Hello to all who find their way here, another week calls for another update, and while this one goes back to visual work over more coding, most of that is due to just updating code that already existed, like the acceleration of Moof and such, small stuff.
For this week I wanted to get into fixing a sprite set I made long back as a placeholder, and since got back to, making it something that fits the character better, the Moof's running.
The running sprites, using an old screencap of his sprite-sheet can be seen here, under his walking sprites (Top Right for the walking, so under that, right half)
It was a simple 3-frame that looked more generic than anything, or if not that, just not too fitting to the character Moof is. This was a problem I eventually wanted to fix, and that's exactly what I did.
The process started with a simple question: "What can I do to the run that would fit his goofier, closer to cartoon style antics and actions?"
So I looked into that and got some notes together,
For cartoony effect, I noticed smaller characters sometimes depicted with these little nub-circles moving really fast, something to look like they have to move their legs a lot faster to match the speed of those with longer legs, this was perfect.
I took notes, and reworked the sprites accordingly, or well I started with a sketch, and with it, also a trial of the body itself, to add the feet to, I got this from it:
This was simple enough, a few tries to get the arms how I'd like them and to what they are now. So that was easy enough, I got the only steady part of the animation, the next was where I get it to live up to the theme of Moof, making it move.
The motion is gonna be interesting, the feet would be moving very quickly, so it's gonna not only need accommodations to look like it's blurring in motion, but the animation speed's also going to be ridiculously fast.
Quickly enough I got together 4 frames that could play in a loop to give swooshing motion and be crazy speed amped to fit that idea as well.
But, I still also want his hair and tail to be visibly moving, the animations for walking for Moof, and the Goo Enemies overall use about 6, for what I'm doing the Running sprite is at a speed of a whopping 24.
Luckily I also found a fix to this, and it's kind of simple but effective.
What I did essentially was multiply the total frames by 3x, bringing the run from 4 frames to 12, just with the feet doing their cycle 3 times over.
This combined with making sprites for the hair and tail that last 4 of those frames each, essentially allows the feet to move at 24 speed, and let's me simulate the hair and tail's speed to be akin to a speed closer to 6-8.
Effectively, I am using 2 animation speeds at the same time this way.
But I think the results speak for themselves:
(There's a slight error in the cheek if looking close enough but it's only in the gif, idk why it plays that way, it might be how Firealpaca exported it. I am well below the 256 gif color limit, but for everything else, my point stands 'n shows for itself)
I effectively used minimal alterations, but also some creative liberties in frame order to mix speeds in my own beneficial way providing the percs both faster and slower speeds would have offered on their own for their respective segments.
It also fleshes the Moof Sprite-sheet out and makes it look more in depth than it is for there only being one body frame, but if you don't tell I won't either, heh-heh.
This is the kind of stuff I want to have in an animation or even just singular sprite.
Something to give ideas of how the characters are by the way they move or act, for Moof, this one switch alone helps go from basic run to giving the idea he's a sillier guy, cartoon logic to his movements, fast steps but they don't go too fast cause his legs aren't even double digits of inches almost, taking more steps to get to places at the pace bigger characters are.
Adding this to Moof in Construct is simple enough to just replace the existing run sprite sheet, use the same hitboxes and origin points that every animation uses of his universally, and adjust the footstep sound effect triggers to all the odd frames since he now has more of those.
That's more of the easy point of all of this, and added adjustments of Acceleration to make his transition to this a bit smoother.
It ain't much, but it's working, and frankly that is some of the best results I could get on my first attempt at switching these, instead of being my 7th, so I am grateful for that relatively smooth development.
Outside of that I will keep working on improving my project further and further, and I can only really show development of that with time, so until next time, I'll keep working to have more updates to show ya.
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