[Character Suggestion] Pet Brontopod

Pet Brontopod

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It was so cute when it was a baby. We didn't have any idea it would get so big... and hungry. We're really happy you've agreed to take it off our hands.

This creature will never stop eating. No idea if it is a species trait or if it is unique to this moron; it'll continue to eat and eat and eat until it can't eat anymore, at which point it'll puke up everything just so it can continue eating. Very annoying. The puke is extremely acidic, as well, though its strength goes away in a short period of time... not quick enough to save the couch, though.

This specimen is also really, really skittish, liable to panic at almost any time. However, "any time" is just as random as it sounds. One moment it can be eating your microwave, the next moment it can freak out and give your house a new door between the kitchen and bathroom. The collateral damage this thing has caused is unprecedented.

Also, be wary of its tail. Those little scales on it are actually retractable barbs; they're very long, and poisonous, and it can whip it with quite a lot of force. Which it tends to do when it's angry. Which tends to be when it's not getting food at an acceptable rate. Which is always.


Speed: +++++
Jump: +++++
Regen: +++++

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• Chomp (Take a big bite for 120% damage. Enemies killed by this attack add a bile counter. Bile counters stack to 5)

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• Vomit (Hurl up a large puddle of acid that does an AoE DoT for 25% damage-per-second, plus a mild poison and possibly a mild slow. Duration of the puddle increases with bile counters (3s with 1, up to 8s with 5). Attack consumes bile counters, and cannot be used without bile counters.)

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• Panic Attack (Increases speed for [2 to 4, not sure for balance] seconds. Brontopod causes contact damage at 10%, as well as stuns enemies.)

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• Tail Whip (Lash foward with barbed tail for 300% AoE damage, significant knockback, and mild poison.)

While I'm not necessarily new to spriting, I really don't animate ever, but I had fairly strong mental images when this came to mind. Timers and cooldowns aren't optimized, since I really know snot about game balance. I just wanted an excuse to sprite a cute monster and practice a little animation in the process.

I have no idea how this thing would climb ropes. 8D

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Let me be the first to say that is absolutely fantastic.

 

Wow. You uh, didn't have to go all out and sprite everything. But it makes us like it more! Nice job

 

Felt this deserved its own thread.

On that note, it would probably climb ropes like a lizard would. You can look up videos of lizards climbing thing to get a good ref.

 

This is really amazing. I like how you used the same kind of 'extending bodily part' animation for the bite and tail whip as the Lemurians have. The description cracked me up too.

One thing I noticed is that its antennae jump around a few times in the tail whip animation; I don't know if that was supposed to happen, but they whip around from left to right a few times more than I'd expect to see.

Your animations loop seemlessly and the amount of detail for such a low amount of pixels is staggering. I'd give it an AI and add it, stat, if I were the dev!

 

Whoa, thanks, it's an honor!
As for the rope thing, it's actually not a case of not knowing how the motions would look (I volunteer at a zoo herpetarium, so I'm familiar with lizard movement), it's more on the conceptual level of "how would a big tub of lard with stumpy little legs have the dexterity to climb a rope?". The fact that it may or may not have a peanut-sized brain wouldn't help matters in the conceptualizing department... but it's likely that, having been raised by people, it could actually be a lot smarter than it usually acts. I'd explain how it'd use mechanical upgrades, at least. Why eat explody things when you can use explody things to kill and eat tastier, not-explody things?

Thank you! This is pretty much the first time I've sprited anything in over 7 years, and the last thing I sprited was a really simplistic 50x50 usericon for DeviantArt. Suffice to say, it's still a learning experience for me, but I'm really happy that they came out so well and are being accepted positively!

I spent a bunch of time looking at the game's art assets up close by assembling some rudimentary animations with a rapid-capture program to see how it was done. As smooth as these may appear now, I think some of them have too many frames to be functional in a game (tail whip animation suffers from this in spades), so I'll have to work on minimizing frames used while maintaining fluidity by utilizing blurs and stuff, which is hard when working on such a small scale without losing a lot of detail to implied motion.

I see the antennae animation wonkiness in the tail swing, though, I was actually having trouble giving them appropriate motion with the rotation of the head, as well as deciding which one would be the 'front' and which one would be the 'back' color-wise. I was more concentrating on the tail and the rotation, and the deelybobs I just kind of tacked on afterwards and didn't fine-tune. I may play with it more later if I pop these open again to try making a few more animations (jump, fall, climb, death).

 

Maybe it should 'caterpillar' up, grabbing the rope with its teeth and feet alternatingly.

Check out these sprites from Earthworm Jim; they have amazing ways to cover this very problem:
http://spritedatabase.net/files/snes/394/Sprite/EarthwormJim.gif

For motion blurs, focus on the ones where he draws back his blaster. For other fluid movements, check out his 'whipping' motions when he grabs onto his wormy head and uses it as a rope.

 

Unless the rope is heavily weighted or anchored on the bottom, believability of any climbing motion from a half-ton caterpillarthing just has to be thrown out the window. XD Given the trend in-game, a rope-climbing animation would be only two frames, so it's either two horizontal frames (lizard) or two vertical ones (caterpillar). Leaning lizard but it might look too silly.

Also, aaaaaaahhhhhhhh, Earthworm Jim! One of my favorite childhood games. And a cartoon so ludicrous it stands the test of time.

I'm familiar with the concept of the blur, which was actually from observing Guilty Gear X sprites back in high school and just thinking "Wow, that's actually really neat how that works." I just need to practice using it more. The higher the sprite definition, the easier the blur is to pull off without completely obscuring something in the process, since shadows can be used to differentiate shapes more, not a luxury always afforded to very tiny sprites. (as a note, original resolution;; I tripled them for the post so people wouldn't have to squint too hard) It'll just take a bunch of tinkering to get right. :D

I really don't mean to sound snooty and "raaaaarr I already know all the things!!!", constructive crit is always appreciated! I just wanna emphasize that I threw these together in a single afternoon after grocery shopping so there is stuff I'm familiar with that I just didn't give myself a chance to implement. XD;

 

This thing is adorable, and awesome too. I'd play it.

 

JA, you don't count. ;P

Anyway, after spending so much time tweaking the tail whip, I gave up and made a completely new one that looks a lot better in every way. Also made a silly two-frame rope climb. They've all been added to the main post.

 

Shush I totally count.

 

Ahahaha the rope climb is hilarious! Great job, it worked out well. I also like the new tail whip animation a lot more; it loops nicely into the neutral stance and will loop nicely, if it gets a chance to be spammed, now (think 8x Skull Ring cooldowns).

 

I'm genuinely impressed by this, the description fits very much into the style that some of the descriptions ingame are already like, not to mention the fact that you already sprited the character. It definitely seems like a class I'd try out.

Funny how with this one too, I start making very loose comparisons to Awesomenauts. The bandit reminded me a bit of Lonestar with the dynamite toss and general design, and HAN-D's drones make me think of Voltar. The puke from this little guy, and if you've played Awesomenauts you can see this one coming, reminds me of Gnaw.

 

Ah, it has a jumping and falling sprite now, too. I'll just keep saying this as it keeps being true: great work!

 

I'm only as familiar with Awesomenauts as the two videos I've seen of it, one from Northernlion and one from TotalBiscuit, so I'll have to say the similarity is coincidental. Then again, it's hard not to find similarities between anything with MOBA-style skills, and Awesomenauts has an additional layer of connection by being a 2d platformer. Mechanic and archetype overlaps are pretty much bound to happen whether anyone wants them to or not. ^^;

 

Last animation is up. I'm not sure if I'm missing any for the sake of thoroughness, so let me know if I am!

 

And then you went and added ICONS. Dammit you. Stop making me feel inadequate.

 

I'm seriously starting to wonder whether or not the devs would consider adding this; most of the work, art-wise, is being made handily ready. Of course - and I know this from experience - the hardest part would be the programming...

 

Awesome. That's all I've got to say

 

Even if they don't, I understand coding things are the bulk of the work. I wasn't necessarily doing all the art expecting them to go "Oh, hey, all this work is already done! Let's throw it in!" and was more just doing it as a personal exercise in spriting, since I do it so rarely. I'd half expect them to need to be tweaked, anyway, since I have a feeling some of these might need even fewer frames to work in a game format.