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| 15 OCT 2005 at 7:26pm |
Steve IncePrivate Detective
Posts : 571
Joined: 7 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | You should really plan everything in advance - that way you have the chance to examine your designs well before comitting resources and development time to them.
The main trouble with making things in the backgrounds move is that it can take an awful lot of time to animate these things. Sometimes this is better spent on character animation or gameplay. The best way to get an idea of the amount of work involved is to take a typical location, decide on all the things you want to give movement to, work out how long each will take to create and animate, then multiply it by the number of locations you expect to have in the game.
For instance, you might have a street scene where there are two trees, a flag hanging from a building, a fountain and a piece of paper blowing along the street. If they take an average of 20 hours to animate, that's 100 hours, multiplied by 60 (locations) which gives 6,000 hours of animation work. That's about a year's worth of animation for someone working full time.
Of course, not every location needs this kind of detail, but it illustrates what you were saying about planning ahead.
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| 15 OCT 2005 at 11:30pm |
KoriSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 399
Joined: 27 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | I understand what you are saying, and I agree. But... what I am trying to understand at the moment is if I want to have moving water, or fire, or tree limbs moving, do I always use a Sprite Animation?
I have not picked a game engine yet. Do all game engines use sprite animation to make objects in a scene move, or are there other ways to do this?
Thanks
Kori
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| 16 OCT 2005 at 8:58am |
Steve IncePrivate Detective
Posts : 571
Joined: 7 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | If you use a 2D engine, then yes. The only way to animate anything is through the use of sprites. If you use a 3D engine the things you want movement for will have to be animating 3D objects.
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| 16 OCT 2005 at 11:58am |
KoriSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 399
Joined: 27 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | Why is it that in some games they do not use a sprite for large bodies of water? For example, in Riven, they use a sprite (I guess it's a sprite) on the village bay scene to make the water move, yet in the ocean scenes, they do not. I have noticed this before in other games. It seems like they limit the amount and size of their sprites in some scenes.
Have you tired out many game engines? What are you using for The Sapphire Claw?
Thanks
Kori
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| 16 OCT 2005 at 12:24pm |
Steve IncePrivate Detective
Posts : 571
Joined: 7 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Using a sprite for a large body of water will use a lot of memory if it's an animated sprite. One of the reasons for using a 3D engine is that you can create more animation for less memory overhead.
I've looked at a number of game engines and for a 2D adventure game I believe that the Wintermute Engine is the best.
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| 16 OCT 2005 at 12:26pm |
R.P._CorseIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 60
Joined: 18 JUN 2005
Status : Online | Hi kori , Ive been working on my game for a while,
as far as water effects , on the software i use called
ADVENTUREMAKER this is a feature built in. from what i
can see its just an effect overlaying a 2d pic creating
ripples in a certain part of the screen which the
developer chooses. I didnt code it but its seems to
be more of an overlay than a stand alone animation.
as far as making a scene real one of the things you
can do is place animations over your artwork
this is an old way to do it. remember the orig. myst?
you can render an animation ( mov. or quicktime )
in your 3d enviroment scene say like
a bird flying , crop it then use the same 2d rendered
scene and overlay your animation ,
loop if it you like. placement is critical but the
results are pretty good.
good quality animation file compression is important
also to keep the file sizes down. scenes can be made
to look alive with a few animations and some good
sounds , other things like sprites or animated gifs
can work too depending what your software supports
hope this helps
good luck
rp corse
R.P.Corse&&&&[url=http://ancientrein.com]Lunar Deep Special Edition[/url] &&&&&&
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| 16 OCT 2005 at 6:22pm |
KoriSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 399
Joined: 27 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | I want to thank Steve Ince and R.P. Corse for the information. I will look into Winter Mute and AdventureMaker game engines.
Thanks
Kori
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| 16 OCT 2005 at 6:28pm |
KoriSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 399
Joined: 27 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | I can see how putting an animation on top of a 2D image would work as long as it has a transparent base. Is this the same thing as a sprite, or is the sprite something different? I read somewhere that a sprite requires QT.
Kori
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| 16 OCT 2005 at 6:44pm |
Steve IncePrivate Detective
Posts : 571
Joined: 7 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | You should take a look at the Project Joe demo, which can be downloaded here:
http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,433
Project Joe uses the Wintermute engine. All the characters and any background animation are sprites.
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| 16 OCT 2005 at 10:23pm |
R.P._CorseIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 60
Joined: 18 JUN 2005
Status : Online | kori , your animations that get placed over your
2d screens dont have to be transparent. only
the placement is critical so it appears as one screen,
as one environment. Its all an illusion anyways.
Just has to look ok.
Sprites used in adventuremaker are basically
just animated gifs. Like shown in its tutorials.
Both wintermute and adventuremaker software
are quite good and proven. Either is a great
choice.
Good luck with your game.
rpcorse
R.P.Corse&&&&[url=http://ancientrein.com]Lunar Deep Special Edition[/url] &&&&&&
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| 17 OCT 2005 at 1:06am |
KoriSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 399
Joined: 27 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | I downloaded it (the Winter Mute game) and played it about one-half hour until it froze up on me. When the car dealer took off his hat, it locked up.
I saw four things moving in the scenes. The candle flames, the ceiling fan, the clouds, the car dealer flags.
It was a nice little game, with a few problems. I do not know if it was the game engine or the maker. First, the foot steps were not in sync with the distance the character moved. Second, the car dealer kept walking through Joe. Those were the only two things that stood out as wrong. If it had not locked up, I would have kept playing.
Thanks for the suggesting the demo. I can see what Winter Mute is capable of doing now.
Kori
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| 26 OCT 2005 at 2:54pm |
HolmqvistIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 23
Joined: 2 JUN 2004
Status : Online | Originally Posted By R.P._Corse (16 OCT 2005 10:23pm)
Sprites used in adventuremaker are basically
just animated gifs.
Does that mean 256 colors and no alpha-blending?
Is that what most engines have to handle animations?
/ Jacob
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| 26 OCT 2005 at 4:33pm |
Steve IncePrivate Detective
Posts : 571
Joined: 7 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Holmqvist (26 OCT 2005 2:54pm)
Does that mean 256 colors and no alpha-blending?
Is that what most engines have to handle animations?
/ Jacob
No, actually. Wintermute has full alpha blending which allows you to create sprites and layers with anti-alieased edges and you can even vary the transparency of a sprite at run-time.
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