Messages

211

Resources / Re: Ryskeliinis sprites

« on: October 02, 2012, 11:53:30 pm »

Expanding & broadening the research tree is an exciting avenue. Not necessarily purely "better" stuff but more variation, several types of lasers, different plasma-tier weaponry, armour values etc.

Where do you imagine the droid being, power-wise? Less armour than a tank (but which tank, the starting tanks or later hover tanks?), but beefier than a X-Com soldier?

Less prone to panicking I imagine too. Obviously it can walk through doors unlike the tanks so that's a plus. Same negative as tanks that it can't gain XP or would the elerium chip gain maybe a reduced capability for that? (like at a 25% rate or something).

Don't want them entirely replacing X-Com soldiers, so they should either have limited firepower, toughness or skill compared to a veteran X-Com agent in Power Armour.

212

Resources / Re: Ryskeliinis sprites

« on: October 01, 2012, 08:25:57 pm »

That's a sweet looking robot you got there, and I do like the idea of integrated weapons - maybe it could still use grenades - or have some form of grenade launcher/mortar attached to a shoulder or something.

213

Released Mods / Re: New Terror Mission Map Blocks

« on: September 30, 2012, 10:59:08 am »

Pretty cool!

I imagine we could eventually do some cool shit with region/country tied tile-sets - like some Asian/European inspired terror site map blocks.

214

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 29, 2012, 06:56:35 pm »

A bunch of new drafts:

Draft 3

Switched places on Frame 4/8 and 5/8. Some minor adjustments to make frame 5's legs long enough to work in Frame 4 after swap.

Draft 4

Continued with Draft 3, but switched Frame 4/8 with Frame 3/8. Some minor changes to frame 5/8 to move the rear foot closer to the ground for transition with frame 6/8.

Draft 5

Same as Draft 4, but Frame 1/8 got the rear leg further up in the air already.

Draft 6

Same as Draft 5, but modifications to Frame 3, 4 and 5/8 legs. Frame 5/8 now has the rear leg touching the ground.

Draft 7

Same as Draft 6, but Frame 3/8 rear leg is closer and higher relative to the body so there's a more marked difference between it and Frame 4/8.

Draft 8

More minor changes compared to Draft 6/7 - Frame 4/8 leg is now slightly more forward to make the movement change greater.

215

Released Mods / Re: New Terror Mission Map Blocks

« on: September 29, 2012, 12:59:30 am »

Maybe make both a lighter shade of blue? Or go for a more "concrete military research outpost, location classified" feel. Or a delightfully rusty Soviet-era bunker complex.

216

Released Mods / Re: New Terror Mission Map Blocks

« on: September 28, 2012, 08:22:55 pm »

Looks rather good!

Maybe try a variant with whit(ish)/black tile floor outside to have the interior lab floor and outside floor mesh a little better?

You could take a look at something like Theme Hospital (not a lab but similar enough) for some ideas.

217

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 28, 2012, 08:08:50 pm »

Hmm, that makes some sense yes.

Remember here, frame 0 is not actually frame 0 - I've not yet completed all the "standing still" frames.
The rearmost leg in my first frame here should actually be slightly elevated compared to the static frame, as its movement cycle begin (seen more clearly in Frame 1).
When it's actually moving the figure will also be advancing across tiles - so the second frame is kind of an illusion of movement for the front foot - it's only the upper body "falling forwards" (to go with the physics term  ) as the Veronian starts walking.

You can try a similar pose/walking stance yourself (helps to mimic by standing on your toes), with the rightmost leg slightly in front of your body and then start going forward - once you hit the ground with the left foot (a long step, say 1 meter) the right foot is already halfway from leaving the ground - which is where the current animation kinda "jumps a step" between frame 4 and 5. In frame 4 the left foot is somewhat too high in the air and in frame 5 it's already in the "back of the middle" position as you say and the right/front foot has already jumped to the equivalent of the back foot in frame 1 (the second frame).
If you get what I mean (we might be meaning the same damn thing ).

218

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 25, 2012, 10:06:56 pm »

Ported the changes to the NE movement set and ran into some troubles due to the way things are not entirely mirrored between the opposite sides:


I think I caught another thing that made the animation odd, the last four frames up here had very compact legs which I made longer (compare to their counterparts in my previous posts). Olso tried to make the feet closer in level to each other so that the eventual transition between the two Four-sets were smoother.

The transition between the fifth and sixth frames inner legs / the fifth frames little "squat" where it begins moving the outer leg (complete outer leg movement seen in frame 6, 7, 8 and 1). At the same time the inner leg begins pushing a little and so it moves "backwards".

The transition between the inner leg of Frame 4, 5 and 6 aint great either - maybe switch the inner legs of Frame 4 and 5? I think the drop between 5 and 6 is a bit too steep - I'm having trouble getting a good transition from the rather long inner leg movement to a "solid foundation" to begin the outer leg movement on.

219

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 24, 2012, 07:02:36 pm »

Which is why it's such a headache to get everything to line up properly on the final .bmp chart, because you got to keep all that in mind while you can't see the complete sprite - a single pixel off and you got an arm that's hovering in mid air 

220

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 24, 2012, 06:26:02 pm »

Ah you see, that's ACTUALLY the unarmed combat animation - if you put in a X-Com soldier you can see how he knees the human in the face 

(j/k)

That's pretty helpful to visualize what may be "off" indeed!

That's the "unarmed" movement animation - when armed it will have only one set of arms holding the (two-handed) weapon which will only move up and down with the torso, creating a stiffer appearance.

There's a couple of things at work that creates some of those flaws:
I believe I may have accidently copy-pasted the legs/bodies of some of the sprites in that line out-of-synch compared to my drafts (that I keep in another section of my work sheet). There's actually 1 pixel height difference too much between the first 4 frames and the last 4 frames. I never intended that to be an animation test so I rushed it, just to see so that each set of arms lined up with the bodies and didn't block the legs - and to compare them to each other.

For the first draft I also worked on the assumption that the torso's where at a steady height, but from studying the Muton sprites they actually move the torso like so: 0, 0, +1, +2 (or -1, -1, 0, +1) - that goes for the arms and legs as well so I believe the game is juggling a little on purpose to create a greater sense of movement. Or the game itself may be using some inbuilt Y-coordinates to further change how the sprite moves once in game.

I also now noticed that while the torso and arms are doing the Y-dance, the "non-moving" leg ISN'T which creates that "jumpiness" because I copied it wrongly.

Let's see if I can correct it.

Edit:
New draft


Corrected the 1 pixel left:right height difference.

Modified the rightmost arm a little to show more of it, making the "jump" between it and the frame before it smaller.

Had to elongate the two rightmost legs after correcting for the one and two pixel "drop".

Corrected some minor shading errors on some of the legs.

"Repaired" the fifth leg, making it look thicker.

221

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 23, 2012, 09:42:20 pm »

Yeah, I've noticed that too a little. The moving foot is actually one pixel below the inner one which creates the "side-stepping" effect. Hard to picture how one of those bug legs would move to their maximum extent at that angle 

Would something like this look better? (Might need to slim the leg a little)


Third draft of the sideway arms motions too:


Going for more of a "wheel" motion of the outer arm and darkened up the inner arm a little more. This angle is bloody hard to work with using this body type, both the head design, hunchback and legs conspire to make it a headache to look right.

222

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 23, 2012, 08:50:08 pm »

No, I haven't seen them in motion yet - these are the first drafts. Some will be ok, other will need adjustment. Maybe I could add a little shoulder jostling to reduce some of the static feel (although I don't want it to look spazzy in the other direction).

Did these two in the meanwhile:





Here's there's even more of the body blocking the inner arm but I've got a few frames where it juts out a little - can't do much more than that without it look a bit weird though.

223

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 23, 2012, 06:31:25 pm »

See your point.

How about something like this then?


e: Just discovered by a misclick that Paint.net comes with a pixel grid system built in. That should help things along later!

224

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 23, 2012, 02:48:02 pm »

NW arms movements


Was a bit worried that some of the hands would overlap the legs before I started gluing on the legs (and not sure how the game handles that when it comes to "overlap priority") which could look wonky if an arm was supposed to be "infront" of the leg while the hand ends up behind the hip or something. Turns out none of the hands did so no worries there.

I've noticed that the game have "complete" arms even when the main body should hide most of them (diagonal facings/side view). Might be smart to fill in with a dark colour "just in case" the arm doesn't link up perfectly with the body as it wouldn't be noticable then. Might help with positioning too...

NE done


SW done


Because the body hides the arms I chose not to draw the hidden arms, no need to have them pop out if they end up misaligned with the body.

Only 40 frames (West and North) + 8 stills + Picking death animations to go!

Well... that and getting them in game.

225

Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply

« on: September 22, 2012, 05:08:52 pm »

S Arm movements:


Gonna be tricky to get the weapons to line up properly, the Muton sprite is very broad and bulky. I'm trying to keep an eye on where the hands are in relation to each other though, everything else is pretty irrelevant.

E: SE Armo movements done:

Took a lot of work to get those arms looking decent. Process right now: Do drafts of all the arms and worry about things lining up properly on the big grid later.
Assembling the models to get a good view of how things should look complete helps a lot. Gotta be careful not to have weirdness like arms/hands that should be "behind" the model show up "infront" of the legs and such.