Hello, this is Art J from LIFUEL. The weather in Korea is very hot and humid right now. Although we are not working under the scorching sun, we are developing in an office filled with the heat from our computers. I hope you all take care in this heat as well.
We have prepared the second part of [Character Design and Animation Polishment for the Real “Action”]. You don’t necessarily need to read the previous content as it doesn’t directly continue from it! I will try to make it as entertaining as possible.
Silhouettes
In fast-paced real-time action games, smooth animation and flashy action can also catch players' eye. However, even in such rich screen compositions, I must deliver clear enemy action to you.
What is clear action? I believe clear action is something that can be immediately understood when seen, even in a fleeting moment.
To do this, I pay a lot of attention to the silhouette, which is similar in concept to shadows.
I try to get the character to pose in the most dynamic way possible to make it instantly visible
Why is this part so important? In action games, there is a key piece of information that we must know, and that is the enemy's attack.
I believe that many of you have seen both good action games and games where you can't even see attacks clearly. This makes the game feel very unreasonable. It may also make you feel powerless and not know how to respond.
Therefore, even if it means a lot of extra work, I try to include as many dynamic poses as possible in the character silhouettes.
Here is a small selection of my ideas.
In the early prototype design, we did it as rough as only a few frames. It was simply rotated to give it a sense of attack as I thought it's enough as long as it looks like an attack.
But in the actual game, there are many more elements that can be seen at the same time on the battlefield, including the number of enemies, the form of attack, one's own hp status, skill cooldown status, and so on. These kinds of small movements are more difficult to notice in the game than you might think, thus more exaggerated movements are required to produce.
So, I started redesigning to make the attacks more visible by twisting the character’s axis in various angles. Additionally, I added skill effects to make the movements more visible.
From this point, we realised that many wolf characters have exceeded 200 frames. Thus, this was the first work that we began to transform, although the monsters were planned to be less than 50 frames initially.
After gaining some experience, I also tried more complex angles. The head of the machine in particular is made up of very complex geometric shapes, and it is not easy to draw it from multiple angles. Even so, we squeezed time out of other work to put more effort into the animation.
After all, it makes the game better.
However, there were also concerns. For instance, gun attack motions were not visible well because reloading doesn’t have a big movement compared to swinging a sword. Of course, I could add flashy reloading actions, but that would ruin game’s atmosphere. So we came up with two methods.
We added some skill effects to make powerful energy more obvious. In the actual game, SFX makes the effect more obvious.
In unavoidable cases, I used UI. Personally, I don’t like UIs indicating attack ranges because each game has different UI attack timings, making the information useful but too confusing when the attack starts. (It can also obscure the screen.)
We tried to make the attacks clear from the movements, and if necessary, added warning signs or used UI to assist. We are quite satisfied with the movement performance at this stage.
Boss Action
Before making our game, we referenced many games of similar genres or perspectives. However, the action experience in boss battles varied greatly from game to game.
For example, the boss battles in Hades and Dead Cells are both fast-paced, but feature a different action experience, probably because of the differences in game genre and perspective.
Another example is Hollow Knight and Katana Zero. Both have side-scrolling perspectives allowing movement while attacking, providing a different action feel. However, their boss battles differ as well. Hollow Knight has hit detection on enemy bodies, making them impassable, while Katana Zero requires quick judgments.
Despite different actions, each game had its unique action mechanism, and bosses were designed accordingly.
So, what direction did Stand-Alone pursue?
Our developers aimed for boss battles like those in Soul-like games and Vindictus.
These games often feature monster-like bosses that seem very realistic. The actions in these games are excellent and fun. The fierce action of fighting monsters and the thrilling moments of slight movements are amazing.
Could there be a game with such action in a 2D side-scrolling view? Could we create this in 2D action?
We reinterpreted our favorite elements and started production.
The boss resources we considered are as follows:
1. The body must be BIG. The bigger, the better.
2. The movements must also be large, appearing threatening just by motion.
3. Minimize UI indicating attack areas.
4. Prohibit too many projectiles. It shouldn’t turn into a bullet-hell game.
5. No twin or multiple boss battles. (Boss battles should be noble, we shall protect warrior’s pride with 1:1 combat.)
After many revisions, the boss looked like this. It was our first boss battle. Though we had a lot of fun producing it, we also honestly evaluated its strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths:
1. Good size.
2. Rich motion.
Weaknesses:
1. The 2nd attack is not clear.
2. Slightly slow.
3. Feels like the frame is skipping.
4. It doesn't show the clumsiness of a big monster.
5. No backup plan if the player runs away.
6. The performance is monotonous.
7. Rich motion but the boss’s attack timing is not well felt.
To solve these issues, we devised several solutions by observing people playing the game.
Solutions:
1. Significantly increase the frame count for more natural movements.
2. Create more new patterns and motions for continuous combat.
3. Further exaggerate the movements and use heavier animation principles.
Based on these criteria, we decided to invest more in quality. The resulting work is as follows.
We changed the pattern from simply crouching and charging to adding a stomping action, shaking the head, and moving the arms at various angles while charging to convey a more beastly feel.
We added additional VFX to make animation clearer. We posted this on Twitter to gather feedback. Many people shared their thoughts and ideas, which were very helpful.
The resulting movements are what we see now. Anticipating the enemy's movements at every moment, trying to achieve a high frame rate in a 2D game that feels like a 3D game, every aspect of the game is full of our efforts.
Additionally, we added unavoidable modes to create intense action experience. After understanding the characteristics of side-scroller games, we added a counterattack feature when scrolling back, etc., and put a lot of thought into it.
We wanted to give players a sense of intense combat with the monsters. Is the quality good?
Conclusion
Although it is not yet present in the current demo version, Stage 2 and 3 bosses will be more interesting with offbeat attacks and irregular patterns.
We do aware that our game belongs to roguelite genre, so we strive not to make it an overly difficult action game.
We have this idea of showcasing the action in Stand-Alone, and we hope it will be a fun action game and not just a bunch of high-frame animations.
We also hope that everyone can feel these in the demo version. Although there are some minor problems, we will work hard to solve them while developing!
Finally, thank you for reading this long post. See you later!