Standing and idle animations?

[Redeth]

The general and pikeman (especially the general) need some additional inbetween frames on their head movement - the pikeman only needs one for when he turns his head to face the other way, the general needs several to ease how his head snaps around.

No problem.

We seem to be moving in the direction of having most of the undead idle animations be slightly to extremely humorous. :/

True enough. I'm running out of ideas, though. What would you have the skeleton do, for instance?

[commanderkeen]

Just because the Undead have died doesn't mean that their sense of humor has rotted away!

Really like the animations. Keep up the good work!

[Simons Mith]

In ref to Turin's concerns about the undead animations all being 'humorous' - well, what generic actions can critters take?

Look around.
Brandish weapon
Howl/scream/other intimidate option (I suppose evil sniggering counts under this category . . .)
Shift weapon from hand to hand
Something humourous [obviously should be rare]
Lower weapon then raise it again
Shift feet
Look down and shift feet
Examine weapon/armour/equipment
Perform a weapon kata of some kind
Finally, a creature's costume can move in the breeze

A rider can calm or pet his beast
A beast can howl/neigh etc.
A beast can shift position, toss its head, twitch its tail, flap its wings etc.

I think we do have most of these already covered. But undead probably ought to be less fidgety, so their actions should tend to the intimidate actions, or brandishing its weapon, or a weapon kata. In other words, deliberate acts rather than, say, actions to relive muscle fatigue or that sort of thing.

I think we've got pretty good coverage of all the above already.

[turin]

But does it really make sense for a skeleton to laugh maniacally? I thought they were soulless beings controlled entirely by their creators...

[Stilgar]

Agreeing with turin here, I think that if any of the undead units are going to do an "evil laughter" type of animation, it ought to be the Necromancer or some other unit in the adept line.

Love the headbanger adept though, although it should probably be a pretty rare action.

[Drake Blademaster]

But does it really make sense for a skeleton to laugh maniacally? I thought they were soulless beings controlled entirely by their creators...

What if their creators were feeling like some evil laughter, and so the skeletons did so too?

[Simons Mith]

Well, they are currently described as almost mindless, but 'act intimidating' could still easily be a part of the Animate Skeleton spell. Or the description could be updated to specifically say that they retain some of the old warrior's cunning and combat skills - and intimidate could certainly count as part of that.

Actually, I've just thought of another animate, particularly suitable to magic users and magical creatures - you could have the occasional magical halo effect as the spell animating the creature pulses or something in response to changes in the magical ambience. You could have a skeleton's eyes momentarily glowing red or something, or have its entire body - or its weapons - shimmer with power, for example.

[Jetrel]

I think having the skeletons shiver would work fairly well; a shiver that's partly "brr it's cold" and partly the disjointed twitching of a junkie hitting bottom. In fact it could even come off as rather creepy. That could be a good exercise for Turin; try and make exactly such an animation.

But by all means, we're keeping the one that's been made. If turin does come up with a good shiver animation, we'll set that to display much more often than the cackle animation, but we're not tossing this perfectly good piece of work from redeth.


It would also not be a bad thing, at all, to have multiple animations for level-1 units; they've got the vast majority of screen time.

Redeth: You might want to have the general's shadow spill forward a bit as his torso leans forward (and it would, from what I know of anatomy). Other than that, these are great; go ahead and pack them up.

And by the way:

[zookeeper]

I'd like to see any of Zookeeper's thoughts on these..

Well, I've never been a fan of these kind of idle animations where the unit does some odd contextless combat-like moves like that pikeman. So I don't really like the pikeman much, and I have to admit I really have no idea what the marshal is doing. He mostly looks like he had some sort of a paranoia attack and went nuts.

The pikeman could do all sorts of other things, like just twirling his pike around once or twice, plant his pike on the ground and stretch a bit (or do some other exercise-like move), and so on.

[palloco]

I agree with zookeper. I find it annoying to have around 40 units on the screen and see always some of them doing senseless moving. Although it would be nice having animations like that one of WC each 10 minutes, and not every unit should have an animation.

[Darth Fool]

Another undead type idle animation that is not suitable to other types is the whole falling to pieces and reassemble. We have one already with the head roll and throw of the skeleton archer, but there are other variations, like hand dropping off and running around before hopping back on...etc... the necromancer line could do things like summon up small undead creatures... you could have undead dig up bones or skulls out of the ground...etc. Basically, I don't think we have really exhausted the pool of possible idle animations.

As for the general he looks to me like he is an american football quarterback getting into the huddle. And the pikeman, I am not sure what he is doing. Still, I think that since idle animations are pretty infrequent these are fine to go in for now until someone comes up with something better.

[Redeth]

But does it really make sense for a skeleton to laugh maniacally? I thought they were soulless beings controlled entirely by their creators...

That's what their creators thought... hence the laughter.

I think having the skeletons shiver would work fairly well; a shiver that's partly "brr it's cold" and partly the disjointed twitching of a junkie hitting bottom. In fact it could even come off as rather creepy. That could be a good exercise for Turin; try and make exactly such an animation.

Looking forward to see this one made.

The pikeman could do all sorts of other things, like just twirling his pike around once or twice, plant his pike on the ground and stretch a bit (or do some other exercise-like move), and so on.

Looking forward to see some of these too. Isn't it great, the fact that we can have multiple idle animations for each unit?

By the way, in case the obvious needs to be described with words: the Pikeman is planting his pike on the ground, leaning on it, and looking to his left/over his shoulder. No combat move whatsoever, nothing flashy, nothing fancy, just a brief and casual movement.

We have agreed that the whole point of these animations is to bring some life to the dullness of an otherwise static screen. They're not and must not be the main attraction or the major focus of attention. Some of them will be funny and that's good, some will surprise us from time to time, and that's fine too, but I think most of them should be of this sort (Pikeman, Footpad, Orc Archer, etc.): pretty normal and uninteresing enough to provide some movement withouth much distraction.

We have one already with the head roll and throw of the skeleton archer, but there are other variations, like hand dropping off and running around before hopping back on...etc... the necromancer line could do things like summon up small undead creatures... you could have undead dig up bones or skulls out of the ground...etc. Basically, I don't think we have really exhausted the pool of possible idle animations.

By all means, don't let anybody stop you or anyone else from making these too.

As for the general he looks to me like he is an american football quarterback getting into the huddle.

Yeah, it's great when quarterbacks plant their shiny swords on the ground, protecting themselves with their tower shields. You gotta love that game.

Good lord, now I remember why I had abandoned my own thread such a long time ago... More explaining: the General is simply taking a break, crouching a little and resting on his sword to make himself less imposing, then looking around quickly assessing the situation of the battlefield, and finally nodding approvingly, maybe to himself, maybe to somebody else, it doesn't matter and it will work fine whether the unit is alone, with allies or surrounded by enemies (he's a General, after all, so he must always look confident, no matter the situation he is in).

Redeth: You might want to have the general's shadow spill forward a bit as his torso leans forward (and it would, from what I know of anatomy). Other than that, these are great; go ahead and pack them up.

Done, and done. And I appreciate the helpful criticism, as always.

Committed by kbaskins 06/16/07

[Jetrel]

The forum ate my last post, so I'll recap something similar:

We have agreed that the whole point of these animations is to bring some life to the dullness of an otherwise static screen. They're not and must not be the main attraction or the major focus of attention. Some of them will be funny and that's good, some will surprise us from time to time, and that's fine too, but I think most of them should be of this sort (Pikeman, Footpad, Orc Archer, etc.): pretty normal and uninteresing enough to provide some movement withouth much distraction.

EXACTLY.

A lot of the best animations are ones where the unit is doing -something-, but is doing something natural enough that it's not easy to grossly categorize. They're almost forms of shifting your weight around, while standing; they're the kind of things a person would do if they were forced to stand at a deserted street corner for several hours. Or things that a person does while standing in a line/queue. They're often hard to describe movements of impatience; english doesn't have good vocabulary outside of saying that "they're swinging their arms/legs around", or just "doing impatient stuff". Just goofing around.

Good lord, now I remember why I had abandoned my own thread such a long time ago...

Redeth; please do ignore any negative comments, and keep making these - everyone else: please try to refrain from commenting on the content of redeth's animations, just comment on the technique used to make them. I'll make a call if he does anything grossly out of line.

I say this, because I _really_ want to keep him on a roll here, I'd rather not have him get discouraged.. Again.

[Dave]

I don't have much to add, except to say that I think Redeth is doing an excellent job on these. Having idle animations of this quality and quantity really makes Wesnoth feel like a much more complete and polished product.

David

[zookeeper]

I didn't want to spend ages trying to produce an animated .gif, so you'll have to check it out from SVN, but I just committed an idle animation of the elvish fighter doing some leg stretching.

Someone could further improve on it by drawing a few more intermediate frames for the second stretch to make it smoother, having the sword move (he should probably lower it to horizontal when going down) and perhaps cleaning up the shield in a few frames.