I personally don't see the need of the mosaic. To me it looks like naught but vector art with a mosaic filter on top. I think it looks like good vector art, so I wouldn't mind just that.

Maybe introduce another sort of roughness, such as paper textures or something like that. Regardless, those are my thoughts on the graphics.

The animations are very smooth and not too over worked, well done on that!

https://www.google.se/search?q=walk+cycle

start here (go to images)

there's a doodles and an animation thread and I still wouldn't care if you posted doodles and animation here, just go wild

art first pixel later

disagree superficially, agree in principle

learn art through pixels or learn pixels through art

doesn't matter, regardless you must learn how to art in some way. doing it by pixels will teach you lots regardless

but it is true that every good pixel artist I've seen also knows how to create good art in other mediums - it's the same knowledge applied to different media

In the end it's likely not a question of number of frames as much as it is a question of pacing. I'll see if I can tweak it in graphicsgale to prove a point.



the retiming of some frames and the removal of two frames during the swing produced a somewhat more enjoyable result.

edit: well, it would have, if the frame timings would've shown up correctly after my saving the document. Sadly this seems to not be the case, so now my edit looks like a mega inferior version of the original. Both graphicsgale and photoshop couldn't really handle the document for whatever reason. gif editing is srs bsns

Be careful that the finesse of the animations aren't at the expense of the playability. For instance it takes way too long for the Guinea Pig to stand up again once it collided with the box.

These animations are awesome!

But as previously mentioned, don't let animations get in the way of solid gameplay. Having run into a similar situation awhile back with a project, don't let animations dictate gameplay. It pretty much killed the project because we couldn't marry 'that look' with fun and smooth gameplay. Especially one that's about speed. My experience we ended up speeding up a number of the animations to prevent them from feeling really jarring when they performed, but at the cost of the animation looking good, which leads to more work fixing them.

I'm inclined to disagree with your wording - in my holistical view of games, animation IS gameplay. Neither dictates the other, or maybe each dictates the other.

What I'm trying to get at is that animation and controls are created in the synthesis between each other. There are some gameplay enhancing movements that you would never get with a colored-box prototype environment.

There's a mile-wide difference between pressing a button and then waiting 1 second for your character-box to interact with an enemy box

and

pressing a button and watching your character sprite start swinging a very heavy axe for 1 second before hitting the enemy sprite

even though those two are the exact same in code they will convey something entirely different to the player

in this way the animator working on a game can't just sit down and draw cool looking movements and then give them to a coder for implementation, and by the same account a coder can't just write behavior for a player hitbox and then simply apply animation to it

and neither the animator nor the coder can then blame the other for the end result not working. game animation needs to be a collaborative process where you work towards a vision of movement together and carefully iterate what should be hand-animated frames and what should be procedural movement.

As I'm writing this I realize this is probably what you meant to begin with, but the way you phrased it is slightly coder-centric and could be interpreted as being dismissive of wanting to achieve "that look" and concluding that "gameplay comes first", which I ultimately agree with - I just wanted to add that as an animator "that look" and "gameplay first" is part of the same ideal. I think that every type of motion has the potential for good gameplay, and I think every type of gameplay has the potential for good motion.

Basically I'm here to sow confusion and dissolve matters. I'm sorry. Thank you for sparking this tirade, it felt good to write out. In the end I am convinced we agree on this and the final text I wrote is more directed out in the air than towards you.

I have no idea why this thread has become the place I come to vent animator ideas, and if JoeGP would like me to take this discussion elsewhere I gladly will.

rabbit's schtick is to be unnecessarily rude

he knows. hes just giving me shit. ray and i are bf and bf.

I have to read it ALL THE TIME : ((

rabbit's schtick is to be unnecessarily rude

personal opinion that needen't be heeded:

don't mix resolutions

Game is a fuzzy term. At some point a piece of software ceases to be a game, but there's no clear way to know exactly when and as some people will find great enjoyment in something that might not even have been intended as a 'game', it's very hard to define exactly what makes a game.

I also think that you should just make the game you want to make. If it feels like a game to you, then it probably should be made. You're also free to iterate, so if you ever find yourself wishing your game was more game-like, you are free to make it so.

But if your dream is a town simulator where running about and doing goal-less interactions with NPCs, then I say you should make it. I don't mind that in the least. I'd still call it a game.

edit: there's also webpages and software like, say, wikipedia that aren't games in the least, but they still provide the foundation for games - there's a wikipedia game where you're supposed to race between two terms (say 'cat' and 'lamp') only by clicking links instead of typing in the search field. When such rules are imposed, suddenly something that isn't a game turns into, if not a game, the foundation for a game. Computer game software has a long tradition of having certain interactions and certain rules so they're easily definable in their self-likeness, but like I said before, I don't think that should constrain anyone who would like to create something unlike those games.

I think the word 'computer game' is more of a tradition than a medium. 'interactive software' is more of an easily definable term that encompasses, well, most computer programs. So whether you want to call your game a game or not has more to do with how you want to stretch the boundaries of the culture and tradition that is 'computer/video games'. It's up to you.

For instance it takes way too long for the Guinea Pig to stand up again once it collided with the box.

This is completely true - it'd be better for gameplay if the collision went directly into the 'crouch' before the hamster shooting himself up.

I find that pauses in agency aren't necessary a big problem as long as the player experiences the character as moving - like in sonic when you rush through pipes in Chemical Plant zone even though you don't control sonic you feel like you're travelling and thus have agency

it's the same here I think, if the collision makes the hamster rebound, build up energy and then go back into the run in the same motion the player will still be immersed in the feeling of 'transition' whereas if you have the player pause too long on the ground it will definitely disturb the flow.

Of course disturbing the flow can be a good motivator to get the player to play well and keep up tempo, but I think for that purpose a simple 'rebound' kind of motion is enough - if the game feel punishes the player too much for mistakes the player will lose motivation

those are some thoughts of mine that spontaneously happened as I started typing. I still think the game looks good and in many ways do a fantastic job of marrying cartoon-style animation with platformy gameplay

I BEG TO DIFFER

... that's all

i don't actually have anything to say

i just like the broken zelda perspective

i'm sorry

that's great, but just lose all of that disintegration, it's not needed. Wait I'll cook up some edits.

edit:

it turned out the images were saved with a ton of artifacts so editing this wasn't really feasible, so I just removed some frames cause I think that's good looking enough - then I realized that maybe those frames where it goes beyond the initial slash position is a wind-up for the next attack. Well, i'm sorry I couldn't provide better feedback!

Doodles at work.

ooh wow I'm seeing curves rendering 3d form. good that you do that once in a while, very healthy. you draw well!

i'm here again

PARTICLES

PARTICLES

ANIMATIONS

FX

I NEED DROPLETS UPON ENTERING/EXITING WATER

If this is the rise of Valhalla, does that mean that the dead champions of Valhalla have to rise again into the land of the living to take care of business in Midgård?

I think the jelly / rubber feel will definitely start feeling much better as we get some hot hot FX particles and animation splashing going

This game has some of the best stair walking I've seen in a game

Simple geometry simply is beautiful, is all.