Animations

New Sprite Work Continued

Leave a Comment / 2D Sprite Art, Animations / /

This last month has been very busy and I have not worked on the game project as much as I would have liked. Within the last week I took my character sprite base and started making an idle animation from it. I also completed the side and back idle but I didn’t make a gif of them. The character sprites to this point are ok, but I think the sprites could use some more work. I need to add more life to the movement because it is very rigid at this point. I believe I also need to slow down the animation so that the character is not breathing so fast.

Tools and Weapons Sprites

I also started putting together some of the base sprites for weapons and tools. Which included some of the essential survival style tools from many other games. In this case a pickaxe, shovel, axe, hoe, and a sword. I also made sure to include a bow and arrow for ranged weapons. These should just be the start as I would like some fancier versions of these items made from other materials for my game. I was thinking that I may want to add a weapons forging mechanic to the game so I made some sprites for an anvil and tools. We shall see if that is something I can add, but at least I have some kind of workbench or anvil for making items. Some of these sprites are just for the items hotbar, but not the actual in game sizes. For instance with the anvil, one sprite is 16×16 for the item box, and the other is 32×32 for the in game item that would be placed.

Progress

I know that progress has been slow, but I hope to continue making small strides. Over the next few weeks I will continue to try and find more time to work on the project. I would like to over time start recording parts of my work for vlogs so I can have a record of the progress of the game. Especially once I start working in the game engine and pieces start coming together. Right now I am just mostly working on art, and some ideas for what I would like to accomplish. Until next time.

New Sprite Work Continued Read More »

Player Attack Animations and New 2D Grass Tiles

Leave a Comment / 2D Sprite Art, Animations, Collision Detection, Game Engine, LibGDX, Tile Assets, Uncategorized / /

I know it has been about 3 weeks since my last update. But I have been very busy with my class and job. But I worked on the game a lot over the last couple of days. I made many improvements that I was very pleased with. I was able to fix several bugs that I was encountering as well.

Bug Fixes:

The first major bug was that the edge of the game world was not rendering and when the player crossed the edge of the map the game would crash with an out of bounds exception. After redoing the map rendering code, I was able to fix the issue and now the player can walk around past the edge of the world. Which will be fixed when map collision is turned back on. Currently I have it off for testing, and the fact that I am spawning in on a mountain. If I had terrain collision on, I would not be able to get off the mountain currently, because I have not implemented anything to create a path down.

I also had a lot of bugs when resizing the game window. There a still a few issues when the screen size gets very small. But I think I am going to limit the size of the screen to certain ratios. After the fix I implemented, the screen scales much better and the map is rendering properly no matter the size of the screen.

Attack Animations and Sprites:

The largest project I undertook was created the sprites for the player attack animations. Then I also implemented them into the game. So, the player can now attack in all four directions. After implementing that I needed an actual way for the player to attack. I created a new system for collision detection that is much cleaner than my old code. It is working great so far but I do have a small issue with sprites of different sizes working with the same collision code because, the rectangles that detect collision are not being set to the right scale. I will need to fix this in the future.

HUD System:

Furthermore, I worked on a new HUD system for the game. I need to add much more to it, but I was learning just how to create one. Now that I was able to get the game world time to show up in the upper right corner, I would like to add more art to the HUD. The HUD also needs to show much more information than it currently does, but I did get it started. I would like to have it show the players health and have an items bar at the bottom. That will probably be done down the road once I have a better understanding of how to implement it.

Default Grass Tile Update:

Updated Grass Tile
Image showing the updated Grass Tile

The last update over the last few weeks was changing the default grass tile. I updated it using a noise pattern of different green colors. It seems to have worked well so far, and I am quite happy with the new look. I also updated the other grass edge tiles to match it. Additionally, I want to work on other default tiles that are basically just a color. I want to change them to have more details. I think it just makes everything look better. Once the basic tiles are updated, I am going to start working on other objects that will be above the base layer that the player can interact with, to make the game world seem more alive.

I am hopeful that I will be able to post every two weeks again starting next time.

Full Change List:

Added: Player attack animations for all 4 directions
Coded: A HUD interface to show the time of the game world. More coming soon.
Coded: A new collision detection system to determine when the player attacks are hitting other objects in the game world.
Updated: The grass tile to look more like thick grass.
Updated: The other grass related tiles to match.
Bug Fix: Issues with resizing the screen causing map to not render properly.
Bug Fix: Solved the issue with the void space at the edge of the world not rendering properly. Game was crashing when reaching the edge of the world.

Player Attack Animations and New 2D Grass Tiles Read More »

Item and Inventory System Started

Leave a Comment / 2D Sprite Art, 2D Terrain Generation, Animations, Item System, LibGDX, Tile Assets / /
Item Pickup System
Gif showing the items being auto picked up when walking over them

I realize that it has been two weeks since posting the last update.  But college has started the fall semester and my work schedule has increased.  Besides my full-time job at the college I also am teaching a class this fall.  So, I must spend a little more time working on my class, leaving less time for me to work on my game.  But I will still be working on the game it will just be at a slower pace.

Item and Inventory System:

Over the last two weeks I started working on an Inventory System and an Item system.  The inventory is working in code.  I can put items into the inventory and remove them.  However, I have not worked on a graphic interface yet for this.  I also added the item system so items can be placed in the game world and can be picked up by the player. The items can also be rendered into the game world.  But for now, that most items I do not have icons for I just rendered in a black square.  Once I get more sprites, I will add them. 

Campfire Animation and Sprites:

After working on the item and inventory systems I decided to test it by creating a campfire sprite.  From there I realized I would need a way to animate it, so I worked on the art for each frame of the animation.  I am satisfied with the way it turned out so far but I think I will modify it a bit.  I also may investigate adding particle effects to make it look like smoke is coming off.  But overall, I think it looks good so far. 

Campfire
Gif showing the animated campfire

Attack Animations:

I also started thinking about how to handle the attack animations of the main character.  But so far, I am not sure how I want this to work.  I did start making animations for it, but I am no where near done with that work.

While I was working out the player attack animations, I decided I would first create idle animations for each direction that the player can stand.  I was able to finish them, but I want to do more work with them, so the clothes and hair are more responsive to the player movement.  But it was a good start. 

One last project I worked on was creating long grass sprites for adding grass that the player can walk through.  I only created the sprites at this point, and I have not implemented it into the game at this point. 

It has been a slow two weeks and I am hoping as the semester progresses, I find more time to work on my project.  Currently, I am doing a lot of art for the game and it is taking a lot of hours just to get the sprites done.  I believe once I get the attack sprites created then I will still need to implement them into the game.  I am probably going to be posting every two weeks for a while.  But, depending on how much I can get done I may post more often.                

Full Change List:

Coded: the start of an inventory system for the player and other mobs.

Coded: the start of the item system (player can pick up items and store them in inventory)

Created: a campfire sprite and animations for use as a placeable item.

Created: Sprites for the player idle animation frames

Added: Player idle animations to the game.

Created: Sprites for long grass

Item and Inventory System Started Read More »