How This ONE ANIMATION Changed My Game... | Indie Devlog
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- Опубликовано: 20 сен 2024
- This one animation completely changed my game...
Support the Game:
▶Patreon: / hyvestudio
▶Phase I: hyve.itch.io/w...
Come Join the Community:
▶Discord: / discord
▶Website: hyve.studio/
▶Twitter: / hyve_studio
▶Instagram: @hyvestudios
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The Team:
▶ Zoop: Project Lead
▶ IToastPotatoes: Animator
▶ Dennis: Web Developer
/ @fuelledbycaffeine
Today's Video:
In the last month, our game has gone a complete makeover. A simple animation that was sent over completely changed how we went about developing my dream game.
About:
Hello! I am an indie game developer working with a couple of others to bring to life my project! I am currently working on a low poly RPG game based off some games such as the souls series and breath of the wild! I have been working on this for quite some time, but I only recently started uploading my progress. The rest of the progress can be found on my discord server!
Credits
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
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[Inspirational Game Developers]
Dani - Adding New Weapons to my Game! (Got me into Devlogs)
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Sam Hogan - I Made Minecraft in 24 Hours (Motivates to work)
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Michael Kocha - Devlog Ep 14 - Quest Design and Alpha Test Event Results (Reason I pursued Windshire)
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Brackeys - Making of PARTY KILLER - Ludum Dare 46 (How I learned C#)
• Making of PARTY KILLER...
I admire the effort put into blending the animation with the overall feel of the game. It's definitely a step in the right direction. One critique I have is that what makes the animation style for the spiderverse movies and the new puss in boots movies work so well is that usually the skipped frames and choppy look is done primarily in action shots. Not necessarily in the regular walking or running shots. Usually it's done to emphasize certain things. For example, when peter and miles were running through the snowy forest in the first movie, miles was animated in twos in order to emphasize his speed. Animating in twos should serve a purpose beyond "this looks cool", or "it matches the feel of the game". I understand this game is in active development and by no means do I intend anything other than friendly constructive criticism. As the animation sits currently, it looks out of place with the rest of the world and comes off like the player animation is laggy and robotic. Hope this feedback helps you guys! And props for using such a masterful inspiration for your animation style! I know you guys will be able to refine it further and deliver a truly great experience.
I am not reading that
You have a solid point and appreciate the input! I think we are going to take some time and make sure we nail this animation style to give it that same feeling that the spiderverse and puss and boots movies give off.
Hey, Toast here,
The plan is to make the rest of the game coherent with the style. Obviously there will be refinements done as time goes on.
There's a lot more as to why I'm animating on twos, threes and even more at some points. However that could be a video by itself, so we had to keep it short here.
For locomotion we took inspiration from Mr Game and Watch in Super Smash Bros, for example. There's a whole video essay about how his animation works. I will say that there is a version of the run animation that is fully smoothed out, and it looks wrong put next to the other animations.
I'm glad movies like Spiderverse is increasing people's literacy in animation. A lot of CG shows on Netflix think that halving the animation rate is an "homage" to hand animated cartoons but it can't be further from the truth. Like pixel art, the style comes from the limitations of the tools, and not a "stylistic choice". Each frame of 2D animation costs money, so animators need to communicate so much in so little frames. I'd even argue that step animation is far more labor intensive than tweening keyframes. What those Netflix shows don't get is that if you're gonna consolidate 16 frames of animation into 4, each of those frames need to do the heavy lifting of 4 frames each. It's not an even split, you need to squash, stretch, and smear to make it cohesive, and you need to heavily rely on anticipation frames to sell it. Otherwise, it just cheapens the look despite you having all of the motion data to begin with.
I disagree, IMO “it matches the feel of the game” is the really the only thing that matters, animation doesn’t need to have any other purpose. Communicating actions and Creating a feeling is animation’s purpose, so as long as the intended action is understood and skipping frames is a choice, and not a mistake, I think its a perfectly valid choice regardless if it has a other purpose than “it feels right”.
The only thing Id suggest is that the players shouldn’t be the only thing animated in that way, because that’s what makes their animation feel out of place for some people. IMO.
I actually like the animation style and I think it looks interesting and, maybe because of the style of the game, it doesn’t seem very robotic to me.
I kinda feel like the unique animations will be perceived as poor network / server issues on multiplayer.
Also the main run animation doesn’t really look like running, it looks more like he’s doing one of the step machines at a gym. I think you need to space his legs out more or make him have more float time.
It’s a good concept but I think it needs a lot of work. Try looking at Project Feline on that cartoon animation.
That's fair, this style is one of those that if not done properly it takes a lot away from the game. Hopefully after some tweaks it will be a lot better.
i like it, its pretty unique, i think there may need to be some fine tuning but its a cool idea. also love the little character cutscenes throughout the vid
Yeah, it is still early on so its gonna go through some iterations and hopefully we land on something unique and fun. But thank you, it was fun making them.
Awesome, I was just wondering when the next Windshire devlog would be! I like this new direction for the animations, it brings a unique style to the game that'll help it stand out. And the production quality on this devlog was really good!!
Thank you! Definitely was a major reason we went back to the drawing board. Hopefully we can iron out some kinks and it ends up perfect. Also thank you, we really wanted the devlog to stand out and I think we did a pretty good job on the editing of it!
This animation style is beautiful. Instantly gives this game its own unique character and recognition!
Lean into it! I'd love to see some 2D smoke/magic effects with the same low-frame rate. And timed combos on the frame rate, giving the whole a rhythm.
Thank you! That is exactly what we were going for, we definitely want to lean into the style more and the idea with the effects seem like it would work beautifully!
This video got me interested in the game, excited to see what comes next. Remember to have good night lighting/fog, and to have full enviroments!
Thank you! That is something we are looking heavily into. We are extremely excited for what comes next.
Setting and Gameplay Loop feedback:
I really feel repelled by the generic setting and base gameplay idea. It's not bad, especially since it's just a concept, but it definitely feels underwhelming, lacks any identity and can't catch my interest. What if you make it all happen on floating islands and turn magic crystals into gravity-bending rocks? (Seems random? Let me explain!) Islands float because of this anti-gravity ore, so whenever you steal another one from the orc camp - the island itself becomes unstable, parts far from the camps crack and fall off, giving you less safe space. You may extract or continue. But if you get too greedy - the island becomes dangerously unstable, starts shaking and crumbling, even more parts fall into the abyss enabling intense platforming, but thanks to all the cracks in the ground and terrain shifts - even more little ore deposits become uncovered. So now you have to race against time to reach your flying boat and sail away, or should you risk it and fill your pockets to the brim? Risk/reward eh?
This gravity-based setting opens a more focused and distinctive ability pool other than just our average "magic". Flying ships are powered by those crystals, tank may activate an AoE push/pull/slow effects as crowd control or launch teammates somewhere with his shield, archer could manipulate arrow flight or resummon used arrows back as a "reload" xD, warrior can dash around very fast kinda pushing himself using the very same crystals, healer might learn how to levitate or incapacitate enemies for a while making gravity for them several times higher.
I know for sure that my niche desire of Floating Islands setting wasn't quite fulfilled in the industry. Veterans might remember how many players attended the last day of Worlds Adrift MMO. And those players are still out there. Maybe they're waiting for your game.
Progression feedback:
I saw that! Lvl. 100000000 CHAD?! No please no xD Not the numbers! Whatever you want, but not numeric progression lol :D I know it does work in your average Chinese MMO, easy to implement and people generally like seeing numbers go bigger, but focus more on unlocking new abilities, chaining them together and all that stuff. Simply going from 100 damage to 10000 damage really makes any game feel outdated and artificial. As if I can physically see the hand of balance designer typing those numbers in. Your idea with melee combos is a flawless example of your ability to generate fascinating mechanics-based gameplay. I beg you to develop in that direction and not burry your creativity under a pile of boring numbers.
Animation feedback:
Shift towards choppy animation is definitely a positive in my eyes. I don't necessarily think that Spiderverse is a good example to follow because they use it in conjunction with cinematic camera angles and careful action choreography, but nontheless, it still adds to the game feel. Skipping frames also triggers the same brain mechanism of "filling the gaps with imagination" as with pixel art and low poly. Even from your brief showcase I can tell that it works. At least works for me.
UI feedback:
Inventory is something I loved to see in this video. Gives those tactile Astroneer vibes. I don't really have anything to suggest here, you 100% know what you're doing on this one. It's going to be gorgeous after being polished. By the way, gravity setting also helps to justify this kinda weird telekinetic way of dragging items into the inventory haha.
Wow... those are some insanely interesting suggestions!
I completely agree that the environment needs to be looked into. I hate the idea of having a generic landscape/island for the map. Maybe for a public playtest we would do something like that but for a full release doing something like floating islands could be an amazing idea. The suggestions you gave, I feel like a lot align with the gameplay idea we have for Windshire and we would love to "borrow" some of those ideas as we look into our environment and lore building. This would open up so many ideas for us to play with as we develop the game.
As for progression, I agree grinding is something we want to ignore and the whole level-based progression is outdated. We are aiming for more "permanent" vs "run" based progression where your character can upgrade his character to increase health, certain skills, etc but then during the run you can have upgrades that are not persistent so each run is unique! Then we want to continue building our micro progressions to let each player progression simply by becoming better, which in turn, gives them a hand in the combat. Progression is something we seriously want to consider and continue building as we progress in development.
We appreciate that you like the animation style we are going for, we want to make it instantly recognizable and allow us to have more creative design when coming up with cool animations for characters!
I agree, the inventory was the first system we implemented that made us think, "What else could we rethink from traditional games?". With some more polish it'll be the perfect mix of dealing with the boring inventory management and not taking the player out of the immersion.
Overall thank you for these suggestions. A lot of them would turn Windshire more into its own unique experience, and we would love to see you in the Discord keeping up with what we implement :)
Dayumm Bruv ngl kinda Trippy, I LOVE IT 😍😍
Thank you!
When you do your enemy design, may i suggest a very simple enemy mechanic? Try using the frames of animation to be a duh-duh-BAM style, so the windup is super telegraphed, but in the style of your animations
That would be awesome. That is our next focus as we close in on our deadline for a public build. Cannot wait to see how everything turns outs.
Think your changes sound pretty good, the idea for the game is super nice!
My main concern is. If someone wanted to play this on their own, and wanted to go the magic based class because magic is cool, would tbey be kinda stuck with no ways of dealing effective damage? Or is everyone put into a squad? Perhaps subclasses for support vs offensive?
That's a good point, we are planning to have sub classes for each main class which would allow for more variety between single player and coop experiences. Somewhat in line with what Cube World has done in the past where the wizard class had the Aqua/Fire subclass depending on what you would like to specialize in.
@@Hyve it's something I've had to consider myself, what if a someone wants to play my multiplayer game on their own. It's a hard one!
I think subclasses definitely will help, and I also think for your game Cube World feels like a great source of inspiration!
Love the video and the game looks great, but I have one minor suggestion: Change the camera to move smoother when preforming certain actions. looking at the gameplay for the swordsman class makes me slightly sick, the camera moves far too abruptly with the animation of the attacks which feels very chopy (in a bad way) and triggers my motion sickness a little.
Also its very unrelated but i think giving the swordsman (or all of the classes to be honest) more variety in weapon choice would increse the depth of gameplay a LOT. For instance, you could give the swordsman the ability to wield a giant hammer, which would have slower and more powerful/larger aoe attacks, or you could give the ranger class a crossbow that would lower there rate of attack but improve the accuracy, range, and damage of there attacks. There are other examples you could have for each class, but a system like this would make every team more unique, as well as increasing the replay value of the game exponentially.
Thank you for the suggestions! I agree that giving each class some variety with weapons is a good idea and we already have some special things plans for those cases. However, we also need to keep scope creep in check as we are dying to get this project out to you guys!
The ending left me wanting more
Exactly what we wanted 😊
Game looks awesome
Thank you!
I think it make sense to utilize a loot table for the mods. Something close to what WoW has. It keeps items in a table which can reduce lag for your game. Also, this opens up the ability to utilize part loot mechanics in the future.
Could you go more into details on loot tables?
@@Hyve so each mob has a selection of items that it can drop. Each item has a % drop rate. When you right click on a dead mob, you can see the items it dropped and select the ones you want to grab and add to your inventory.
I think animation fine tuning will need to happen with player feedback. At the end of the day if it feels good, it is and if not it’ll make the whole game feel clunky. There’s potential but really need to start getting actual feedback on feel to avoid creator bias and unnecessary back tracking later on.
Good point. This style is definitely one of those that either be really well or mess up the feel of the game completely.
Wouldn’t you call that an extraction shooter without shooting? So an extraction game
Basically, there will be ranged combat... if that counts 😂
I never thought about deliberately making animations more snappy. Now I wonder how it would interact with exagerated deformations to amplify the feel of the movement.
Like a fist getting three times bigger right at the end of a punch.
That is something we were wanting to experiment with, however since we are using a humanoid character avatar, Unity will not allow us to have deformations in the skinned mesh.
@@Hyve cant you just make the bone size larger in the animation? I reduce bone size to zero to simulate dismemberment, I assume this would work just fine in the opposite direction.
Damn.
Thank you thank you.
Nice work! However the animations doesnt look nice, it feel like the character is lagging (especially the jump attack)
Thank you for the feedback! We went back to the drawing board with the jump attack and I think we are getting it to look how we intended!
Although it comes from a good place, I don't think it really fits your aesthetic
We are working on some tweaks that will hopefully work better for our aesthetic!
This seems like a cool idea but watching the devlog it felt choppy and if I played I would not be sure if it was lagg or style. I think older games emphasise actions more than have a low framerate. I think it'd be neat to see more about how you plan to animate.
We reworked a few animations since the video and hope that the next devlog shifts your opinion. When actually playing, the animations feel great but that is still to be decided once we release a playtest.
Oh, it looks fantastic 😍😍😍 Is there a chance you might need music for this game?
Thank you! We are always open to work with talented individuals. Join the discord and lets get connected.
Very nice editing
Thank you, definitely was a fun challenge.
how you came with idea to this melee combat system? and how you implemented the quick attacks? great video btw
The idea came from Toast, a big pet peeve in melee combat games is this idea that all you do is spam left click. So he spent some time coming up with a combat system that the player can improve in by simply getting better at a specific class. We used the animator and triggers and are checking for input! But thank you!
@@Hyve Really appreciate it.
If you could explain in detail what the analogy is behind it would be nicer. (I do sword fighting in my game if you would like to watch my video and give me a feedback I would really appreciate it)
I like the game idea, but the animations honestly are throwing me off, i don't think your art style fits that comic book style animation. A couple others feel that way too, i would definitely jump backwards and make it smooth, and more stylized.
I think we might look into smoothing out portions to help mix the style of the stylized with this more comic book like.
what even is Windshire
I am so glad you asked! Windshire is an Action COOP Extraction based RPG! Taking back Orc camps with friends is the main focus!
your discord link doesn't work btw
Should be fixed now, thank you for letting me know!
Your game looks very british, or maybe i'm dumb (this isnt a hate comment, i live in england)
Toast... looks like its spilling into your animations 😮
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