(The original text is written in Korean.)
Hello, this is J from the art team at LIFUEL. Today, I want to talk about how we designed the art while developing STAND-ALONE. This content reflects both our long-standing experience and our team's philosophy on how we view game development.
It might be boring. Nevertheless, I will try to write it as interesting as possible!
--------------
[Character Design and Animation Planning for Real "Action"]
1. The First Dotting Image
This image is the first animation I created back then. At this stage, it was an initial concept where the character's weapon wasn't even decided. It wasn't actual game resource material. The character's animation was very insufficient, and it was difficult to determine the hit points. Due to the small pixel resolution, there were also limitations in movement.
However, I realized something through this practice. To express the good action we wanted to show, the character needed to be larger, and the frame rate had to be relatively high.
Therefore, I designed a size that allowed the character's arms and legs to be visible and the attack motions to be clear from various angles within the game resolution of 640x360. Simultaneously, I researched many games of similar genres. There were indeed many great games. DNF and Momodora, in particular, provided a lot of inspiration and ideas.
During this time, I learned something very crucial about axis changes. Animations made with spine tend to move like marionettes along the y-axis. What we wanted was the dynamism that comes from movement along the x and z axes, which is different from the direction of spine animations. (Of course, you can mix both for expression.)
Eventually, I decided to create it with full sprites. I didn't want to miss the freedom of z-axis expression and the emotional impact of full sprite animation.
Thus, I completed the character that would be in the game.
2. The First Stand-Alone Character Design
The character design thus created was quite suitable for expressing action. (Even though my understanding of animation wasn't high at this time.) Many people liked the resources when they saw them.
The frames consisted of about 200 frames in total, with 100 frames for basic actions and 100 frames for attack actions. As the texture size and resource details increased, the visual enjoyment of the game certainly improved. However, problems remained.
- The character design didn't look like a sheep.
- The swinging motion was too flimsy, lacking impact.
These two problems were quite serious but remained unsolved for a year and a half. There were many other tasks to do, and honestly, I was worried because I didn't know how to change it. Fortunately, there were a few timely factors to solve this problem, such as the release of good games like Cult of the Lamb and having a playable build of our game. We compared user responses to the latest successful games with our game and pondered how to renew our game resources.
During that time, I pondered a lot about what kind of design users liked and whether such a design was suitable for expressing good action. What is a design suitable for game planning?
3. Renewal
To solve the design issues of not looking like a sheep and lacking impact, we renewed the resources through many tests. Having accumulated a lot of knowledge and skills, we decided to renew them definitively.
The renewal was complex yet simple. We exaggerated the action more, made the weapon larger, and added more motions and frames to enhance the action. (I have a record of the action know-how from this time, and I hope to share it if there's an opportunity.)
The results were very good. The most important aspects of impact and visual enjoyment improved significantly. Although the art resources previously fell short of what we implemented, they now reached a similar level, allowing the game to be fully expressed. The sheep looked more like sheep, and the combat and SF concept became more prominent, clearly showcasing many planning aspects.
Though it was quite usable in the game, I added more visual enjoyment mechanisms as an art professional. Specifically, detailed interpolation frames.
4. Interpolation Frame Animation
I paid a lot of attention to this area. I wanted to show everyone the emotion that comes from 2D animation. Although such interpolation frames existed in the resources before the renewal, they were only in some actions. Now, you can see details in a wide variety of motions. For example, the character's running consists of 6 frames, but the stopping motion when returning to idle is 16 frames. It was extended to express catching the sword's handle in reverse.
However, on the other hand, I was concerned about whether these actions would interfere with the game. For example, turn motions are quite frequent in side-scrolling games, but adding interpolation frames could cause delays. While this might mean smoother control, we believe it to be unnecessary smoothness in an action game.
To find a balance that is not too rigid but also not too flimsy, our team, including programmers, discussed and tested to achieve good control. Thanks to this, we now have good control in the game.
[Settings for Clear “Action”]
Having played many action games, I've felt dissatisfaction when I couldn't tell what hit me. I don't think it's good action when you don't know who attacked you or what attacked you when. We aimed to solve this with the following measures.
1. Enemies are All Orange, Players are Blue
We decided to follow a rule in the game settings. Enemies are all orange, and players are blue. This secures visibility through the contrast of warm and cool colors. One annoying aspect of action games is getting hit without understanding the situation. Without proper feedback, the game becomes frustrating, not fun, and hard to understand. It feels like torture rather than a paid entertainment experience.
Action games are inherently tiring, and their tempo is fast. Battles are hectic, and information that must be judged momentarily is crucial. In such situations, clearly recognizing enemies at a glance is essential in STAND-ALONE development, and we strived to adhere to this rule.
The color scheme was chosen to leverage the visual fear concept of red and orange. The red series helps to instinctively detect danger. Also, the colors are highly noticeable, making them easy to recognize quickly, so we used these colors a lot for enemy attack weapons. If you look closely, you'll see that the wolves are not orange wolves but wolves with orange weapons. This is to help identify attacks more clearly in those short moments. Though it may seem minor, these details accumulate to create good results.
One more thing to mention is that determining the color for such reasons can feel a bit disappointing, right? Therefore, we added a scenario concept to add a bit of relevance.
Why are the wolves' weapons orange? What material was used to make them orange? Find out in the game!
2. Outline Setting
I judged that all monsters should have outlines. This is because outlines provide better visibility in the game.
Many games don't have this feature, which isn't necessarily bad. Without outlines, you get a more natural and beautiful art. If you are a true artist, this is the correct way to create graphics. I also wanted to create a game with graphics without outlines. As someone in the beautiful graphics field, that's the ideal. However, I believed that fundamentally showing a good game was more important than beautiful graphics. Beautiful art is just a means to express the game. So, I added outlines to provide more information.
The satisfaction with the result was very high. Especially in Stage 1, where the bright desert background could make it harder to distinguish, the clear outlines helped to clearly identify enemies.
Though it made animation work a bit more cumbersome, it was worth it.
3. Utilizing Brightness and Complementary Color Contrast
Stage 1's desert background is generally yellow. The problem is that the enemies' appearance and attacks are orange, meaning bullets are naturally orange according to the above rule.
- "This won't be visible in the desert, what do we do?”
This problem led to a lot of deliberation. Ideas ranged from giving the bullets colors other than warm tones to changing the background resources, making resource production quite challenging. After referencing and researching many games, we concluded the following:
• “If enemies are orange, are we never to create orange backgrounds?”
Though it was difficult, I decided to find a way to maintain the desert while also ensuring the visibility of the enemies. Here’s the method I came up with:
1. Make the background darker, so the bullets appear brighter.
2. Add complementary colors to the bullets for visibility.
Thus, we placed many objects along with the background tiles in the battle zones. We utilized dark walls appropriately to make the bullets more visible. We plan to continue updating the map to make the bullets even more visible.
Additionally, we created the bullets with a slight touch of blue + gray to enhance visibility. We carefully worked to ensure that white didn’t cause eye strain by flickering. Though this process is not easy during resource production, it’s crucial. I’m well aware that many users are concerned about this aspect. Although I keep looking at the same work, feedback from you occasionally helps us improve it.
4. Creating Warning Animations
Even with exaggerated and clearly visible monster motions, making their attacks visible wasn’t easy.
When the number of monsters increases or new monsters appear, players need to focus a lot to recognize their attacks, which might be tiring.
To make the game more enjoyable, we added warning signs during monster attacks, similar to other games.
However, we recognize that this could interfere with the action. Some people prefer dodging based on the monster’s movements, enjoying the primal action.
We are always watching to prevent this problem, ensuring good action!
5. Testing Attack Motions
Though it may seem trivial, we paid close attention to the motions. We discovered an unusual situation where the wolf’s attack motion wasn’t visible.
Even though we exaggerated it, why wasn’t it visible? It turned out that the attack motion after the hurt motion looked similar.
With a warning sign on the head, it wasn’t a significant issue for the game, but to minimize unpleasant experiences, we adjusted the angle of the wolf’s sword to point upwards.
We also found that the backpack wolf’s attack lacked axis variation. Though the warning sign on the head mitigated the issue, we added a leaning forward animation frame for a clearer attack timing.
We updated this animation change without any notice, and through user play, we realized how significant the impact was.
Currently, the baby sword wolf’s attack visibility still feels lacking. We will also improve this to ensure attacks are more visible.
------
The content is longer than expected, so I might have to divide it into two or three parts. It will take some time to summarize the boss creation and the stages not revealed in the demo.
I will try to write as concisely and interestingly as possible.
While organizing my thoughts, I realize there are so many things I want to write about, but I lack the time. Nevertheless, I will keep writing! Thank you for your constant feedback and support. It seems a good game is made because of you.
Thank you for reading.