Sprite animations would be the most game-changing feature.
This would be more impactful than quite literally any addition to the game suggested so far. People in general are simple minded, just 2 extra sprites to rotate as the characters are moving would change this game from janky to professional indie title.
Where do the sprite sliding comes from? It’s from the game being developed on top of some ascii roguelike, it’s just a pawn being moved from tile to tile. Except now the characters move within tiles and have much more nuanced and dynamic interactions with the world, the sliding sprites gives the game janky infamy more than anything, it scares people from the game.
I’m not a dev but I assume now that a FOSS engine like Godot could be used to animate sprites or maybe even develop exclusive tools for sprite editing SS14 assets? Since it’s an open source project adding such tools should be easier?
I strongly believe, that even if all the character sprites and clothes had to be remade, making sprites that have the ability to have a walk animation would be the most “bang for the buck” feature to add. I strongly believe that there’s not a single feature being suggested that would be as impactful as sprite animations. I don’t think that any feature in SS13 that is yet to come would be quite as impactful as a simple walk animation.
With this we can have 2 states of animation, walking, and “flying” animation as in, zero G, with moth people beating their wings and the characters in general having their feet not being flat with the ground, maybe moving by wiggling their arms around.
I’m not a dev who has worked on robust toolbox before so I have no idea of their engine limitations, shortfalls or bottlenecks but I can say for certain that this task is not nearly as simple as it sounds, especially for a game that has so many active sprites. On average there would be 80 sprites changing almost every frame (assuming a full server) This would put a strain on the network replication (orwhatever system robust uses to share live data with clients)
This does sound like a very awesome and interesting idea but I have to wonder the feasibility of it for a engine that was not designed with it in mind. I know robust has some form of sprite changing as doors have multiple frames but i’m unsure exactly how it works and if its possible to use the same system for the character sprites.
Carps, Spiders, Dragons, have animation cycles.
Machines have animation cycles and a state, so the animation only triggers when you’re crafting something.
So it’s not an engine limitation, it’s about initiative, that’s all it takes. Someone needs to wake up and say: “I’m gonna move the entire community towards this today.”
Once that person makes a template for a naked character to be running around and then plugs into the client to cycle the sprites when the player is moving, then it can generated interest among the community into getting into it further.
This is not a gargantuan task, when you make your baby’s first game following youtube tutorials you do some sprite animations without major trouble. All we need is the first template that looks good.
I think a big limitation here would be sprites- you wouldn’t just need animated spritesets for the characters themselves, but also for every piece of clothing and equipment they might have visible on them. That increases the scope of this significantly. Everything in the game that currently has an animated sprite- dragons, carps, etc- only exists in a single state.
“Everything that is animated exists in a single state”
I’m not here to argue with the OP, I just stated the possible limitations of it. If the task is so simple then I highly encourage the OP to do it themselves but until a robust toolbox developer chimes in I stand firm on my stance that its not as simple as the OP is implying it will be.
Yes, it would be a significant increase of scope in the character relative to having a flat position; whoever, you still have to take into consideration that we’re talking about a very low res pixel image. It would be on the scope level of terraria or some of the least animated sprite games there are. Furthermore, it’s on a type of labor that is easy to collaborate with once the conventions are set up, everybody would be able to just launch MS paint with the template and draw their clothes, no programming experience required.
Assuming a walking animation of 4 sprites (3 if we wanna be extra nice and reuse an inbetween), that is an additional 16 sprites per clothing item. Multiply that by the number or jumpsuits, coats, shoes, etc. and you get the number.
Honestly? Not unreasonable. A lot of work but you could def divvy it up between artists, and honestly since you’re working from an existing sprite the skillset requirement isn’t high. You could feasibly cut down on work even further if you make a generalized displacement map solution too.
The numbers scale quite hard if you wanna go anywhere fancy with it though. Arm swinging? Enjoy respriting all inhand sprites. Wanna do a more complex animation? Woe be upon ye.
I think you grossly, grossly underestimate how much work this would take, and overestimate how much people would really care, long-term. Most people probably don’t even realise some mobs already have it
At the end of the day, people don’t plays this game for the fx. We should strive to have the best fx we can, where reasonable, but not break our backs for it
it would also take the initiative to add sprites to every single piece of equipment in the game, every body part of every species except maybe the head and torso, multiple markings, as well as adding additional sprites to all equipment added in the future - which may deter new contributors in particular, since they’ll have to make an animated sprite for any equipment they want to add.
it is not as simple as just making a template, because the animated sprites still need to… y’know, look decent. it’s not enough for a spriter to just come in and shuffle the pixels around, they need to make a new sprite that makes sense in its own right.
terraria has the advantage of having been made this way from early on, instead of having this tacked on midway through. it also has the advantage of fewer equipment slots that need to be animated with the whole body in mind, and only 2 directions a sprite can face as opposed to 4 - and if memory serves, it just mirrors its sprites to switch directions.
additionally, i think you’re just… overestimating the amount of jank that a lack of walking animation provides.
I think you’re very, very wrong.
Think about this: why do mobs have animations and players don’t?
Because turns out, without visual feedback, players walk up to dragons thinking they’re statues, mobs are indistinguishable from plushies. The bear has a glow animation but no movement, you often mistake him for dead when he’s actually standing up. The fact that the community felt forced to add mob animations is proof that it matters, and people do notice.
How many games in the top 100 on steam have static sprites?
See: Project Zomboid, people became more interested in it than CDDA simply because Zomboid added a simple sprite animation early on.
For new players, the base game is very confusing. A simple walking animation tells the player “okay, this is a lil’guy, probably another player”. When they get into zero gravity they often don’t get any visual feedback, it’s just the same sprite sliding around but in a weirder way, if the sprite was actually representing it they’d be like “oh, I’m floating now, did we lose gravity?”. Being able to intuitively overcome these short moments of confusion is what makes games “easy to get into”. Some games can be very complex yet very intuitive, some other games can be extremely shallow but bloated with “noise”.
And here’s regarding the difficulty or extra labor for creating the sprites, here’s a thought experiment, why don’t people just make flat texture armour mods for Terraria that just slide around? Why don’t we just remove the side and back sprites from SS14? That would cut 66% of the work required. Why aren’t people excited about slapping PNGs on tile games like Tales of Maj’Eyal?
When the character is alive, and the item is alive in the world, it’s gratifying. Sliding PNGs are not gratifying. I would argue that people would rather work thrice as much to have a fully animated mothperson than to only work 1/3 as much to have a sliding PNG.
The things is, this can be completely optional. Just add the sprite rows and the state triggers for the animations and let people explore. People can stick to the base sprite sheet or make animations. This can be a universal set up that can be also used for animals and enemies. Want to stick with the regular set up for a custom server or gamemode? No problem! Just have the option to lock the sprite at neutral, you can then even use the animated sprites in a non-animated setup.
btw, did you notice that the mothroach has a walking animation which is what makes it alive and cute? This game has unicycles and roller shoes, pets you can equip in your head, it has sprites for oxygen masks for animals, it’s filled to the brim with things that took extra work solely for the sake of making the world feel alive and interactable.
Why so many people contribute to games like Terraria and such if it’s so troublesome? Animations don’t deter contributions, they attract contributions, because it makes the result gratifying. Like I said, nobody is out there making sliding PNGs for Tales of Maj’Eyal all day even though it’s obviously easier to make 1 PNG than a sheet with 3 directions like SS14.
So, is it too late to add sprite animations to SS14?
SS14 already has an animation player for sprite sheets and can do different states, see the mothroach for instance.
All it takes is ONE DAY of work.
In ONE DAY, someone who knows how to make sprites can make the first animation and template sheets. The rest is bandwagon. You make a “fashion diva” server build with all the equipment where people can try out and also just slap their spritesheets into by posting them on discord to the server owner, slowly it becomes broad enough other builds will consider having it even if there’s stuff missing solely due to how lively it would be.
All we really need is the pipeline, the first templates and the first “fashion diva” test server, the rest is jumping on a bandwagon and having fun.
Personally, I believe a walking animation will kinda make the game feel… weird and also some other stuff.
Ever since 13 it’s always been “sliding around” and honestly… I (personally) think it looks fine just as is. Some sprites do have animations yes, but with player characters it feels a bit… uncanny. Sure, maybe another server may like that art style, but I don’t see this on upstream servers anytime soon.
I also don’t believe not having a walking animation makes the game “janky” and neither do I believe having it will turn the game a “professional indie title”. Neither do I believe we should drop everything for this. (There really are better suggested/in development additions than a walking animation that effect gameplay.) I don’t believe people play this game expecting stunning visuals. This game is about role-playing on a space station with goofy stuff happening to it and I would rather see more goofy stuff.
I am also concerned about maintainability, depending on the animations it may also require modifying inhand sprites or “on body” clothes sprites (MAYBE this can be automated with a displacement map but IDK if they support animations yet). Having to draw extra sprites is annoying, but not that huge of a deal IMO. If we were to do this the initial move would be massive and will likely take a long time to review.
(I don’t know much about this topic) Having more sprites may require a bigger sprite atlas to be generated in game start and that is already a bit chunky already (And can probably be fixed, but I only know 1 person in this project who knows graphics programming that deep.)
The animation player is not that robust currently (or at least last time I had to interact with it). I believe it may need some expanding before it can be considered to be good for player sprites.
Knowing some of this stuff currently. This won’t take 1 day. Trust me. It will require a lot of colab work from programmers and spriters.
Do I believe this is an interesting idea? Yes
Do I believe this will make it’s way to upstream? Probably not
The number of cells required is the same as PokeMMO, which is another community project filled with custom clothes and hats that aren’t in the base game or weren’t really animated to have a running cycle. It’s the PokeMMO cell count but with slightly more pixels.
yes but PokeMMO has existing art to draw from. and it only needs to draw each clothing for 1-2 bases (male/female) where as BASE ss14 would need to draw each clothing for lizards, humans, dwarves, diona’s, vox, slimes, and moths. and both genders of that.
and that is JUST wizden. if you include downsstreams with 2-3x as many species this idea would be HELL. and it would basically be removed on those servers. cause it is weird to have 5 species that do have walk cycles and have 3-4 that dont.
okay, this one seems a bit of an exaggeration. you wouldn’t need to draw clothing for every single species, because wizden already doesn’t do that - aside from vox, every species is shaped in a way where the same human-fitted clothes will fit them acceptably. if their animations are made with that in mind, you’ll only need to resprite clothes for generic humanoids and vox. the game already has a method to re-fit clothes depending on the wearer’s sex, too.
i’ve already outlined why i think walking animations are neither necessary nor all that good of an idea, but this specific argument against them just rubs me the wrong way.
Ngl I say you should just get started. Make a prototype with a Urist McHands, get a grey jumpsuit animated, and see how it looks. That’ll give you an idea if it fits the artstyle or not, how much work it takes and the code behind it. Then, if all those things seem positive, keep at it and when/if people think it looks good you’d get more peeps to help.
tbh, the fact that some mobs do have animations and others don’t (just a very specific few do) clashes with the art style a bit.
But i honestly never notice it. A key thing of a game’s atmosphere is that you get used to it, and only things that differ from it take you out. If a game is all static, you get used to it, if someone adds something that is smoothly animated, that may take you out of it.
Carps, dragons, Ner sie (soon TM) all have very low FPS animations that blend in nicely with the rest of the animated sprites like console screens and what not. It is also important to reflect the fact they are flying, if carps just slided accross the floor it would look very goofy as they are literally fish.
This is why i was originally against lizard tail animations, but they are so minor that they work fine. The game’s aesthetic IS about only animating the important bits and leaving the rest mostly static. Otherwise you end up with a similar situation to that Half Life cinematic mod, where the stuff is higher quality, but clashes with the original art style too much.
