Will NPCs have walking animations?

[Kappa Omicron]

I watched the video on the store page and also saw some of the animated gifs on the kickstarter page and it shows the NPCs teleporting to spots unnaturally with no animations of any kind.

Will the NPCs continue to do this or will they have actual animations?

Example of what I mean from the kickstarter:

https://i.kickstarter.com/assets/039/877/541/8a4de4abd4ab9333c3455ac15363e82e_original.gif?fit=scale-down&origin=ugc&q=92&width=680&sig=Dro1CIs6ZuqGBywziR4FLRMnTiZHyLSOxZ2hq092yz4%3D

If I'm honest, I'm not a big fan of that, like to the point in losing interest in playing.

Like, I love the look of the game so far, but just the lack of animations kills it for me, sadly.

[MeowMeow]

No, they won't have walking animation. The npcs of the their previous game Elona also don't have walking animation. Who knows, maybe they will add walking animation to the npcs in this game.

[Kappa Omicron]

Originally posted by Auhmy:

No, they won't have walking animation. The npcs of the their previous game Elona also don't have walking animation. Who knows, maybe they will add walking animation to the npcs in this game.

Ahh, that's a shame (for me).

The game looks really cool and I'm glad that many fans of their original game are looking forward to it.

But the NPCs not having animations for walking and just popping into place just throws me off too much, unfortunately.

I don't really know why it bothers me so much, but it does. To the point that my interest in the game just died because of it, which seems petty but I can't help it.

My loss, I guess. Thanks for answering!

P.S

If anyone reading this years from now or whatever and they did end up adding animations to NPCs and stopped them teleporting, please let me know!

I'll definitely re-add it to my wishlist and be interested in it again.

[Doesn't Learn From Mistakes]

You can set the jitteriness of NPC movement from teleporting to smoothly sliding from tile to tile, but there are no walking animations as that would massively bloat the spritesheets for the sheer number of NPC types there are in the game.

You can set your residents to use PCCs like the player does, but then they all become generic humans.

[Sirius]

You missed a great game just because thinking too much about the graphics tbh

[Warnoise]

Originally posted by Auhmy:

No, they won't have walking animation. The npcs of the their previous game Elona also don't have walking animation. Who knows, maybe they will add walking animation to the npcs in this game.

So then what's this? A censored version of Elona?

[LuckyToShoot]

If they at least set it up in the code for modders to be able to draw the walking animation, it'd be enough for me tbh.

[Doesn't Learn From Mistakes]

So then what's this? A censored version of Elona?

Can't censor what was never there to begin with. Elona didn't have walking animations for NPCs, either.

Even a two-frame walk cycle for every NPC for four directions would octuple the number of sprites needed. That's a lot of effort for not much payoff.

If they at least set it up in the code for modders to be able to draw the walking animation, it'd be enough for me tbh.

Like I said above, the best you can do is to set your residents to use PCCs, then mod in a bunch of PCCs. But no, that will not apply for generic NPCs out in the world.

[Kappa Omicron]

Originally posted by Doesn't Learn From Mistakes:

Even a two-frame walk cycle for every NPC for four directions would octuple the number of sprites needed. That's a lot of effort for not much payoff.

I have to say that considering that the vast majority of games actually animate sprites, to the point where even the first Super Mario game on the NES had walking sprites, this whole excuse of it being too much work doesn't really hold up in my opinion.

The only games where you see basic unanimated sprites like that are on really, really old games for DOS or the AMIGA and other similar systems.

The lack of walking animations really makes this game look cheap imo, and it hurts its overall visual presentation which otherwise look pretty good.

It looks very lazy and off-putting.

[Doesn't Learn From Mistakes]

Originally posted by Kappa Omicron:

Originally posted by Doesn't Learn From Mistakes:

Even a two-frame walk cycle for every NPC for four directions would octuple the number of sprites needed. That's a lot of effort for not much payoff.

I have to say that considering that the vast majority of games actually animate sprites, to the point where even the first Super Mario game on the NES had walking sprites, this whole excuse of it being too much work doesn't really hold up in my opinion.

The only games where you see basic unanimated sprites like that are on really, really old games for DOS or the AMIGA and other similar systems.

This isn't a team of devs from some corpo.

This is a single guy, one artist, and two spriters.

I went and did a rough count of all the 1x1 npcs in the spritesheet. About 468 at current count. With a two-frame walking cycle, multiplying that by 7 (four directions, two frames, assuming the current sprites can be used for one of the down-facing frames), that's 3276 additional sprites needed. The actual PCCs used by the player and the gods are a 4 frame walk cycle for a total of 16 sprites per character, so that'd be even more ludicrous if one were to stick to that standard. That's a lot of extra work for the nebulous and completely subjective benefit of not "looking cheap". Cost vs benefit, doesn't add up.

This is doubly so when the game is clearly targeted at people who've played Elona judging by the kickstarter demographics, and for whom the standing sprites are actually a plus as they harken back to the old game.

[DaWrench53]

You just get used to it.

[That Old Jake Guy]

Originally posted by Doesn't Learn From Mistakes:

Originally posted by Kappa Omicron:

I have to say that considering that the vast majority of games actually animate sprites, to the point where even the first Super Mario game on the NES had walking sprites, this whole excuse of it being too much work doesn't really hold up in my opinion.

The only games where you see basic unanimated sprites like that are on really, really old games for DOS or the AMIGA and other similar systems.

This isn't a team of devs from some corpo.

This is a single guy, one artist, and two spriters.

I went and did a rough count of all the 1x1 npcs in the spritesheet. About 468 at current count. With a two-frame walking cycle, multiplying that by 7 (four directions, two frames, assuming the current sprites can be used for one of the down-facing frames), that's 3276 additional sprites needed. The actual PCCs used by the player and the gods are a 4 frame walk cycle for a total of 16 sprites per character, so that'd be even more ludicrous if one were to stick to that standard. That's a lot of extra work for the nebulous and completely subjective benefit of not "looking cheap". Cost vs benefit, doesn't add up.

This is doubly so when the game is clearly targeted at people who've played Elona judging by the kickstarter demographics, and for whom the standing sprites are actually a plus as they harken back to the old game.

Cope

[Bussin Rot]

Originally posted by That Old Jake Guy:

Originally posted by Doesn't Learn From Mistakes:

This isn't a team of devs from some corpo.

This is a single guy, one artist, and two spriters.

I went and did a rough count of all the 1x1 npcs in the spritesheet. About 468 at current count. With a two-frame walking cycle, multiplying that by 7 (four directions, two frames, assuming the current sprites can be used for one of the down-facing frames), that's 3276 additional sprites needed. The actual PCCs used by the player and the gods are a 4 frame walk cycle for a total of 16 sprites per character, so that'd be even more ludicrous if one were to stick to that standard. That's a lot of extra work for the nebulous and completely subjective benefit of not "looking cheap". Cost vs benefit, doesn't add up.

This is doubly so when the game is clearly targeted at people who've played Elona judging by the kickstarter demographics, and for whom the standing sprites are actually a plus as they harken back to the old game.

Cope

Zoomer detected. Therefore your opinion is wrong by default

[Shark Food]

Originally posted by Kappa Omicron:

Originally posted by Doesn't Learn From Mistakes:

Even a two-frame walk cycle for every NPC for four directions would octuple the number of sprites needed. That's a lot of effort for not much payoff.

I have to say that considering that the vast majority of games actually animate sprites, to the point where even the first Super Mario game on the NES had walking sprites, this whole excuse of it being too much work doesn't really hold up in my opinion.

The only games where you see basic unanimated sprites like that are on really, really old games for DOS or the AMIGA and other similar systems.

The lack of walking animations really makes this game look cheap imo, and it hurts its overall visual presentation which otherwise look pretty good.

It looks very lazy and off-putting.

Are you trolling? What true rougelike you've played has walking animation? These are basically turn based games, enemies only move when YOU move and if they have more speed, the essentially teleport around you each action you take. There's no point of walking animation for this, that would slow down the game play to a crawl. Did you even play the first game or any games of this genre?

[Duex]

Originally posted by Shark Food:

Originally posted by Kappa Omicron:

I have to say that considering that the vast majority of games actually animate sprites, to the point where even the first Super Mario game on the NES had walking sprites, this whole excuse of it being too much work doesn't really hold up in my opinion.

The only games where you see basic unanimated sprites like that are on really, really old games for DOS or the AMIGA and other similar systems.

The lack of walking animations really makes this game look cheap imo, and it hurts its overall visual presentation which otherwise look pretty good.

It looks very lazy and off-putting.

Are you trolling? What true rougelike you've played has walking animation? These are basically turn based games, enemies only move when YOU move and if they have more speed, the essentially teleport around you each action you take. There's no point of walking animation for this, that would slow down the game play to a crawl. Did you even play the first game or any games of this genre?

Dungeons of dredmor for one

[Doesn't Learn From Mistakes]

Originally posted by Duex:

Dungeons of dredmor for one

Dredmor has walking animations for the player character only - same as here. All other NPCs have a simple animation cycle that has them jogging/oozing/floating on the spot forever and they teleport from tile to tile. So no.

Also, Dredmor has a much much much smaller selection of NPCs, with many different monsters just being recolours of each other. I would know, I was a pretty big Dredmor modder back in the day.