Well, it’s been a really weird and depressing week, but not actually too bad in terms of productivity. I’m still mired in animation work, but the light is definitely starting to show at the end of the tunnel!
First, I finished the jump attack. Last week, I had the basic motion of the rising attack done, but I did not have the looping animation to sustain the attack, the complementary descending attack, or any in-game implementation. These have all been completed. Here’s what it looks like now:
It’s not perfect, but I think it looks pretty good in-game. Hopefully it will also play satisfactorily.
After completing that, I set in on the crouch attack animation. After the disaster that was my botched attempts at the jumping attack, I came to the crouching attack seriously considering what I would need to do to make it feel satisfying. I decided that, as with the normal standing attack, I would need to do the same back-and-forth-type double-swing animation. It’s a lot of work to do these, but I think the results are worth it. I’m still caught up in making the first swing look good, and only have one sample frame done of the second, but so far I feel pretty good about this. There’s some definite problems with the movement of the sickle at the end of the attack, which needs to be corrected via either additional tween frames or re-animating that part of the picture, but the basic motion looks really solid right now I think.
Looking at it, there may just be one bad frame for the sickle in there that I can easily fix. We’ll see. I’m going to be wrapping that swing up and starting in on the recovery for the second overhead swing you see at the end there later today. If it goes really well I might be able to finish both today and do the flipped versions and the code implementation tomorrow, but more likely it’ll be done on Sunday or Monday, at which point, as I said, these planning animations will be complete.
What then?
I think maybe it’s time I got back to music for a bit, if only for my own sanity. Chapter 2-2, The Ruins, still needs music, so that’s probably what I’d be tackling next. After that – actually, probably while I’m doing that – I need to start brainstorming about how I’m going to actually create the code that makes attacks affect other entities in-game.
Thanks!