This attack animation turned out to be the most challenging since I did the run cycle, but I think I’ve gotten it, if not necessarily perfect yet, pretty dang good. Good enough that I’ve decided to move on to the rest of the attack animations, which will hopefully be a bit less tricky, especially with the practice I’ve gotten from these attack animations. So, here’s what they look like now:
I got the attack behavior roughed in in-game to test these animations and so far it’s looking really good. Though the animations may look a bit jerky and shakey here, since the player sprite in-game is about half-size the motion actually looks completely natural when I test it.
This is also kind of an interesting experiment in frame timing for me. When I first completed this animation, the motion seemed a little bit too fast: I think I mentioned before that I want each attack to be a discrete and important decision when playing the game. I slowed each of the recovery frames down a little bit, but, more importantly, I slowed the strike frame itself down a lot: The difference was immediately noticeable. This way, the attack snaps, and feels much more powerful. It feels like an attack that matters now. It feels good.
Timing is important.
I’ve currently started work on the running attack too. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
It’s from a standing start here, but it’s normally to be used when the character is moving forward before the attack starts. Actually, the strike frame may possibly be usable for the crouch-strike as well, something I intend to test once I finish this animation. It would look really smooth to be able to use that attack as a transition between standing and crouching depending on the character’s current state at the time.
So, that’s it for now. Not a huge update, but some good progress here, and I think it’s at least kind of fun to look like. I’m hoping to get all of the other attack animations finished for next update, have them imported into the game and feeling fairly smooth – and, once all that’s complete, it will be time to begin the task of making them actually affect the game world, so that it is truly an attack instead of just going through the motions.