Hi! We have a fun story today about one of our features — animation pop-up. You know, like this one:
It all started when we decided to add our very first interactive scene to the game. It was supposed to go like this: robot turns towards the switch -> flips the switch on -> turns its ‘face’ back. Sounds easy, right?
Well, it turned out to be a very bug-heavy and complicated feature because of the way the engine’s physics work. We had all kinds of amusing things happening: the robot was going out of bounds, skidding in place, not turning at all, or turning in the wrong direction. And when it worked, it looked super weird and out of place.
Our graphics lead suggested a very interesting solution. You see, he had experience creating scenes in a way comic book bubbles are made. You know, the ones that show some details zoomed or something similar. So we created an animation where the robot turned on the light and placed it on top of the robot to hide all weirdness.
It worked perfectly! Yes, we had to create an array of these bubbles for different scenes, but they are much easier to make than a procedural animation that needs to be implemented in real-time physics.
And, actually, it also improves the immersion quite a bit. You can almost feel how our hero does all these manual things. It really empowers the way you perceive the main character and gives an impression that he's capable of any task you throw at him. And we love it! It also gives us an easy way to illustrate more complex things that you'll see later in the game. Essentially, we made a workaround into a very convenient and nice-looking feature: win-win!
On this happy note, it's time for us to wrap this one up. Have a nice day, and share this one with your friends!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1301950/Time_Loader/