Even more animations
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So, this week has been full of animations since that was the only thing that was left to implement before the beta. Since we are using Anima 2D in unity it made it easy to move between the animations, if you need to change anything or make a new animation or pose then you can just move the bones and you have a new pose. But the problem with this is making a clip-doll that can be bent in this way, if the parts aren’t perfectly aligned and everything, then the moment you move something it will clip and it will look bad. So Anima 2D comes with some blessing and some curses, but that isn’t all, when we animated squirt and put him into the game, he started to spin around like crazy and bounce around the screen. This was because of the code that we used for him, which created some errors and made him freak out.
All that is left now is to polish the animations, make sure that they aren’t clunky or awkward, which some of the animations right now are. But it all comes down to time, just fine tuning the movements little by little to get the smooth feeling of a living being that is moving.
The enemy that was the hardest to animate was Marbles, she needed a shooting animation where she picks up a marble from her pouch and throw it at the player, which can look a bit awkward if not done right, She also needed an idle animation which is easy, but the more difficult animation was her charging up animation. She charges the player in the game and we needed a way for her to telegraph the charging in some way, so I took a bit of inspiration from the Metal Gear Solid series, to be specific the parasite unit. They move slowly but get really fast and erratic movement when the move forward before the attack, so this is the feel that I went with for marbles, all of her limbs start to shake, including her head, before she charges, which gives the player a warning that she is about to charge.
This week was quite calm and the only thing left is the polishing for the game, hope that goes as smoothly.
// Alex Östermark  |
