Quadrupeds + blocks = problem?

Wow, this explained it so much better in a GIF then I ever could have. It's basically what my idea would do, but even smoother. The invisible line shouldn't take that much CPU power to calculate, either.

 

You could fix the animation so that on those last two steps it sinks into the ground a bit. It looks like it is completely floating.

The way I imagined it wouldn't be such a gradual change. What happens when the creature jumps off the ground?

Does it use trig to calculate the angle on every frame for every quadruped mob on the screen? I guess that's not so bad.

 

No. That would be unnecessary. It would only need to calculate if a block was placed or removed. And the only area that would need updating would be a 3x3 section around the 'updated' area

Anyways, the guy who posted after me had a much better way of explaining it, with the whole drawing invisible line and all.

 

Well, Tiy used to be spriter from Terraria and you can see a lot of objects there which rotate without losing quality (all the pieces of monsters when they are killed). It's not a problem.

 

But that invisible line would cause sudden changes when the middle-bottom reference point hits the next spot on the line. Either that or it would have to be a curved line, which is more complicated to calculate compared to a straight line between the points of each block. I'm also still curious if you think the mob should go back to being straight when it jumps, and would the angle be adjusted when it contacts the ground again or while mid-air?

 

Curved lines aren't as difficult as you think. As for jumping, the jumps would be vertical but the rotation would stay the same, and only change during landing. The lower part of the sprite hits the ground first, then the rest of the sprite 'rotates' down to whatever angle of inclination the landed spot is calculated to be.

 

yeah, I like that a lot. Looks really good to me, and seems simple enough. I know I've been saying it the whole thread, but it just makes it look a lot nicer and I can really appreciate people putting effort into small things like this. Small things are what make a game good. Even if the devs don't do it, I'm sure someone will mod that in at least.

 

Each pixel in starbound is actaully a 3 x 3 pixel box. This means that they can be AAd by the engine without very much distortion.

 

Well yes, of course it's not a problem, it's something that's more of a preference really, hence why I prefer leaving it rather than pixel distortion.
I mean having it ingame already grinds my gears, but not enough to stifle my potential enjoyment for the game. Hah, graphical anomalies.

I know for sure AAing will fix it. As much as I love AAing when it comes to pixelart and the sort, using AA as a method of fixing this is still quite a turn off for me.



I mean that's pretty much why I prefer keeping it the old fashioned way or if they somehow create an interestingly complex way of allowing a creature's sprite to be divided into pieces and orient itself to its base's angle while maintaining the clarity of the infidivual aspects of the creature, be it randomly generated or not, without having to individually create new sprites to fit certain inclines.

I saw a pretty cool concept of this. Not saying this is the ideal concept; it's actually quite flawed and far from workable. It skews the form way too much, but it seemed like an interesting take.
I don't remember where it is now, but I made a mock-up.

 

Devs must see this Thread!

 

It would be quite straight forward to program. Games have been utilizing invisible skeletons since the really early days; and most of us will know of 3d games using 'hitboxes'

The way I'd tackle this programmatically would be to have a very simple oblong invisible vector aligned to the sprite. All that vector will need to do is read the terrain and adjust the rotation.

 

About jumping...

Well...This is the way I found to solve this...there's only one problem, higher the inclination, higher is the probability of the jump not work properly or to seem strange at least. But I prefer this way than floating bodies everywhere


Some jumps seems ok...

 

Hm, now that I noticed, rotation might be a problem for larger-scale sprites, especially those who are larger vertically than horizontally.

 

[/QUOTE]
Your

You're right, but this is also a problem when sprites aren't rotated...

See? This is extremely ugly!

 

Perhaps, but that's the initial problem you're trying to fix. Having similar problem on the solution is quite counter-productive.

[Also, please spoiler the gif, it's slowing down my computer ;-;]

 

The mech jump rotation doesnt follow the ground-line it follows the inclination line. Is what you meant?
I suppose the circles diameter is based on the jump skill of the monster, right?
However, generally jumps are parabolic not circular. See:



To say it doesnt matter misses the point. A circle is awesome... and obviously when rotated the apex is still at the same point. Rotate a parabola... apex will move and your jump will look odd.

Thanks for using iforce. Pics load super fast for me now =). (Yay for living in a country with super-limited intl bandwidth)
Protip though, use the re-size tool, your GIF doesn't need to be that big.

I think that rotated looks better for the mech.

 

I agree with bounding star. I think they should have a climbing animation. It would look something like two people climbing stairs, but instead it is just
an animal with four legs. At least, that's my take on it.

 

I can already picture that ;D
But then they'll have to add additional slanted torso sprites.
I say go for it. If it'll make the game look even better.

It's those little visuals that makes me go. "Huh.. that's neat."

An great example would be Huskar/Abaddon in DotA 2. They have their weapons set down/ concealed. Then bring it up when hostiles are nearby.

 

Yes... I was imagining something like this, but then like Suika mentioned it would look really weird if the creature is extremely tall, and then imagine that the creature is extremely tall and the terrain is bouncy. It would look ridiculous in that case.

But yeah definitely looks great for the mech and that creature. I really wonder how they will make it work in the end, maybe mix up all the ways depending on the size of the creature? Like super huge bosses having animated parts to look more natural, small creatures having the same function as the mech, etc.

Edit:

This guy has shown three different methods in the post, I'll just try to explain how I think it could work, by using his gifs because I'm lazy right now lol, hope that's not a problem.

Both tiny creatures and small quadruped creatures could work this way:

Minibosses could work this way:

Large scale bosses could work this way:

 

I don't think they will create npcs sprites this size, perhaps they create bosses this size but not common npcs. How do I know that? Look at Terraria for example, there's no npc with this tall (or at least not the ones who walk). This is useful to avoid situations like this:

And if this "climbing system" is implemented based on monsters of "limited size", it would fits perfectly