Homestrife 4⅓ - Development Thread 2 - Tech Demo 2 out now!

[LuciferZ]

Ok there is a trade-off point in the development of the Equius Cage level. I need someone with deciding power to tell me which route to take.

I finally got a good design going, and the key "interesting" thing on the stage is the robots in the background. They're going to be numerous, difficult to animate, and difficult to break up in such a way that they can be animated. Or at least I think they will be. I'm assuming very simple motion right now, like a bobbing of the arms/head/torso to make a kind of idle stance.

Anyways. Here's the trade off:

I can make 8 or so very nice, detailed robots complete with levels of shine, rivets, and textured materials. Then duplicate them, mirror them, etc, until I have about 15-20.

Or I can make 15-20 unique robots, but they won't be quite as classy. Simpler shading, less detail, but each obviously made from scratch.

I think both would work fine. The lacking detail fits with the "background things get less defined" style of the comic. The duplicates will look nicer, and the repeats may actually give it a more old school game vibe?

Or we could have 15-20 unique and beautiful robots if you raid an art class and capture some slaves.

[Darlos9D]

Well they probably don't need to look more complicated than the playable characters themselves, so the extreme levels of details you describe might actually clash with the rest of the style of the game. So you can afford to keep it simple.

It would be pretty neat if individual robots looked a bit different and the background had a sense of personality to it.

[onFyre]

I don't think you need 20 robots. The whole background will be full of them, and it will be too busy. Just make about 5 good ones and repeat a couple. Then add a pile of robotics in the corner, and a window on the wall and that's a really interesting background, without it distracting you from the playable characters.

[LuciferZ]

I personally feel that a crowd of robots is less visually distracting than adding other elements. Breaking up the background with windows, workbenches, piles, and other things tends to unbalance the background. A perfectly flat stage should feel perfectly flat, and if there's a pile on one side, there needs to be a pile on the other too in order to keep things balanced.

I'll have a pretty final-design sketch done soon, and any last minute changes can be made then.

[Darlos9D]

I personally feel that a crowd of robots is less visually distracting than adding other elements. Breaking up the background with windows, workbenches, piles, and other things tends to unbalance the background. A perfectly flat stage should feel perfectly flat, and if there's a pile on one side, there needs to be a pile on the other too in order to keep things balanced.

I'll have a pretty final-design sketch done soon, and any last minute changes can be made then.

Eh, I disagree with this. Plenty of stages in traditional fighters have completely non-symmetrical stages. I don't think it'd bother anybody. Just as long as you can tell the difference between non-interactable background elements and interactable foreground elements it shouldn't be a problem.

Just because it's technically a simple stage doesn't mean the background has to especially simplified.

[mynameissua]

Oh hey look, it's that guy that never posts anymore!

Alright, so I had a few mins that weren't occupied by tons of schoolwork or extreme laziness and threw this together. It's obviously rough and simple but I think it brings to light some important game development discussion.



When you're playing a fighting game you don't have the opportunity to take in the pretty graphics so as cool as some of the other health bars I've seen are they're impractical. You need to be able to tell your status at a moments glance. You also need to be able to recognize your character almost instantly. Using the character's faces would serve this purpose for any long time reader of the comic as they've become rather iconic. (Not gonna bring the Jake/John issue into this since we're not talking about the new kids).

For added flair we can do simple animations for when you take damage or use specials.

I may work on some upgraded versions with nicer graphics if I have any more time.

EDIT: An alternate idea

This one is even simpler, I animated it for effect.

this is cool ^^ like the animation !!!

@selig and that idea is also cool too XD

[Roundy210]

Decided to try my hand at the John f+h, here's what I have so far.

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I know it's not much, but i have to admit, I'm pretty proud, especially after only half an hour or so of work...

[mynameissua]

Decided to try my hand at the John f+h, here's what I have so far.

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I know it's not much, but i have to admit, I'm pretty proud, especially after only half an hour or so of work...

this is cool!!! XD but it suprise me that it took u this long.. O_O like a couple of hour..

[Roundy210]

And a little gif of my progress...

[mynameissua]

@Roundy210 cool~ LOL this is most like excellent ^^ ( lucky that u have some talent ^^)

[aspiringHelpfulness]

@issua: Please put quoted images in spoilers.

That GIF still looks weird to me, with the way the hammerhead gets bigger, and disappears. Well, it's a work in progress. Still, the animation is very fluid. I like that.

[animatedAspirant]

@Roundy210
Man, you work fast! I'm on hour 12-ish and I haven't even started on most of the details. :snail:
Personally I tend to agree with aH that the distortion is a bit much on the hammer. The distortion idea itself is great, but the amount of it you've got now draws all your attention away from John's movements. Just my opinion, though.
Also, I'm really digging the facial expressions. That was the part that stumped me the most-- whatever you're doing for those, keep it up!

Here's what I've got so far:

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@paradoxius, who mentioned the lights on the equius cage level a couple pages back:
Thanks! Here's an attempt to add the front side of that light support. The perspective errors fM talked about become really evident in this draft, so I didn't polish it up much, but hopefully it gets the general idea across.

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[mynameissua]

@animatedAspirant well i like the Roundy210 animation cause more likely finished.. O_O but also i like the ur stages ^^

mention about stage did anyway finished the other stage rather than equius cage?

[animatedAspirant]

Yeah, I agree. For a game with this many animations, speed is probably the most important factor, and thinking about all that cleanup was giving me time vertigo.

You mean like the SBAHJ level? I don't think so, but someone might be working on it away from the forums.

[trulyElse]

IMO, Speed is good, as long as quality doesn't drop because of it - and I think the ammount of strtch to the hammer in Roundy's is kind of off-putting. But that's me.

[Roundy210]

@Roundy210
Man, you work fast! I'm on hour 12-ish and I haven't even started on most of the details. :snail:
Personally I tend to agree with aH that the distortion is a bit much on the hammer. The distortion idea itself is great, but the amount of it you've got now draws all your attention away from John's movements. Just my opinion, though.
Also, I'm really digging the facial expressions. That was the part that stumped me the most-- whatever you're doing for those, keep it up!

Here's what I've got so far:

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@paradoxius, who mentioned the lights on the equius cage level a couple pages back:
Thanks! Here's an attempt to add the front side of that light support. The perspective errors fM talked about become really evident in this draft, so I didn't polish it up much, but hopefully it gets the general idea across.

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You've definitely got a lot too! Looking back, it probably would have been a good idea to go with that semi-skeleton thing you've got going there. I just went ahead with the full details from the get-go. As for the hammer distortion, I am still trying to figure that out. Looking back on Homestuck, fast movement is generally portrayed with a motion blur, so I'm thinking I will try to go with that. Granted, motion blur would have to wait until coloring, so maybe I'll put a pin in that for now.

So here is my newest draft, with some frames roughed-in, and the awful smear changed into a generic blur.
(Spoilered for SO BIG IT MIGHT MESS YOU UP IF YOU'RE ON A LESSER-POWERED COMPUTER)

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By the way, i found a great article about animation that uses examples from a fighting game. Now I am posting it here because it is WONDERFUL.

[animatedAspirant]

Looking much better already! I think the hammer smear was just taking attention away from the rest of it, which looks great, IMO.

Thanks for the article link-- from what I saw skimming through it, it looks like useful stuff! /bookmarks

[Roundy210]

And done.

(Once again, Spoilered for FRIGGIN HUGE)

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[Darlos9D]

And done.

(Once again, Spoilered for FRIGGIN HUGE)

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Hrm... while good in pencil/ink, I have to wonder how those little lines would ultimately be colored. Personally I'd imagine the blur to be more "solid." Kind of like this:



That would ultimately be much easier to color and probably look best, especially in the incredibly simple Hero Mode style.

I'd suggest going around to other 2D games with a lot of dynamic fighting animations and see how they do such things.

[BwdYeti]

The expected pacing/speed of the game is pretty fast right (I think there was comparison to BB in the past)? That f+H seems too slow based on that premise. It would need to follow an attack with huge stagger if it's supposed to combo, and even as a mostly stand alone attack it's still probably too slow to punish anything, unless it guard breaks or has guard point frames or something. It almost looks slower than even Tager's 6C o:

[LuciferZ]

animatedAspirant, I behaved like a dunce and didn't read back enough to see your version of the stage! It looks great! I especially like the lighting rigs overhead, and I'm wondering if you'd like to collaborate on the Equius stage? I have a partial .PSD going, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by it.

[frozenMeatpopsicle]

Alrighty, I'm back from my little trip. Time to catch up with all the going ons.


On HUD: Good stuff so far, but I'm not a huge fan. My problem is that special bars will be different per player, functionally and visually, so it can't really look like a traditional fighter HUD with everything lining up nicely. The head icon in an enclosed area works, as would a trademark icon, so either is fine. Just don't forget everything's gonna be aliased in the end.

All in all I think we're off to a solid start on the HUD.


@yoyi: Definitely post it anyway. Also we're not on a timeframe here, so there's no reason to apologize for lateness quite yet. If anyone needs to apologize it's me for the lack of animations.


@Roundy: Inking looks a little rough, but admittedly my base pencils are pretty rough. The inks should be ready for colorers to trace over, so it should be pretty clean. Keep track of feet positions too. Your inks are moving around pretty badly. Make sure to use onionskins on things that aren't really moving that much. Also, I drew the cross lines on the face for a reason, to keep things on track. The face in yours is all over the place

Your original smears are on the right track but I think you went the wrong way. Try removing detail in them. Try somewhere between your first and second take(don't use the line swarm), have them as undetailed smears(blocks of color) instead of stretched images. Look at things like lightsabers and other game sprites, like the one Darlos posted.

In the future I will be sure to clean up pencils more, putting the size guide for joints in and stuff.


@animatedAspirant: John is looking really nice so far. Really looking forward to seeing it finished.

The stage is looking good too. I know you said you haven't corrected the perspective yet, so I think I should clarify before anymore is done. The angle is wrong. It looks like you're looking down on the entire stage. It should be lower; at an angle where the top of the cage and the lighting should be angling upward. You should not be seeing the top of those things. Overall(perspective-wise only) it should look more like this. If you do collaborate with Lucifer, that will likely be corrected.


@BwdYeti: Yes, I admit it does seem a tad slow. I'm well aware of that. If it helps, this is how I see it:
- It's his strongest normal by far.
- It does a weak hit as he swings back. So it kinda pops them up into position/stuns them long enough for the big slam.
- You would NOT use it to start any kind of combo or rely on it by itself at all. It's a combo ender.
- Only idiots would be hit by it if it wasn't comboed into.


Okay, I think that covers everything that happened while I was gone. Good to see things have been happening. Keep up the good work guys.

[Darlos9D]

The expected pacing/speed of the game is pretty fast right (I think there was comparison to BB in the past)? That f+H seems too slow based on that premise. It would need to follow an attack with huge stagger if it's supposed to combo, and even as a mostly stand alone attack it's still probably too slow to punish anything, unless it guard breaks or has guard point frames or something. It almost looks slower than even Tager's 6C o:

Two things: First, I'd say its about comparable to Tager's 6C, if not a bit faster actually. 6C is pretty darn slow. Also this move would be used in a very similar manner to 6C, which means you wouldn't be throwing it out randomly all the time or anything since it'd be pretty easy to react to.

Second, keep in mind that this is just how the animation was put together for this gif. We could always make it a bit faster or slower in-game. I'm sure there will be a lot frame data tweaking as development continues, so I wouldn't worry about it right now.

[Roundy210]

I really need to pick my words more carefully. When I said done, I really meant with the movement. I am still going to clean everything up a bit, fix the less consistent bits, etc. Yeah, that was my bad.

As for the smear, I'm thinking that maybe we should go with some sort of motion blur, which would be truer to the webcomic. I will try to get a test of that out sometime soon...

edit: Okay, an archetypal smear would probably work best

[mynameissua]

So far i've seen the john attack action and work process is work very well ^^

@Roundy210 that was great animation but i agree with the rest of people opinion too because the pencil and the hammer part its kindda looks rough.

i have three questions.

1. so far i see the lot of scripts and mini scripts so far but we are still didnt record with the voice actors yet?

2.stages and music, so far i see the one particular stages: equius cages. How many stage we have in the total? and we are still work on the music?

3. lastly, the god tier (or other hero mood) have different scripts or using same scripts? Ex) Gamzee and Sobber Gamzee