The Pixels Of Joxon

[Joxon]

Well, I guess I'm doing the hand switch. I think I'll go with E-Man and have him face away from the player. (IE instead of facing forward-right he faces back-left) Now I have a pretty good idea of what it should look like but if some one could provide an example from an official good game that uses the sprite switch?

Edit: I saw some nonoficial examples and iguess I could only do the back facing thing for the slash itself? All the others will just have the sword in the other hand and that's it.

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A little guy that shows up at certain points in the game. This is the closing animation.

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Health bar.

Oh, and don't forget about these.

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I tried an idle sword... But neither of them look right. Any suggestions?

Edit: here's all the PBG sprites so far.

Or these.

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Eesdesesr.

Ref.

Or him.

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Here's something quick.

I'm gonna edit more later.
Figured I'd just see how it looked... Not square I guess I should say?

Edit: here's this.

Or this.

[Paladin]

The sword animation is bugging me. Each frame just seems like an edit of the previous, making it stiff and motion-less.
It doesn't help that his hand and legs just seems to flap around, either.

I'm not really that good at animation myself, but I did a quick example.



My animation only includes one more frame than yours, but is pretty different. Here are three of them:



As you can see, the sprite turns, moving the whole body rather than just one arm. Also, the arms and legs
move logically rather than at random. You can't be lazy when animating, but you have to think 3D and make
more unique frames.

[Kelvin]

Why not just do depth shading on the whole thing? It'll save time, and honestly, with sprites this small, I doubt many people are going to notice, much less take the time to appreciate the shading being done on two sides. Plus, selective depth shading makes the sprite look broken and inconsistent. Either do all or nothing.

[DragonDePlatino]

The hand-switch doesn't matter. I never notice that kind of thing when playing games and drawing things like that are just a waste of time when you could be working on other frames, or cleaning up existing ones.

[Arkenova]

The hand-switch doesn't matter. I never notice that kind of thing when playing games and drawing things like that are just a waste of time when you could be working on other frames, or cleaning up existing ones.

I can agree on that issue. It's a pain.

[Joxon]

The sword animation is bugging me. Each frame just seems like an edit of the previous, making it stiff and motion-less.
It doesn't help that his hand and legs just seems to flap around, either.

I'm not really that good at animation myself, but I did a quick example.



My animation only includes one more frame than yours, but is pretty different. Here are three of them:



As you can see, the sprite turns, moving the whole body rather than just one arm. Also, the arms and legs
move logically rather than at random. You can't be lazy when animating, but you have to think 3D and make
more unique frames.

That'll kinda screw up what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a regular chop where he doesn't change where he's standing. Plus it'll screw with the collision.

[Paladin]

It doesn't need to be exactly like that, I just made it to show you that you should give your animation a bit more movement. It looks really lazy as it is now. I don't see why the character changing position would be a problem, as you could add a short animation of the character returning in place. As for hitboxes... I don't know much about programming, so I don't know how well you can define them, but still, you shouldn't sacrifice your animations.

[Joxon]

Not that I disagree, but does anyone else think the same thing?

[Koh]

That's pretty much what I was saying earlier. In terms of collisions, you don't have to change the collision mask at all. You just use a rectangle that tucked inside the bounds of the sprite outline (I'd go even further and say only on the bounds of the body portion, so you aren't getting nicked by the tiniest of pixels, and every hit is clearly visible). Whatever animation that happens doesn't need to affect the collision box.

[Joxon]

If I use that foot changing animation,
I just realized how many problems this is causing.

1. The box CANNOT follow the sprite without changing it. Unless you have a fix in which case please provide an example.
2. It will take out if the 48x48 size I'm trying to contain this in.
3. It gets rid of the simple chop I was going for.

Also looking at certain examples I've seem that Zero does the exact same type of chop as mine and he doesn't move his feet either. Also none of this is ment offensively.

[Koh]

If you're referring to this
This works too. Notice how his body is fully in the motion of the swing, even if his legs don't move much. The step forward just allows for maximum range.

[Joxon]

I did try a little bit more to make the body flow.
This one he pulls himself back a little after


This one he doesn't.

[TheShyGuy]

How are you doing attack collisions? Maybe I can help you figure something out?

[Joxon]

So, PBG had his own collision mask represented by a rectangular mask (every sprite has the same collision). The sword has its own collision mask that is represented by an object with a collision representing the swords path. The sword mask lasts as long as PBG is swinging the sword.

[TheShyGuy]

So what would be the issue if the sprite moves?