Hi there, Marcus here. This is a devlog from November 2020 when Looky's run animation was created:
From time to time I come back to my worm models to add some animations like last weekend. I added a nice looking run animation to Looky so that when you double click somewhere on the screen and that point is far enough away from Looky, he will run (or better said „jump“) to that point. To have points of interest in a scene that are quite far from each other by design is one thing, but not to have an option to get there fast is another. Or more precisely: It’s best to keep the routes very short by design, but occasionaly you want the player to be aware of distances between things and you have to make sure as a game designer to not let that frustrate him or her.
I’m quite happy with how the run animation turned out and I made some other animations too, to make dialogs a lot more lively. For example I added a dismissive gesture when Looky said „Aw, don’t worry!“ and a shake animation when he holds his breath, while trying to buy some chili powder from Aunt Emma.
The very cool thing about this is the fact that those animations are not only recycable across several dialogs, but also across all worms in the game. Since all characters use the same „Animator Controller“ (maybe I explain the animation engine in more detail in a future blog post), all animations that I add to Looky are automatically usable by all other worms.
For example these are some moments in the game, where I could use the „Point“ animation:
But don’t worry: Wormventures – Barrier 51 won’t be a „Point-On-Everything“ game.