Superhero Game WIP

Art looks great, if your trying to distinguish him from Superman, what about bracelets and/or a small,thin headband below the hairline to match the orb on his chest. The Orb could even pulsate. Just a couple of thoughts. Regardless the idea is solid! Keep it up

Thanks, MelVin . I've been thinking about some kind of bracelet and maybe a change in hair color. Just something I can easily change to the existing sprites. Glad you are liking it though.

<img src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56104169/RedesignSprited%20Allbig.png" border="0" />

Decided to finally bite the bullet and work on some kind of tweak to the character design. I've changed the hair to brown and added gauntlets to play into a motif I have for the game. I'm thinking of adding the ability to deflect energy with them. At the moment I'm leaning towards the design to the right, but we'll see. I'm going to start doing a lot of animating here in a bit and I need to have the new design locked down.

<img src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56104169/RedesignInContext%2011-19-13.jpg" border="0" />

Looks great <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> He blends well into the different backgrounds.

sman118 I like the one on the right but I'm thinking the brown hair looks a bit too red? I like the deflector idea! Regardless it looks great, and the hair is nothing more than an opinion thing :D

I totally agree with you about the hair. When I shrink the sprite in Photoshop, I have it set up to only use certain colors. These colors were set up with the previous version of the character. There isn't a brown in the list of colors so it looks for the closest thing, which is the orange. I need to go in and tweak it. Glad you like it though, damainman

So I finally decided to make the tough decision of revamping my game. I have been tooling with the game for so long and have learned so much that it was getting harder and harder to keep moving forward with the early mistakes I had made.

The biggest problem being the character design. Everyone's first comment is the Superman similarities. While I'm a huge fan of the character, I'm not making a game about Superman and need to distance myself from that. Second, my original design was created to accentuate the character's strenght: small legs and big upper body. That's fine if the player never leaves the ground. My character flies...constantly. So when you flip him over or turn him on his side, those tiny legs look ridiculous.

I'm also wanting to revamp my animation system. For example, there is going to be a different base animation for normal walking and carrying something. Using folders, I can streamline my code and get a better result.

The other changes that are going to be made in the redesign are:

-Dynamic light and shadow for every character (possibly BG's too)

-Slight turning for Civilian characters while being carried

-Cape will be animated separately (possibly react to wind also)

As you can see, I've already started on the new design, combining classic superhero with medieval armor. I've also placed the art next to my original design so that you can see that the art is now much larger. I'm trying to emulate that Capcom vs Marvel arcade look.

I'll post more when I have it.

So it would seem that I was working way too hard on getting that retro sprite look that I wanted with compositing the line work over the fills. Toon Boom Animate Pro can export without any antialiasing and that's getting me the color separation I want. From there, its just a quick shrink and I've got what I want. The above Picture is me testing out the overlay layer that I'm making for every frame of animation to see how it will work in Construct 2. The colors will be swapped and controlled through WebGL to change when the animation is flipped.

I finished building out the character in Toon Boom Animate Pro and decided to test a little idle animation. First off, its definitely not final animation. I just wanted to see how it looked moving and shrunk down. My initial impression is that its actually a little too smooth. There are so many frames (26 at 24 frames per second) that the strobing and de-rezing of the art work is really obvious. I'll probably drop it down to 8 or 9 frames, add some easing, change the arm animations, and change the frame rate.

Next, I'd like to test him moving with a civilian sprite in his arms or maybe attach the cape animation. I decided to do it separately from the main animation to break up the loop a bit. I'll attach it with an image point.

Finally, I'll probably have to take the best shrunken version of the head and paste it on top of all of the frames for consistency. While I think I can get away with the strobing on the body, the head might be too much.

So I'm finally beginning to pick up steam with the game again. I'm recreating assets and rethinking my art style, all with a mind for modular creation and reusing assets. I'm working at about twice the size as before, but still shooting for the retro aesthetic. I've built my main character in Toon Boom Animate Pro so that I can use cut out animation. Hopefully that will help me churn out assets quicker. Below are some screenshots ans WIP's:

New idle animation and size comparison

An image within Toon Boom Animate Pro showing how I rig my characters.

In level screenshot.

Quick update: Starting to replace all of the animation that I had in the original build. Finished the run cycle and starting to add the cape.

Things are still moving along with the redesign of the game. Running animations are finished. New dynamic camera is almost implemented. And I'm kneed deep in flight animations. I've upgraded my system to be triggered by the movement angle rather than button presses. The previous system was fine, but I needed more transitions between my main angles. I've completed the loops for the "slow" flight angles first and am moving on to the rest soon.

Basically, the player is going to have a regular flight and a fast flight. Both move the same but flash has the player stretched out. The slower one keeps the player in the standing position while flying in different angles. Now, each angle of animation will have a starting animation (cape begins to lift off and body starts to take posture), Looping animation (cape flaps in a loop and player is in flying position), and Stop Animation (Player slows and returns to the idle flying animation).

Right now, I have the Looping animations for the slower flight all setup. Still plenty to go, but a good first step. Above is one frame.

You can find much more frequent updates on my personal site: http://www.NeedYourDisease.comor follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/NeedYourDisease

Looking good mate! The run animation and cape looks sweet! I know it's finished, but can I offer a small suggestion? Right now the torso looks a little stiff. Maybe have the head bob a little as well as the torso (so the belt bobs too). I've found tiny details like that can make a huge difference.

procrastinator Thanks for the suggestion. I completely agree. My original run cycle actually had the torso twisting as he ran with the shoulders turning towards and away from camera. I'm going to try and implement that into the new version too. The whole thing is built in a cut out fashion so adding to what I already have shouldn't be too hard. Thanks again for the suggestion.

I always enjoy coming here to check up on the progress Hope to see more!