I have been thinking about the animation for the upcoming pirate game for a while. For this challenge, I will focus on the main player ship’s animation, the NPC ship, and some small effects relating to combat.
Additional stretch goals relating to water animation, boat trails, wind effects and much more are logged for future development.
I had previously received feedback relating to the control mechanism, which used absolute directional control, which felt very unrealistic for boats. Switching this to rotational and acceleration style movement and coupling this with the new sprites from the art challenge was rewarding, but the boats still seemed very static. It did not provide any indication as to player speed.
Recalling previous research on other pirate games, Sid Meier’s Pirates (‘Sid Meier’s Pirates’ 2021), and Assassins Creed Black Flag (‘Assassin’s Creed -Black Flag’ 2021), the feedback was clear on how fast your ship was going either through wind animations, the speed of the rocking boat, or sail position.
Animating the sail position initially sounded like a great idea. However, multiple attempts later, the real complexity of using a 2d sprite-based engine became apparent. 224 sprites later, retrofitting a tilemap, troubleshooting sprite palette size issues in WebGL, I am beginning to re-consider using a 3D engine for future 2D games.
In the interest of time, I spent the remainder of this challenge experimenting and tweaking particle effects. Again, these are based on feedback received from early playtesters. I was convinced I could find a way to make effective looking sprites using just the native particle effects and emitters. This was challenging, but ultimately rewarding by keeping my sprite count low and reducing loading times.
Experimenting with the emitters led to the discovery of a bug where the boat does not rotate at a constant speed. The discovery that problems that you thought were fixed weeks ago, are not as fixed as you thought they were is more difficult to detect in game programming vs traditional applications where business objectives are more clearly defined, or, maybe, I’m just more familiar with them and am able to see them more easily. Either way, this bug is on the list for future resolution, its only noticeable towards the 45 degree rotations.
Much has been learnt this week, including the complexities of animation coupled with rotational sprites. Segmenting sprites to allow for easier rotation which would also improve the quality of the particle effects - including possible occlusion for the smoke and fire.
References
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‘Assassin’s Creed® IV Black FlagTM on Steam’. 2021. [online]. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/242050/Assassins_Creed_IV_Black_Flag/ [accessed 12 Mar 2021].
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‘Sid Meier’s Pirates! On Steam’. 2021. [online]. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3920/Sid_Meiers_Pirates/ [accessed 12 Mar 2021].