Superhero Game Revamped! New Flight Anim (Update 10-27-16)

Hello, Everyone!

I've been sporadically on the forums through the years and posted in a thread about my superhero game here: https://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=148&t=71586

After the forum was reconfigured, my WIP updates were left in the "Completed Creations" forum. It is definitely not a completed creation. Its misplacement on the forum and my longing to start a new Dev Log lead me to creating this new post. I'll be posting occassional updates to this feed, so please check back.

If you haven't seen my game before, my first Dev Vlog looks to give you a rough idea. Check it out here:

My basic idea was to create Choplifter with Superheroes, but the game has grown in scope over the years. Now you will be patrolling the city, stopping crimes, rescuing civilians, and taking on the bad guys.

I originally was hand drawing everything and it was taking forever. Now that I'm a husband and father, I needed a quick way to create assets. So I switched to skeletal animation for all of the characters. The player is created in Toon Boom Animate Pro 3 and the frames are exported.

The civilians and Enemies (all NPC's) are also skeletal animation, but created with Brashmonkey's Spriter Pro to help keep file sizes down while letting me randomize the characters.

Spriter will let me randomize clothes and colors while preserving my FPS:

It is also an easier way to animate the civilians for their many NPC states:

And of course there are the enemies:

So that's a little taste of the game. Please feel free to follow me on the bagillion different social media outlets that I'm on:

http://www.facebook.com/needyourdisease

http://www.twitter.com/needyourdisease

http://www.tumblr.com/needyourdisease

http://www.NeedYourDisease.com

this is looking pretty sweet. I've been thinking about using spriter for some projects in the future (or maybe even my current project) but I haven't taken the time to really learn how to use it.

mudmask

Fist off, I was checking your site and your games look awesome. I can't get one finished and you've got 3. I'm pretty jealous.

Second, I'm pretty much in the same boat as far as Spriter Pro. I know how to get in there and move stuff around, but there's still a lot that I haven't figured out yet. Its just a matter of me sitting down to spend some prolonged time with it. My original hang up was that I couldn't draw in the program so it felt like too much pre-planning to be as useful or as organic as I'd like. I've kind of gotten past that and am using it for all of my NPC's.

I put up a video on my Youtube channel with a little commentary of me making my Robot enemy:

I definitely think it is worth the money and am excited about some upcoming features. Especially controlling parts of the character independent of the rest. If I could get an enemy to randomly say things to you in the middle of battle, I would be pretty excited.

At least that's the dream. Thanks for checking out the game.

-Ben

ha perception is 90% of the battle.. I only have 1 finished

I'll check out your video for sure. this will be super helpful. I have a wife and (lots of) kids now too, so time savers are always a plus.

Greatly enjoy your work with Spriter Wish I had the art bug.

I have bought a Pro license for Spriter when it was in discount, but until now I' ve never used that tool...

It seems to me very tricky to use, at first glance.

HR78 That is defnintely understandable, especially if you don't have any previous experience with skeletal animation. Brashmonkey has a lot tutorials on his Youtube page that might be of good use. I've been playing with the idea of recording a few tutorials myself. If there is anything specific you would like to know, you can feel free to ask.

so hey sman118 - each individual part of your sprites are separate images right? as in actual separate files? can you designate different files for those body parts in construct?

just finished watching your robot enemy video - pretty interested in this

mudmask Yeah. There is one drawing for the hand, one for the forearm, and so on. But you can also set up multiple versions to use in an animation. For the Robot, I have 3 or for different torsos to switch between. So when he twists his body, I'm just switching between the different versions and sliding the other body parts around to line up properly. Spriter also lets you swap out entire sets of files for other ones. If you look at the pictures from my superhero game, you'll see a bunch of civilians. Ultimately, I'm going to draw a lot of different hair styles, clothes, and faces. Then I can randomize them when they spawn and the city will have unique citizens. I haven't done too much with that yet though, but it is the dream. Hope that helps.

This game looks pretty cool

Update: 2-4-16

The game jam wiped my brain and i'm finally starting to ease back into my main project. It hasn't been easy. As far as I can figure, I was working on getting the "fast" flight animations in. I realized that he looked stupid while he was turning and all straightened out, so I figured out a way to determine if he is turning up or down and animate accordingly. Basically, I took the movement angle and converted it to a rotation angle (piggy backing on a lot of conditions set to trigger animations) and compared that against the direction being held on the analog stick. Confused yet? Me too, but I think the theory is sound. So I will be doing a little test soon and finishing the rest of the turning animations. More to come.

Ben

PS - I also added a new head angle. I should probably do more of those.

See the second Devlog Here:

Super quick video. Starting to get my flight angles in. I think I've figured out how to get my guy to turn his body as he rotates to his final position. Hoping to do more of these short videos. Please like and subscribe if you'd like to see more. Thanks!

-Ben

Haven't posted in a really long time, but I still add to the game when I can. Got some new background tiles going for buildings and just worked on this punch combination. Need to work in combo stacking and have it affect some enemies. Hoping to have that soon.

-Ben

Still following along! Keep it up dude.

Hey, I'm also following this! I like all the updates you've been making on your blog. This looks great!