Deciding what to cut, design and animation

During this Monday i continued finishing up the animations that is considered to be number one priority. These are prioritized by looking at what animations are required to play the game and communicate our mechanics. For example a walk animation may not be needed since you can steer a character in a game without a walk animation.

But since we are using whats called true first person*, a walk animation suddenly is important since the animations will affect the camera in the game. Whats even more important, in our game specifically, is how the character uses her hands within the game as they are the games main mechanic. Since the character can carry around fire with her hands and they also are the feedback to the player if it is working or not. For example, if you couldn’t see the hand or the fire when playing, how would the player know if they are carrying the fire. So all the animations for walking and moving around in the game and interacting/using mechanics was prioritized. After that I looked at animations that have the character have a ”first time” reaction to their interaction with touching the fire.

This will be displayed as a cinematic reaction, the player will lose control over the character for a brief moment as the character reacts for example to lighting the cursed hand on fire. Hopefully this will have the players understand that it is not something dangerous and that it is what they are supposed to do. Here is a video of the animation:

The animations that got cut from the production for now is the ones that was supposed to be included in an introduction cinematic. Also animations where the character interacts with props like torches have been down prioritized as they are no props that the character can interact with and they are not needed for the current gameplay of moving around fire.

*  True First person: is when the camera in the game is actually in the head of the character trying to simulate how the character would see the world. This includes being able to see the characters body as you look down, just as you would in real life (or at least as close as possible). 

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