Adventure game in installments.

Inspired by the recent BGMC and by SolarLune’s shakecan games thread, I’ve decided to focus on a short game for a while. Our second Baby will be due in April and it’s already getting hard to devote much time to game development, so I’d like to do something which has a payoff in the time scale of a few months, rather than in a few years.

The project is a platform/adventure game. It will feature dialog driven roleplay (I need to design a dialog system for my long term project, so here’s a good place to do that) as well as inventory based puzzles (ditto the need for an inventory).

So far I’ve got a main character:


More updates as they come, and maybe some demos for testing if anyone would like to help me out with that. :slight_smile:

EDIT:
Actually here’s a good channel for human animation reference:

EDIT 2:
An up to date gameplay video is here:

And you can test the blend here:
No Name Adventure Game

Oops! You’ll need the dialog dictionary if you want to run it:

test_dialog.zip (1.55 KB)

Well, I managed to get something done with the better reference videos. Still stuff to clean up, but looking better.

Any thing look off or wrong about the animation? I’m open to feedback.

The running animation is good. I just recommend to add abit more bounce to it, since your characters look healthy ^^
http://s2.postimage.org/p88na95w/yoyo143.gif

My current project is riddled with laziness but when I want precise animations I usually record myself or friends doing the walk cycles etc.

Just an idear ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, the root bone needs to go up and down a little, my own rig is,very rigid and mechanical, but I was kinda going for that, stompy style walking.

Here’s some idea on womans running reference - Try Lara Croft

Hahaha :slight_smile: I actually looked for some videos of Lara’s walk cycle but mostly the videos available were speed runs of the tomb raider games where people spent the whole game glitch jumping through the scenery.

I usually have a lot of bounce in my run cycles, but then it looks a little too artificial, like the woman on the tread mill above. I’ll try out two versions with actual game movement and see which looks better.

…bouncy + slowmo, try Baywatch. :wink:

I wouldn’t say more bounce, but when I walk/run, my shoulders don’t stay in exactly the same place. My legs also don’t move only forwards and backwards, they move slightly sideways. I have in my bookshelf a grand old book, and one of the things in it is how to walk. Not just walk, but to walk like a proper gentleman. If you look at your footprints they should for a line, and your toes should be pointing slightly outwards. (So says it). You must also straighten your back and do a whole host of other things to make you look proper.
Now most people don’t walk like that, and their footprints won’t be in a line, but they won’t be in two shoulder-width lines either. As the leg gets placed down, the body shifts sideways to centralize it’s mass over the foot.

Just some thoughts. I tend to say away from animations of any kind, so don’t let me give you any advice!!!

Yes, I’ll experiment with some lateral motion in the foot.
For the shoulders, shoulder swing (rotation on the z axis of the spine) is one of the key characteristics of a male walk cycle, so it’s something I want to avoid.

it’s very difficult to produce a naturalistic representation of the oposite sex without resorting to clichés like big bouncing baywatch breasts or limp wristed flouncing walks.

As a man I know how men move, and how they look. Its difficult for me to draw, model or animate a woman.

I want the game to have a female protagonist but I don’t want lara croft or Barbie. I want a normal(ish) looking woman.

After what seems like forever, I’ve finally got a walk/run cycle which I feel happy with.
I also made the other outfits for the game, a couple of spacesuits:


The top one is a hard shelled EVA suit, shielded against radiation and extreme heat.
The bottom one is a modernized light surface “walker”. It’s not that strong but provides heating and an air supply for the occupant.
They both restrict movement, the “hardshell” has a special walking state which is very slow, while the walker allows normal walking, but no running or jumping.

They’ll be used for special sections of the game where you need to think differently to solve a puzzle. I don’t want the player becoming too used to the normal game mechanics, so I want to shake things up from time to time, give the chance for different kinds of puzzles and a more in depth experience.

I also worked on making a class based FSM, which is coming along nicely. The normal class structure means that lots of the basic functions, such as changing facing or doing raycast checks for on_ground status can be put in the base class, and inherited by subclasses. Other functions are restricted to the relevant classes so there’s no need to run them out of place.

Entry and exit actions should also work well to allow special states such as crawling through a hole, climbing a ladder or pulling yourself up on to a ledge, which would be very difficult to do without an FSM.

As a man I know how men move, and how they look. Its difficult for me to draw, model or animate a woman.

Find a women and watch them… Um, I mean, don’t be creepy while doing it…
Suggestions: Wife, sister, daughter, preferably with permission!

Nice models. Looking really good.

I want the game to have a female protagonist but I don’t want lara croft or Barbie. I want a normal(ish) looking woman.

There is a lack of normal women in computer games aren’t there?

I think they tried to make Lara more human in the most recent game but she still feels the need to walk around with almost nothing on.
How about putting a jacket on Lara? you look cold.

Anyway, I did some more work on animations, and some basic work on the movement system.

I think I need to do something about movement speed, so that you don’t go from stopped to running in 0.1 seconds.
When I’ve tried to use an inertia value before it leads sometimes to getting stuck, but with states I think I can do something good.

Another update today, and a blend file for testing.

I’d be grateful if someone could download it and test it:

Instructions are in the blend file but I’ll repost them here:

##################################################  ##
use num pad to move, up left right and down.

hold shit to run.
press space to jump, do it near a block to climb up, ditto ladders
press Ctrl to toggle sneaking mode

please feel free to give me some feedback:
    
    IS movement too slow?
    Do the animations seem fluid and natural enough?
    Does it feel anoying to have the slight delay when turning?
    Are the jumps too long or short?
    Did you get any bugs?
    Was any error printed in the console?
    
custom keymapping will be included next time.

Any ideas for more movement types?
    rolling?
    Climb through holes etc...?
##################################################  #####

And a video:

Just with these small selection of movement types I can think of dozens of small puzzles.
Maybe next I’ll work on pushable blocks…

read the thread and i remember having issues with walk cycle animations and i made this rig that helped make seem more realistic. here u can take a look at the file

Attachments

rig.blend (499 KB)

Nice game so far. My thoughts:

  • I’m pretty sure you meant “hold shift to run” in the instructions. The other way didn’t work.
  • The animations did an excellent job of communicating what was happening as far as movement and jumping.
  • In video games, I always appreciate a lot more agility in the playable character. I don’t like how this character seems to take forever to start moving, change direction, or especially jump. I’m used to the character responding immediately, even if it’s a tad unrealistic.
  • The arrow keys would be better than the numpad. I don’t want to move my finger down two rows of keys to switch between forward and backward.

This actually looks really good so far, it just plays like it’s underwater. I don’t think there should be a pause when you change direction, and I think jumping should also have a much shorter pause.

This looks really good. If the video’s running at 60 FPS, my advice would be to speed up movement and animation by around 25-50% - it seems unnecessarily slow. If you’re going for weighty, I’d say to up the speed of animation and movement overall, and slow turning, slowing down and acceleration.

EDIT: After playing it, I’d say it plays really well, too!

It feels pretty solid and interesting, but I think I’d still speed up the execution of actions a bit; it feels a little unmanageable.

Climbing ladders automatically could be problematic if you put enemies or hazards at the top of them. Maybe you could make it so that either up and down (or other keys) move up or down the ladder, or at least you’ll only move up the ladder while holding a key. If you let go, the character can start descending.

Moving only on a straight-up 4-way grid is a bit weird, especially considering the numpad has enough keys for every direction.

Pressing Control to sneak works well, but only when you’re standing completely still. It might be a good idea to allow it to be toggled as you move (but not sprint, perhaps) and just slow the player down when that happens.

You forgot to pack the textures (which is fine; you don’t have to pack them just for a test).

Nice work!

Hahaha what a typo. I hope you didn’t try the other method.

Thanks for the feedback, I’ll be taking some of it forward to the next stage.
I’ve done a little fixing of the keyboard input to use 8 directions instead of 4. Originally I wanted to use only left and right movement, with a small concession made for moving up and down to go in to side rooms or doors off the main strip, but I’m getting closer now to a full side-on 3d game rather than a 2d scrolling game. The short length of the ray used to detect ladders and such should stop you from entering a climbing state in a diagonal direction (unless the block is set up that way).

I’ve added support for all 8 directions on the numpad, but you can use just 4 directions and combine them:
“n” + “e” = “ne”
So arrow keys can be used instead, or WASD (which has given me some kind of carpal tunnel syndrome recently, so I’m not using it).

I’ve added the options screen at the beginning of the game so you can set up the keys as you like.

I’ve removed the turning state (the state that was causing long pauses when changing direction) for non-acute changes of direction. So if you change from running east to running north-east, there’s no pause, but if you make a 90 degree or 180 degree turn, the player will stop a little as before. With a little practice you can run around quite smoothly.

I think I will split the ladder climbing state in to two or three states which can be run backwards or forwards. SO if you get near the top of the ladder and decide you want to come down, you can do that, or if you want to wait for a guard to walk past before popping up, you can do that too.

I don’t want running to be the default method of movement though. The levels are not going to be that huge, and there isn’t going to be any combat. Where you face guards, you have to get around them, either by sneaking past or finding an alternative route.

I have tried running the animations faster, but it makes them look they are in a Buster Keaton movie.
I’m playing with changing animation and movement speeds on the fly at the moment, since certain outfits (the spacesuit) make movement speed slower, and it needs to be seen in game. I’ll try some faster speeds too.

EDIT:
I’ve made a demo with adjustable speed.
Could you try it (use pad plus and pad minus to adjust the speed of animations and movement)?
I’d like to know what speed is most comfortable for players.

I felt like 1.1 (110% previous speed) was pretty good…

If you want to get to the options screen, just switch scenes before starting the game. From there you can adjust screen resolution and keymapping.

I don’t want to spent much more time on movement, this is supposed to be a quick project after all. ^^
So next I’m planning the dialog system.

I want a system I can edit in a python program I’m going to write myself. I can’t write multi threaded potentially looping dialogs in microsoft word, i want to represent paths through the dialog visually.

I need to be able to export dialogs to save them, and I need to spellcheck them too.

I need custom events so certain dialog options can have requirements while others can perform actions such as adding or removing an item from the player’s inventory.

Phew! Quite a list of requirements there. :slight_smile:

Hm, that sounds hefty, yeah. Dunno if you can get everything done in a few months, though I suppose there’s enough time if you really plan it out well.