Post by Barely_Games in 2D Pixel-Art SciFi Graphics Toolkit Vol.2 comments

2D Pixel-Art SciFi Graphics Toolkit Vol.2 » Comments

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As for the fantasy theme, you really hit the mark, I'm torn as well: I can't decide whether to start by adding a wizard character, who would be great company for the paladin, or to begin with classic fantasy creatures like spiders, demons, and the like. I might just roll a d20 and let fate decide! 😉

Regarding the space theme, I really appreciate your suggestions. Lately, I’ve been thinking about something important, maybe the robot collection should also have 4-direction animations, to allow for more versatile gameplay.
What would you find more useful, more environmental assets or more robots with 4-direction animations? (Though honestly, for true versatility, I’d probably need to go for 8 directions!)

When I mentioned the idea of a space shooter, I was imagining it with vertical scrolling, but I think that project will have to wait a little longer, first I want to keep developing and expanding the existing themes.

Thank you so much for your message, it was very inspiring and full of great insights!

GemInEyeTwin252 days ago (2 edits)

I will let you decide on what you want to work on next for your dungeon theme. I like having creatures and the Wizard.

I admit, I am trying to wrap my head around how one would show other weapons and armor on the paladin programmically. To me a lot of drawing would be required, because of the different directions of the character and unique animated movements.

That is probably why I am leaning to work with your space theme first as I would just need to rotate a weapon and I am currently working on a game that uses the 360 degree gun rotation.

For your question on the space theme, I am a little biased at this point.

1) I plan to use my own hero that only has a side view sprite which would work OK with most of the smaller robots that only have side views too.

2) I am using a 360 rotating gun which works fine for a side-view sprite (as well as for many of the robots), but would require changes if I had the move the gun behind the player for a back view (which I am sure I could figure out but was not planning for).

3) Since they are robots, I think it is OK to just have the side view sprites, but must admit that 4-way movement for the larger rocket firing robots might look better.

4) I was planning to use the larger robots with a side scroller view if I thought they did not work well enough with their 2 directions.

5) I have other character assets I want to have in the game too and they are only 2 way as well.

So for me, I would lean towards more environmental assets. Having more of the other environmental assets would help make the world feel more “believable/lived in” and allow more for a variety of levels.

I am going to try to design the enemies to support 4-way animations though, so that if you do 4 (or 8 way), I can support the 4 way.

Is the 8 way movement to benifit shooting in more directions or just to have the character transitions smoother for turns/directions?

Barely_Games249 days ago

When it comes to having more armors, weapons, or colors for the knight, I think there are two main approaches:

Drawing all the frames for every possible combination (which is a huge amount of work).
Or managing everything with layers, overlaying things like weapons and armor synced up with the base character animations.

The second option seems more manageable to me, even if it requires good organization since the number of animations could really pile up. Still thinking it through.

About your point #2 — you could define specific anchor points on the character where you “attach” the weapon, and just change the joint depending on the current animation. That way, the weapon stays consistent with the motion without having to redraw everything.

Eight-direction movement would definitely make transitions between directions feel smoother, and also let bots shoot diagonally (like at 45-degree angles), which opens up some cool gameplay possibilities.

By the way, a while back a friend and I made a small prototype using the Sci-Fi Volume 1 assets, just to test how versatile they are in a top-down setup. If you feel like checking it out, maybe it’ll help to see them in action:
👉 Rise of Droids – BarelyApes

In the meantime, I’ll try to brainstorm some expansions for the backgrounds and props... maybe even an outdoor environment.
Really appreciate the chat!

I'm curious: which engine are you using?

GemInEyeTwin248 days ago (1 edit)

Yes. For animating all the different combinations of armour, weapons, etc option 2 sounds like the better way, but still alot of work I suspect.

I can see anchor points working for things like the helmet on the player (maybe it even becomes the head/helmet), but the sword I think would be more difficult if it goes through complex motions. I am no expert with any of this but if it was me I would probably isolate the weapon animation as its own sprite and just frame by frame layer it over the player animation so the player's “body” animation would be the same, but a different weapon sprite used (e.g. regular sword vs flaming sword). If armor moves/morphs a lot based on the player's animations, then a seperate sprite layered over the player body animation would work, but again a lot of work I suspect.

For me, that is why I am leanig towards the Sci-Fi assets as any weapon that I plan to use, I would just rotate 360 as needed with some complexity if I want the back arm to move with the front arm which I already have working in my current game engine.

Also, I have a weapon select system working for the Sci-Fi theme, but would have a lot of work if I wanted to keep track of weapons, armor and other inventory for a dungeon theme.

I can see how the eight-direction movement allows for extra angles to shoot at, especialy if the weapons are static for each one of the 8 directions. Since, again, I plan to rotate the weapon 360 degrees for the hero and enemies, I don’t really need the 4 or 8 directions (other than if I wanted the characters to look better in terms of actually representing the direction moved as oppsed to just having a left and right sprite).

A week ago I did look very briefly at the small prototype you mentioned, but may take a closer look. Thanks for the reminder.

I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with for expansions for Sci Fi backgrounds and props.

Currently I use Game Maker for my game development. Since I only plan to work in 2D at this point, for me Game Maker works very well. The only disadvantage I see right now is that I have to fake any lighting effects.

It has taken me 13 months so far from not knowing Game Maker to getting a side-scroller engine shooter with inspiration from Metrovania-like games, but I am briefly taking a brake from that to develop a top-down engine which currently caters more towards a dungeon hack/slash but plan to use if for an above view Sci-Fi shooter, using you assets, if all goes well.

Your dungeon hero character animations, including those of the enemies are outstanding. I want so badly to try developing a dungeon game with your assets but will focus on the Sci Fi theme since my current game engine support it much better.

One thing I thought I should mention concerning your dungeon hero: With the hero's sword out all the time and off to the side, I find in my testing that I needed to add an extra collision tile between my wall and the character; otherwise the sword/arm would appear to be floating over or under walls. Thus I could not have the character next to a wall. He had to be further out.

Thanks again for getting back to me!

All the best!

Barely_Games247 days ago

Yes, exactly, to manage multiple weapons, helmets, and armor pieces, I’d definitely need to work with the different body parts on separate layers. What worries me a bit is that less experienced developers might get lost in the “sea” of PNG files and struggle to animate the characters correctly. I’ll definitely run some tests with the helmet!

As for the Sci-Fi set, the ability to freely rotate weapons really solves a lot of issues, so I totally understand your prioritization! I’d probably limit 4- or 8-direction movement to those robots without movable weapons, since they’re naturally more restricted in top-down combat.

The issue with the fantasy knight’s sword is kind of inevitable — it takes a bit of creativity to make it look believable within the environment.

I’ve never used Game Maker myself; I usually work with GDevelop, but I’d love to give it a try at some point, just out of curiosity!

It’s great to see how active you are in game development , best of luck with all your projects! I hope to see them posted here someday.
Thanks again for the great chat!
(I'm working on a sci-fi set for the humans, imagining it as an operations center.

Thanks for the suggestion!)

GemInEyeTwin246 days ago

Yes. With the fantasy knight’s sword, it just would mean, for me, making hallways wider to accommodate character movement that takes up more room.

At one point I hope to post images, game play, etc for the shooter I am working on, but do not plan to show anything publicly until I get more things nailed down. At the moment I am “bouncing” around a lot on numerous game projects.

The game I worked on for 13 months, spending a good portion on just learning Game Maker, I have planned as a Metrovania-like side-scroller game but realize I could have 2 years ahead of me to nail down the story, level designs, item placement, level unlocks, boss battles, etc. As my first Game Maker game, and as a lone developer, I may be “bitting off more than I should chew”.

So right now my idea is to still do my Metrovamia-like game, but put it on hold to do a stream-lined version (just a shooter with level progression that does not rely one backtracking. And that is where your Sci Fi assets come into play.

I was also itching to get a top-down engine done, and that is what I am currently heads down on. Once done, I am hoping to combine it with my side-scroller engine.

I was also talking with my brother about a game we had worked on together on the Amiga, which unfortunately was never finished as the Amiga gaming scene “died” around the time I had the game engine done with one of four levels fully complete, but at least 3/4 of the graphics completed. I realize there still is an Amiga community, but do not think I would return to it with a finished game. But I would love to complete it in Game Maker. It was initially written in Blitz Basic on the Amiga, then rewritten again in Xcode on the Mac but canned when multiple platforms/resolutions was more than I could handle as an inexperienced game developer. So a rewrite in Game Maker would be my third pass at the game. But with the experience I have in Game Maker now, I am confident the game could be completed far quicker than my first two attempts.

There are too many game projects I want to do. Too many irons in the fire. But I will try real hard to focus on the pruned down Sci Fi shooter for now.

I will definitely keep an eye out for your operations/human pack or whatever you decide to release next.

Thanks for the chat too.

All the best.

itch.io

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