Possibly make it so you can't swipe your sword while against a wall?

And for the knight, would it work with the game if the knight smashed through the walls or crumbled them down by jumping on them or simply stepping?

Good luck,
Laxwolf

[burning]

Something that occurs to me while reading your plan is i curious how you will handle the player taking off their gear. Will there be some sort of inventory system where the player has individual control of each piece of their gear or will there just be a button that takes off a piece of gear, or will loosing your gear not be under the players control at all? Maybe pieces of gear just break/fall off at certain points.

If i had full control over it, i feel like i would just want to discard everything right at the start because i'd much rather be a wall jumping badass suit ninja then a clunky ass knight 

[bart_the_13th]

thank you guys!

did some more mockups
trying to figure out how the character will react to the enviroment

here are 4 hypotetical moves: small step, slightly higher step, little climb, and wall climb (4+ tiles high)




here i encountered some problems:



1) with such small hitbox some elements (sword) may cut through the tiles
   solution 1: enlarge hitbox - don't like it
   solution 2: deal with the problem in level design, avoid 1 tile wide walls
   solution 3: who cares, minor glitch


2) platform too small to stand on, unpredictable behavior (and looks awkward)
   solution: again, deal with the problem in level design, avoid 1 tile wide platforms (during knight sections) ?


3) common problem in platforms
   solution 1: make him fall down after half body is over the edge - rough
   solution 2: do a "step/jump down" animation, when you approach the end of a platform - better



now the tile size is 10X10, instead of the usual 16X16
will it cause problems? is too small, considering character size?

ah decisions, decisions... 

1) with such small hitbox some elements (sword) may cut through the tiles
   solution 4:make the player stay in front of the box? Still looks like glitch but I think it looks better

2) platform too small to stand on, unpredictable behavior (and looks awkward)
   solution 2:make the knight can't jump? Instead, just make him able to smash walls just like Laxwolf said

3) common problem in platforms
   solution 2: do a "step/jump down" animation, when you approach the end of a platform - better <- I vote for this one, the first solution can get you to a nasty bug, unpredictable behaviour

[Taugeshtu]

with such small hitbox some elements (sword) may cut through the tiles

Maybe 1 more image for person, holding his sword pointed down? So it wouldn't be too ling to "penetrate" 1-tile-wide wall

platform too small to stand on, unpredictable behavior (and looks awkward)

make the knight can't jump? Instead, just make him able to smash walls just like Laxwolf said

This.

common problem in platforms

do a "step/jump down" animation, when you approach the end of a platform - better

This.

[Dhomochevsky]

so

step down animation: approved
smashing through walls: nice, but difficult to implement! (and not being able to jump makes n°2 less of a problem! I didn't think about it)
sword cutting through walls: still dunno, will deal with it on prototype phase

thank you!

i did some animations, idle and run

   

did two version of the run cycle, this one is a 20 frames cycle at 24 fps
but i think it's a little too fluid
the other one is 16 frames at 18 fps
(here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8520368/carapace/salaryman_run%2816%29_18fps.gif )

stil don't know which one to use (probably the second one but at higher framerate)
will decide later

[laxwolf]

so

step down animation: approved
smashing through walls: nice, but difficult to implement! (and not being able to jump makes n°2 less of a problem! I didn't think about it)
sword cutting through walls: still dunno, will deal with it on prototype phase

thank you!

i did some animations, idle and run

   

did two version of the run cycle, this one is a 20 frames cycle at 24 fps
but i think it's a little too fluid
the other one is 16 frames at 18 fps
(here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8520368/carapace/salaryman_run%2816%29_18fps.gif )

stil don't know which one to use (probably the second one but at higher framerate)
will decide later

Keep with the shorter frame running animation. The thrust in motion helps convey movement. Love the style! and the idle? will there be a pause like that in the game? might help to add an ease-in frame dropping one more pixel slowly before coming back up.

[Dhomochevsky]

a dynamic pause between breaths would be cool, but that later later later
first I want to have a good set of animations, so I can hack together a prototype
then I'll refine as I go

Something that occurs to me while reading your plan is i curious how you will handle the player taking off their gear. Will there be some sort of inventory system where the player has individual control of each piece of their gear or will there just be a button that takes off a piece of gear, or will loosing your gear not be under the players control at all? Maybe pieces of gear just break/fall off at certain points.

gear drop will be sequential, but the player will decide when to drop the next piece
I want it to be a significant moment (and of course not accidental, so the control will be something like press Z+X+Down for a few seconds, with a two step animation, crouch down and drop armor)

[Taugeshtu]

Which animation to use depends on how sparce your levels would be. If they're dense - use 16 frames one.
And this 16 frames version feels a bit "heavy", dunno if it would work well: maybe you'll get enough sharpness and heavyness with just attack/defence animations and with such a set "smooth" run animation would be just better than harder one...
Keep them both and make desigion when you'll have more "feeling of the game"

[H0pe86]

I like that! 

[andy wolff]

I really like the animations and style you have here. I can't wait to see some of the fantasy setting from the earlier parts of the game

[08--n7.r6-79.84]

bravo! so stylish and beatiful!

[andrewjb]

Looking great! Will be following this one closely.

[happymonster]

Since the last author's post was in the first week of December, let's hope this hasn't been abandoned.

[Dhomochevsky]

it has not.
i was very busy, crunching on my last work
development of carapace will continue soon!

[ntdb]

This is a very well thought-out and scoped first project. I'm VERY eager to play it! It will be a challenge to balance the gameplay changes but keeping the length of each "stage" to a minimum will help a bunch.