#How to handle grpahics of a character with a weapon in hands that is rotating in 360°?

19 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

bitter prawn
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Hello,

please take a look at this video. While my character is running around, the bow always points in the direction of the closest enemy, generating arrows pointing in the same direction.

Now my character is redesigned and the artist (and I) wonder how we should handle the situation. How should the character look and what do I need to keep my rotating weapon "feature"? The two options I could think of:

Option 1 - It could be like in Enter the Gungeon. A character without arms and just round hands that could rotate together with the current weapon. But no arms? This looks a bit weird. Or doesn't it?

Option 2 - No bow rotation. The character can just be designed and animated with the bow in hands and the bow would never point at the enemy. So my arrow-objects will just be created without being correctly positioned on the bow. Would be easy, but wouldn't look great either.

I don't like any of those options. What should I do? How could I instruct the artist to create a sprite that fulfils my needs?

Hope you people can help me!

woven hound
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looks like the video didn't get posted

bitter prawn
woven hound
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I've got a free rotation weapon in my game, and I went with the armless floating hands

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it's not THAT weird if your artstyle isn't trying to be super realistic in style or proportions

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if you do want arms, that's gonna take some extra work. You'd probably need different arm poses/animations for different ranges of directions. Alternatively, you could try to draw the character itself in such a way that the whole character can rotate to face what you're shooting

bitter prawn
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I see. And do you use both hands or do you have just one "weapon hand"? I guess with the bow it is a special situation because it only makes sense to use both hands. I'd have to reposition the "bowstring-hand" anyways.

So if I go armless with only hands would you say that the character sprite needs to be designed in a special way so it looks better? I don't know how to explain this but is there a MUST that such a character should have?

woven hound
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I'm not much of an artist, so I dunno if I can give much in depth character design advice

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For me, I just tried stuff till it seemed alright

bitter prawn
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Alright, so I guess I will just go with the no-arms so they could just rotate together with the weapon. Thanks for your reply!

woven hound
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no arms does reduce workload a TON when dealing with independent rotation like that

bitter prawn
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Reduced worload is good!
Another question about the weapon-character-relation: If the character gets animated, the weapon may be in another position each frame. Should the animation be designed like the bow is always in the same position relative to the character or should I reposition the bow any step by code and check which image-number we are at?

woven hound
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depends on what your animations look like

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there's no single solution to stuff like this, you may have to try some things and see how it looks with your sprites/style

bitter prawn
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But it would be possible to reposition my weapon with every change of the image_index?

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Actually with the no arms-solution the repositioning may not be necessary because the hands are "free" anyways.

bitter prawn
woven hound
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yeah it's totally possible to reposition things based on animation frames

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that's not anything too crazy