I think people don`t understand how hard and time consuming animation is. It takes a lot of time for animations itself. Now hooking it up to code is a different thing entirely.
I would recommend forking wizden and trying to do an animation like SlamBanActionman suggest.
It would affect ability to add addtional species. Because of amount of clothing
And that also will affect “Feel of the game”. Bad or janky animation is worse then none.
I cannot say how it will affect work of the client, since i am unfamiliar with engine SS14 uses. But every animation stacks.
My point is doing animation, hooking them up and then doing QA on them is a LOT of work. That takes time. I would personally see this time used on core game mechanics. And maybe return to it in a future, when people have time.
Id like to add, do we really want walk cycles? loads of people dance by spinning on the spot or in a small circle and having a walk animation would likely ruin that kinda look.
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I did this on Godot with a sprite sheet I made in minutes, I’m not an artist, I’m just showing how all it takes is 2 extra frames to break the sliding effect and “revolutionize” SS14. The sprite sheets and the animations are least of the concerns here because anyone can make or tweak them.
What’s needed is someone with the intricate knowledge of the game build that can create the animation tree for walking and floating, and also with a separated viewport for the arms and having them separate in the sprite sheet that way they can have a neutral stance when holding an item, which not only would help to not have a conflict with the current Item holding conventions, but also would add visual feedback and show the player when he’s using his arms.
Once the first animation setup is done, the rest is just screwing around on photoshop, copying and pasting the sprites 3 times for each direction and tweaking it based on the template.
That’s not the problem, I already said it several times. It’s the type the work you can do on autopilot specially considering it’s a community project. Most jumpsuits and pants are actually skin-tight sprites that would have the exact same silhouettes in the animation too, so the only problem here is having the code for the animation system and the first templates.