Hi. I purchased the complete bundle but I'm confused as to how to setup these characters. The sprite sheets have forward facing left/right and backwards facing left/right but there doesn't seem to be anything for up and down.
What do I use when moving down and wanting to attack down?
Viewing post in Minifantasy - True Heroes comments
Hi Naiyr, thank you for suporting Minifantasy.
For Minifantasy characters and other creatures, the facing directions for the animations are in most cases NW-NE-SW-SE. Due to the really low resolution of the characters, and the art style used in the collection, It's not possible to make pure N-E-S-W directions without altering the look/style of the characters. However, also due to the super low resolution of the assets the NW-NE-SW-SE directions should work perfectly as N-E-S-W directions.
As an example, if your character moves towards E or SE, it will use the same animation. the same goes for W and SW. If you move straight south or north, it should use the animation row in the sprite sheet depending on what direction you were facing before going in the new direction (SW or SE for moving towards south / NW or NE for moving towards north).
If you want to see how directions work in-game, I recommend you check this out: https://www.talesofyore.com/?page=home (it's free and it makes a great example of how the assets can be used).
If you have any more questions or doubts feel free to contact me anytime, I will get back to you asap.
Thanks for getting back to me Krishna, really appreciate it.
This helps me understand better how it should work. I think the main thing that is throwing me off is the downwards attack animation for the special characters.
For example looking at the character here:
https://krishna-palacio.itch.io/minifantasy-dungeon
The attack animation "hits" the full 360 degrees around the character. NE hits 0 to 90, NW hits 90 to 180, SW hits 180 to 230 and SE hits 230 to 360.
However for the special characters, there doesn't seem to be an effect that "hits" the ~190-340 range as all 4 attacking frames have the attack stop around the 180/90 degree line.
https://krishna-palacio.itch.io/minifantasy-true-heroes
I guess I'll just have to set it up and see how it looks in practice but I am worried that it'll look really weird using the paladin attack if I'm walking downwards towards an enemy in the 230 degree range because it'll visually hit beside the character unlike the main character from the dungeon pack.
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding how this is supposed to be setup :)
Hey Naiyr! Answering you is part of my work :) so don't worry about asking me any doubts.
I completely understand your concerns about the attack directions. Minifantasy assets have been used successfully in a lot of projects, but every project is a world in itself and it's true that sometimes the assets may present some challenges to fit them in your vision depending on the type of game you guys are building.
because of the really low resolution, and the relative abstraction of the Minifantasy style, most action-based games made with Minifantasy assets work just fine (there are top-down ARPG Minifantasy projects that only use the front views of the character animations that work very well and fluidly). However, I can see how it may be a problem depending on how you gonna implement your game systems.
There are some weapons and special attacks that have pure N-S-E-W directions. You can find them in these packs: Weapons, Magic And Sorcery and Magic Weapons And Effects.
I hope the assets can find their place in your project :) You know you can contact me anytime if you have further questions or if you need some directions.
thanks again! You’re right once I get it setup the size of the characters make it look totally fine :)
one final question: any tips for using the different animations? A lot of the packs have the basic human doing different animations. For example in the magic pack there’s a bunch of animations that align with the spells. If I’m using the paladin or the rogue how would I apply those?
I'm glad to know finally the characters fit your project :)
As for your question, there are a lot of animations only available for the base humanoid races: human, elf, orc, halfling, goblin and dwarf (the naked versions you can find in Minifantasy - Creatures). Some of these expanded animations for the base characters are the ones in Weapons, Magic And Sorcery or the Crafting And Professions packs. I often introduce new animations for these 6 humanoid characters in new asset packs.
If you want the heroes or other creatures to be able to cast additional spells, use the fishing rod, or attack with different weapons, you will need to make some edits yourself using one of the base humanoids as a template.
Minifantasy is an ever-growing asset collection that keeps adding new stuff every month, the increasing amount of animations for the base characters makes it impossible to have those additional animations also available for special characters and other creatures in the collection (right now we have over 100 different creatures between the ones in the assets packs and the ones in the Patreon archive, and counting). I would need to retrospectively update every character to include an always-increasing number of new animations, which would lead me to invest all my time in updating the already existing creatures instead of making new content for the collection. so I'm afraid this is the downside trade-off in exchange for having such an expansive collection.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience it may cause 🙏