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[Madgarden]

Very nice, sir.  For the Mission Impossible level, yeah?
the animation quick and painless.

Yes sir... I believe it's called the "climbing ceiling" on the big sprite sheet. At least, I hope that's what I just drew. :D

And Pony Tails.   :D
Love it!

Or flappy bald-guy-mullet, if you will.

UPDATE: I've edited the existing animation to better match the "legs" of the other frames, and clarified his Franciscan hair-do movement.

[Xion]

A standing up from crouching/crawling animation would be good, too. 

Anything else?

[Madgarden]

Destroy him, my robots.

[Derek]

You guys freakin' rule.

A standing up from crouching/crawling animation would be good, too. 

Anything else?

Generic death animation?

Death by falling too far animation?

[Inane]

Does it have to blink?

[ravuya]

I demand an idle breakdancing animation.

[Xion]

Did someone say ridiculously complicated door opening sequence?
No?
Oh, then...I must be hearing things.

Take it anyway!

Generic death animation?

Death by falling too far animation?

Already started the generic one (I've always loved those death anims where the character spins around before croaking ), but I'm sleepy so I'll finish it tomorrow.

[Arne]

Wow! Very nice animations people! The guy was just a 2 minute placeholder and now IT'S AAaaAALIIIVEeee!!!

Hahahah @ super door!

Does it have to blink?

Maybe just the top light? I like the 'juice mixer' effect on the top light, alternating left tight pixels thing.
Edit: tweaked. I need to practice animation. I just realized how vital it is that key features are 'inherited' to the next frame.

[DrPetter]

About the blinking; My thought was that maybe it would just blink slowly and leisurly while patrolling (maybe with the top light only), and when it spots and goes after the player it goes all wild and disco-like the way it was originally made.
Now I'm all antsy for the milestone demo, I want to see how those jumping frames look in action!

[Arne]

Tweaked Modelsheet. Yeah his legs are kinda short. I guess his belly sometimes hangs over them, like a skirt (omitting the legs just showing the feet, but when he stretches the legs shows better). At any rate, pixel practicalities will take priority... what looks good and so on.

[Arne]

Like someone suggested, the dangers could have some plausible effects rather than just Bxzzt! *dead*

The electricity could just stun you and bump you away (skeleton shows, like in cartoons?), then possibly make you fall to your death as you lose your grip. If you somehow stay into the beam too long, you turn into a smoking corpse. The "Another World" death anim comes to mind.

Lasers might instakill though.

Stuf that crush you need to push you into something.

Some enemies might cause a special death animation aswell, eat you or whatever. It depends on how much custom anims we want to do.

Fixed proportions:



Edit: Oh I redesigned the roof rails.

Edit: These are theme designs rather than actual level designs.

[Bezzy]

Fantastic work, everyone!

Xion - thanks for fixing the jump! I was trying to make a real Parkour-ish jump, and that's why it's so lateral. In a running jump, traceurs tend to really swing their arms forward, almost like they're throwing all their weight into them. Then as they launch, they heave their arms down, round, and back to spread eagled, as if they're pulling themselves through mid-air.

But Parkourists don't jump their own height in a single bound, so maybe it wasn't that smart of me :D.

The wind up frames are cool. I left them out myself because I didn't want to cause any delay between pressing jump and jumping. There's always a desire to do "anticipation" in animation, but often it just lags a lot of your controls. Still, it's only two frames, and they can be played extra fast.

[eobet]

Like someone suggested, the dangers could have some plausible effects rather than just Bxzzt! *dead*

The electricity could just stun you and bump you away (skeleton shows, like in cartoons?), then possibly make you fall to your death as you lose your grip. If you somehow stay into the beam too long, you turn into a smoking corpse. The "Another World" death anim comes to mind.

Lasers might instakill though.

Stuf that crush you need to push you into something.

I haven't read all of the thread, so instakill me if I missed this but:

Isn't this a great way to avoid "trial and terror" a la Rick Dangerous/Prince of Persia? This would enable the player to fail, but instead of die, merely get a warning to try something else.

To take this to the extreme, wouldn't it be cool to have the character be immortal? Then you could have lots of fun traps and stuff (like in Lemmings) which would basically serve to display fun animations and instead of stopping progress/make you start over, he would tumble out of them in a new direction, or be pushed back just a bit. Perhaps you'd even have to try to kill him to get a hint on how to continue in some instances...

Anyway, I'll shut up now!

[Bezzy]

Like someone suggested, the dangers could have some plausible effects rather than just Bxzzt! *dead*

The electricity could just stun you and bump you away (skeleton shows, like in cartoons?), then possibly make you fall to your death as you lose your grip. If you somehow stay into the beam too long, you turn into a smoking corpse. The "Another World" death anim comes to mind.

Lasers might instakill though.

Stuf that crush you need to push you into something.

I haven't read all of the thread, so instakill me if I missed this but:

Isn't this a great way to avoid "trial and terror" a la Rick Dangerous/Prince of Persia? This would enable the player to fail, but instead of die, merely get a warning to try something else.

To take this to the extreme, wouldn't it be cool to have the character be immortal? Then you could have lots of fun traps and stuff (like in Lemmings) which would basically serve to display fun animations and instead of stopping progress/make you start over, he would tumble out of them in a new direction, or be pushed back just a bit. Perhaps you'd even have to try to kill him to get a hint on how to continue in some instances...

Anyway, I'll shut up now!

I tihnk it's a great idea - even to take it to the extremes of being immortal, for the reasons you suggest. However, since we remove a negative incentive, we need to have a positive incentive to balance. How about "Par Times" for each screen. Obviously all these pain animations will, at the very least, slow you down, so that's your punishment - a time penalty which affects your speed score. And people who aren't trying for speed scores, well, maybe they're just happy to try to complete the game, and won't be turned off, therefore, by extremely fatal traps everywhere? That's what I mean about making a game both hardcore and casual at the same time: depth and accessibility, simultaneously.

I think it's a great idea. Certainly the concept of "3 lives" is always sort of assumed as "the way it is, always has been, and forever shall be" when mainly it was just a way to get you to spend more 10p's back in the day.

[Madgarden]

Does it have to blink?

It blinks in the original game, so I modelled that. Go ahead and make it do something else if you want.

[BMcC]

A standing up from crouching/crawling animation would be good, too. 

Anything else?

Generic death animation?

Death by falling too far animation?

Ooh, and death by being crushed (from above).

I like the spinning around generic death idea!  Very LoZ.

Did someone say ridiculously complicated door opening sequence?

I whispered it in your ear as you slept.    (That's so dope!)

I was trying to make a real Parkour-ish jump, and that's why it's so lateral.

Don't get me wrong, the animation is sweet.  I just can't get it to fit with the "standard" platform game jumping. 

To take this to the extreme, wouldn't it be cool to have the character be immortal?

That's a neat idea, but I don't think it's right for this game.  This game is more inspired by the hardcore, unforgiving platformers of the days of yore.

That having said, I think it should be more pick-up-and play than those games.  And I don't want the player to ever die without it truly being their fault.

I really like the idea (did I suggest it?  I can't remember) of being able to escape death in certain cases.  That should make it a bit more forgiving right there, but I also think it'll fit the more ponderous gameplay.

Awesome stuff, everyone!  Keep the concepts, discussion, and those sweet sweet animations coming! 

EDIT:

I demand an idle breakdancing animation.

Hehe, yeah!  Maybe for reaching the goal?

Does it have to blink?

Yes!  Our marketing team tells us that blinking is IN, in a big way.  Now everything must always blink, everywhere.  All the time.

[Akhel]

Does/will it have a story?

[Bezzy]

I was trying to make a real Parkour-ish jump, and that's why it's so lateral.

Don't get me wrong, the animation is sweet.  I just can't get it to fit with the "standard" platform game jumping. 

Don't worry, I completely understand! I'm definately a gameplay-before-everything else kind of guy (hence the lack of any "anticipation" fames), so I don't feel snubbed or anything . It's all for the best.

I just wanted to explain why it was the way it was, and look really cool and smart and clevar while doing it. Although, come to think of it, trying to get across the minutae details of parkour is probably not going to happen in 16x16 tiles . What was I thinking?

[vitaminNewB]

Take it anyway!

   Sweet Jelly!
(Xion = Animation Lead) 

EDIT:  just kidding btw!  everyone can be LEAD

[Arne]

Sewers, WIP. The bottom will have a darker theme. Lots of custom stuff. Not sure if I should drop some of the noise/dither.



The rotating drum will gib the player if he's caught near the edge, otherwise he'll move to the center and do a generic damage animation, then settle into standing or chawling, depending on the new drum orientation.
(Well, that's the quick and dirty way, to save some animation work.)

The waterflow pushes down, resulting in a one way mechanic.

There's little sprinkler steam traps.


It really isn't "Prom's platformgame" with all the awesome contributions we're seeing. It's a Quest.

? Balding's Quest? Adventure?
? Mr. Balding and the Lost Games
? Lost Games
? Manic Balding
? Little Balding
? B.A.L.D.





Edit: I'm not sure about invulnerbility. I liked it in Exile, but for this thing I guess like BMcC said, we can have both, i.e. getting in and out of dangers alive by responding, and plain dying. I suppose it can be a bit trickier to design maps where the player is invulnerable too. Basically the player is invulnerable now, it's just that he's teleported back to start on death... ._.