let's get crackin'

i spent a while tonight fixing up drake form's run animation! it's back on-model and i'm really happy with it. i also added in a transition from standing/walking to running (and vice versa), so ground movement looks pretty smooth now. next task is jumping and falling! i got started on that tonight, but i'm outta steam, so! i'll save the rest for tomorrow.

one lil conundrum i'm gonna have to deal with: i'd love to have a satisfying two-or-three frame squish delay before a jump, but i dunno! having a delay before a jump can be good for ~game feel~ if you've got a nice animation for it, but it can also feel limiting! i'll hafta toy with it and see how it feels.

wah, thank you so much!!!

so! i kinda went from 0 to 60 in a couple hours as far as figuring out How To Flame. i was watchin youtube videos of slow motion campires and stuff and just, like, not understanding it at all. then a friend of mine explained it to me as “basically it’s like a flag waving upward”, and for some reason that made it click? like, if you turn a flame on its side, each side should be kind of a wave motion, and it should kinda “wag” back and forth at the tip for a nice loop. that’s… the vague idea i started with, and after a while of fiddling in photoshop, i got something that i think looks kinda nice!

it’s kinda lazy, but here’s a screenshot of my frames, if that helps you at all!

phew! it's been a while since i've done drake graphics, so these new ones look kinda off-model! whoops!!

i'm gonna be working on fleshing out drake's missing animations this week! i'm starting with a proper dash animation.

also, all drake's graphics sprites are kinda much smaller ingame than they're meant to be, so that fix'll come up soon too... he was the first character i did graphics for, so he was kind of a test bed for a lot of things!

also here's a lil gif of ember coolin off in the shallows, just because.

ok im

done now

and here's a second gif that turned out too big for tumblr - whoops!

i put in some bomb blocks last night! they work p much like the ones in [coughs, looks around the room, loosens collar] the kirby games, except they're activated with a switch rather than another destructible block. the switch can be placed anywhere (so not necessarily right next to the blocks) and tied to any number of blocks. once a block starts burstin', it'll cause a chain reaction in every direction around it. this makes for a lot of different possible block breakdown configurations!

SO! this effect isn't 100% finished yet, but tonight i added an indicator for whether or not an enemy is carrying an element! for some reason, the pulse effect isn't showing up super great in that particular gif. in game, it looks a little more like this:

yowza!!! get a load'a that pulse pig!!!!

seek out elements and claim em as your own!!!

in the final game, different enemy types will carry different elements. beast-type enemies will carry beast element, fire-type enemies will carry fire element, and so on. however, not every enemy is elemental! otherwise you'd end up spawning powerups left and right with every enemy you kill. elemental foes will be peppered throughout stages in places that make sense, a little bit like traditional powerups in a platformer!

bonus horrible accident gif: