After watching several of Tiy's livestream videos, and staring at his avatar frozen in place for minutes a time, the thought occured to me that he just looks so lifeless. It wouldn't be hard to fix with a few more sprites. Having idle animations would really help the effect of starbound being a living, breathing universe and not just a cluster of blocks waiting to be explored. Many old games had these, like Sonic the Hedgehog lying down if you didn't press a button for so long. Examples could be foot tapping, swaying back and forth, putting their hands behind their back and staring up, kneeling down to inspect the ground, and something as simple as a breathing animation. Like if you agree, and feel free to suggest more possible animations, it would be fantastic if each race had their own unique poses.
- Looking around -> left / right, jumping a bit, dancing - In caves it would be great if the idle char points the flashlight around - Shows some tricks with the traktor-gun - Swinging the equipped axe/sword/whatever
Yes it needs Idle Animations, something only Race-Based or it may be the same for every race... But at the moment it seems just static, with no animations when you are stopped/idle
Even if its just breathing or a sighing animation. I dislike it when games don't add an idle animation, it makes is feel less realistic as they just stand there, like a brick.
I think idle animations for different races and maybe weapon types would be really cool. Maybe have them wipe their brow on a hot planet and shiver a bit on a cold planet too
Yes, race based animations would be great. If left alone, they should do all sorts of things. Fidgeting, sighing, checking their watches, but each race should also do some things that are uniquely their own. Apex: Preening their fur, picking out a bug. They look left and right to make sure no one's looking before sneaking it into their mouth. Avian: Flap their arms, achieving a moment of flight before dropping back to the ground and looking sad that they can't fly Hylotl: Blow a stream of bubble into the sky. Perhaps slashing them afterwards if they have a sword equipped. Glitch: Throw off a few sparks from their neck joint. Reach up, detach and reattach their head to fix it. Floran: Plant a seed, making a flower grow for a short time(or pick a little bit of human out of their teeth ) Novakid: Perhaps flicking a coin into the air and shooting it like a Wild West gun slinger Human: ... I dunno, human stuff. Humans are boring anyway. But yeah, something like this would be pretty awesome. We should come up with lots of ideas. Either race specific or in general. Some of them might get in if we have cool ideas
It must be something simple enough for don't make them Re-Make all the Sprites of Cloth / Armor for some new movement. That's the major problem doing such things!
If you look at games like Chasm (Okpii did a video on it) then the animation for that is pretty slick. Maybe you could have an animation for when you're standing still like in that one?
I had this idea, too. Low-and-behold there's already a thread for it! I would like to take it a step further by adding idle animations to not just your character, but the monsters, and NPCs. So instead of them just walking back and forth, they would do things. Monsters would graze and eat and itch themselves and shake away flies or whatever to seem lifelike. Packs of monsters could "play" with each other. You could stumble upon NPCs hunting or even building a base. Chopping down trees, harvesting the world or whatever. Possibilities are endless (minus coding them). As my teacher once said: "nothing is ever finished, it has to be sold".
