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[bateleur]

My elite design team (as they prefer to be called) and I are scratching our heads over a tricky art problem which has arisen in a game I'm making.

The game is extremely 2D. What I mean by this is that it's not merely 2D gameplay, there is no depth to the art at all. Like the way small children draw scenes all in a single plane. All gameplay is side view, never top down.

Now here's the problem: sometimes characters open doors drawn in the plane of the screen and go through them. In the prototype this has no impact on the art at all, the character simply teleports away as they reach the door! *BAMF*

...but now we're plugging in proper art and animations, it's far from obvious what to do.

Certainly we could go for a canned animation somewhat like Fancy Pants, but the innate 3D-ness of that would be somewhat at odds with the rest of the art style.

We could also go for an ultra-minimalist solution where the closed door is replaced in a single frame by a fully open doorway which the character then fades rapidly into. (This is the implementation I like best so far. But as our local dev slang expresses it, this solution "lacks elephant".)

Wise TIGers, I seek guidance! Has anyone got any ideas for good ways to approach this? The primary goal is that the end result should look as natural as possible (natural in terms of fitting with the style, not as in "realistic").

[Trevor Dunbar]

Go to 1:44.

Mickey kinda opens the left door, and walks behind the still closed one. Left Door slams shut behind him on it's own accord.

I win?

I mean I can't think of a way to make it more 2d then that

[Gainsworthy]

Sliding... Doors? 

I can see why this poses such a problem.

[Super-Dot]

I remember having the same design problem when I was a kid with pencils! I couldn't figure out an elegant way of drawing partially-open doors from the front, so I always drew them from the side, like this:

So you don't have to angle the door--just adjust the line lengths of the door and the straight lines that form part of the knob. I'm pretty sure that my doors had widths when they were closed (mind you, they were much thinner than portrayed here, because my pencil hand was better than my mouse hand is) and were paper-thin when opened, because the doors were never actually animated. I couldn't decide whether to draw closed doors with two lines, like above, or with one thick line, like this:

The former is more readable, the latter more elegant.

I dunno if that's 2D enough, though. Can you give us some screenshots so we know what we're up against?

[bateleur]

Mickey kinda opens the left door, and walks behind the still closed one. Left Door slams shut behind him on it's own accord.

That's exactly like the way Fancy Pants does it. (The righthand door being, in fact, entirely irrelevant.) Thing is, this is really 3D. Note, for example, the way Mickey turns about his vertical axis. This cannot happen in a 2D world!

Now OK, I know that doors of this kind can't happen in a 2D world either... but they're ubiquitous features of the natural 2D art style so can't easily be replaced.

I always drew them from the side, like this

That's fine as a style in its own right, but that door isn't in the plane of the screen. It is, in effect, a 3D door.

Can you give us some screenshots so we know what we're up against?

That being prototype art (woohoo!) - you have to imagine the door handle for yourself!

[William Broom]

Sliding door seems like the best solution to me. Remember it could slide vertically if horizontally isn't what you want it to look like.

[Noel Berry]

I think some kind of sliding door would be the best option.

Perhaps something similar to this?

[Core Xii]

Shouldn't be too difficult...?

[Alevice]

Shouldn't be too difficult...?

Seems too 3d.

[Super-Dot]

Would it be possible to omit the door and just have a doorway?

No matter how you do it, it's going to be 3D if you have a room behind the current room. The alternative would be to do doorways like this:

But that might not fit your level design.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Can you make them double doors, and leave one door open, so the player can slide between them? It avoids any sort of animation this way, but still communicates a passage.

[bateleur]

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions - some nice doors there!

Would it be possible to omit the door and just have a doorway?

Not entirely, but we've more-or-less arrived at the same conclusion as you regarding how to handle the character's motion.

Can you make them double doors, and leave one door open, so the player can slide between them?

This is pretty much equivalent to Super-Dot's method. Double doors don't really make a difference (as per comments on Mickey Mouse above).

So... overall our approach is likely to be:

* As the character reaches the door, the door itself vanishes, leaving an open doorway.
* The character then moves sideways across the door space, but moves behind rather than in front of the door frame.
* Door reappears.

The business of moving behind the frame isn't too 2D-breaking since the character was previously "in front of" the wall, which is really no different.

I'll eventually post a demo video so you can all see the outcome of your ponderings (may take a while - art is slow). But for now... cheers!

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Bateleur, my point was more about leaving the doors wide open so that there's no need for animation. Of course I was referencing the Mickey Mouse point, and double doors aren't necessary, but they go some way to compensate for any visual ambiguity an open door might cause.

Best of luck with it.

[Xion]

Still don't see what's wrong with sliding doors.

[jeb]

How about...


 

[Mir@k]

http://www.fhqhosting.com/ui/yes.swf

[Kekskiller]

Very 2Dish, instead of being teleport-friendly. Metroid is a good example for 2D-doors.

Edit: Oh, I totally forgot the picture on page. Here's another idea:



The doors slides to the left and the player can fade away. Can slide also to top, bottom and right! (making interesting door puzzles possible)

[bateleur]

my point was more about leaving the doors wide open so that there's no need for animation

Ah, OK. Yes, if we felt a need to avoid door animation entirely (for example if vanishing doors turn out to look weird once everything else is more polished) that might be a viable workaround.

Still don't see what's wrong with sliding doors.

There's nothing wrong with them, they just don't resolve the problem of character movement through the door.

Although as I type it's just occurred to me that maybe you mean why can't the door just close over the character so that they don't move at all whilst going through? That would indeed work in theory, though there's a possible practical problem that it means two characters passing through a door at almost the same time might break things. (Then again, we might get that problem anyway if we're not very careful. Ugh! )

How about...

Love it! Have you ever read Flatland and/or Planiverse? Someone needs to make those into a game. (No, that's not what we're up to!)

http://www.fhqhosting.com/ui/yes.swf

Win! (Although actually we probably won't X-scale the doors since that's very slightly 3D-ish.)

The doors slides to the left and the player can fade away. Can slide also to top, bottom and right! (making interesting door puzzles possible)

Aaargh! Now you're giving me ideas for other cool games! Please stop! Not enough free time!

[Synnah]

How about...

 

I like how he's so shocked at the way the door swings up that he jams his foot into his mouth.

[pen]

How about...

 

I like how he's so shocked at the way the door swings up that he jams his foot into his mouth.

I like how he is moonwalking towards the door in the first panel.