Characters that can shoot omnidirectionally
by Alex Parker · in Torque Game Builder · 05/20/2005 (11:18 pm) · 4 replies
For a game I'm planning, I need to know what would be the best way to achieve an animated guy who can walk, run, jump, duck, crawl as well as rotate his weapon in any direction?
The only way I can think of is to have the arm as a seperate sprite, attached to the torso and the gun attached to the arm.
BTW have these forums died since I was last here? Perhaps the initial excitement has died off eh?
The only way I can think of is to have the arm as a seperate sprite, attached to the torso and the gun attached to the arm.
BTW have these forums died since I was last here? Perhaps the initial excitement has died off eh?
About the author
#2
06/21/2005 (7:09 pm)
What is the possibility of mounting a bunch of body parts on eachother? Then you could animate them in real time as well as get a rag doll effect when you died.
#3
Could also do brute force. For each animation (walk, run, jump, etc), do the gun in 16+ directions. This is more viable if you are using 3D program to render out sprites. I'd hate to have to draw all those sprites, although it could be done. If you're drawing sprites, I'd figure out a way to use layers in photoshop or gimp so youre not literally drawing every frame from scratch
Check out the old game Abuse... they did what you're looking to do. I can't remember if they (crack.com) used a split sprite approach or not.
If your art style is really retro, like mario retro, you might get away with rotating an arm. It's kind of hard to get that to look natural though.
07/08/2005 (12:35 am)
Another way you might think about it would be to separate the upper body and lower body. The upper body would have poses for holding the gun in as many angles as you want. 16 or so would probably be pretty good. 24 or 32 would be better. Then do a set of leg animations for walk, run, jump, duck. Mount upper to lower and away you go. You might need different offsets for the mount for duck and maybe some others.Could also do brute force. For each animation (walk, run, jump, etc), do the gun in 16+ directions. This is more viable if you are using 3D program to render out sprites. I'd hate to have to draw all those sprites, although it could be done. If you're drawing sprites, I'd figure out a way to use layers in photoshop or gimp so youre not literally drawing every frame from scratch
Check out the old game Abuse... they did what you're looking to do. I can't remember if they (crack.com) used a split sprite approach or not.
If your art style is really retro, like mario retro, you might get away with rotating an arm. It's kind of hard to get that to look natural though.
#4
09/02/2005 (8:51 pm)
Me and a friend of mine (he's the artist/animator) were talking about this dilema today. Splitting the body (top and bottom) was what we decided on. For special animations we decided to switch from the split to a full animation where neccissary. For example: player grabs edge of cliff and pulls himself up <-- for stuff like that we figure the split animations wouldnt look so good (he'd prolly throw his feet up over the split). 
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