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Cool update [MENTION=15682]Volnaiskra[/MENTION] ! Platform AI is really messy, cool methods you outlined.
I was reading your old posts and was curious of that library you talked about in an earlier post, did you build that viewer or is it a thirdparty?
keep it up [MENTION=15682]Volnaiskra[/MENTION], you are an inspiration. I use your theme every day and often learn when you post stuff. You even convinced me to improve the icons for my own actives that store values hehe!
Hey,
looks like an amazing game to be honest!
just wanted to ask two things:
1) is the game based of DeltaTime?
2) any new news about the game 
Thanks.
No, I just use the "machine independent speed" setting. Delta Time has always been on my to do list, but to be honest, I may not need to do it because the machine independent speed seems to be perfectly adequate.
I don't use built-in timer or built-in movements for anything though (except for a few cosmetic things like background animations), because those can cause fluctuating results if your framerate is uneven, even with machine independent speed.
Nice, I always found DeltaTime too hard to do, like you have to make it work with some calculations as some other would just refuse to work with DeltaTime, also making the whole movement run on loops or it would literally skip positions making it skip obstacles on low FPS ( like under 10 ) which is horrible
The funny thing is all the built in movements utilize that without needing to worry about it at all, but we all know that at least 50% of them aren't usable or just won't fit the project use cases
Please login to see this link. seems to be down, is the game still in development?
Looks Amazing! Excellent Work!
Please login to see this link. seems to be down, is the game still in development?
I'm still working on the game all the time. All the structural and systemic stuff is finally getting close to completion. After that, I'll start churning out more front end stuff (levels, animation, etc,). Until that point, I've been consciously neglecting the social media presence and the website - to the point that I didn't even notice that it went down. Thanks for the heads up! I've fixed it now, though the URL has changed to Please login to see this link.
Programming on Spryke is (finally!!) just about done. There'll no doubt be a few more things to code here and there, but all the main systems - level editing, game progression, physics, AI, sound engine, UI, etc. - are built and working nicely together. That means that I can now move on to animation! So after a few years' break, I'm back working in Toom Boom Harmony, which is right up there with Fusion as one of my favourite software programs ever.
This week I've made a new enemy type - the Poker Eel:
Please login to see this picture.
Glad you have finally reached this point! I can see lots of effort put into this game from your posts over the years and it looks very promising, good luck!
Glad to hear it Vol
Lets get this game released :)!
Here's a new enemy I designed this week: the Emberfling:
Please login to see this picture.
Very cool! I'd love to know more about your art/animation workflow, even for things like special effects. They look very polished.
Very cool! I'd love to know more about your art/animation workflow, even for things like special effects. They look very polished.
Thanks! I love nothing more than talking about my workflows, so your wish is my command X)
I use Toon Boom Harmony for animation. It's expensive, but fantastic. It has the best vector tools of any program I've used: powerful, but much more fluid than Illustrator or Photoshop, in a way that encourages natural freehand drawing and sketching.
In addition to a frame-based timeline, it uses a node system, which can seem overwhelming at first but you quickly learn to love it because of how powerful and flexible it is. You use it to rig up your characters in way that lets the various parts interact with each other in lots of useful ways, in complex ways that wouldn't be possible with a top-to-bottom layer-based system alone. This enemy has hundreds of nodes. Even just the pink jelly 'bullet' has a lot:
Please login to see this picture.
It might look like a bird's nest of cables and rectangles, but it actually means that everything is kept super modular and non-destructive, which ultimately makes life easier.
This type of workflow is well suited to my skillset. I'm not a particularly gifted illustrator, so I can't just throw down some art and have it look amazing on the strength of the drawing alone. But where I shine is with my use of complexity and intricacy, and when I can experiment and iterate to test ideas and tweak them as I go. Toon Boom Harmony is great at this. I've set up my MFA to automatically import new PNGs for all key assets when it runs, so I can iterate frequently and test in-game almost instantly.
So have a look at the bullet in the below GIF. Each of the bullet's blue tendrils has its own nodes (those of one tendril are shown in the pink box, top-right). The light blue node is the actual tendril drawing. The topmost Peg node can control the movement of this drawing, as can the three bright green Bone nodes. Rotating one bone affects the others bones (like a shoulder > elbow > wrist hierarchy).
This tendril's nodes are themselves connected to the pink jelly's nodes elsewhere, which allows the tendril to move up and down in sync with the jelly, which you can see in the GIF.
You animate these movements on a timeline (bottom) using keyframes and automatic tweening. And you can fine-tune the easing with bezier curves (top-left).
Please login to see this picture.
You can include various effects and deformers as part of the node network. In the following GIF I isolate some of the nodes that were used to create the explosion effect:
Please login to see this picture.
Here's an example of a neat node called the Two-Point-Constraint. With it, you can place 2 simple pegs on a drawing, then as you move the pegs it automatically applies squash, stretch, and rotation to the drawing. Notice how each cheek can be independently squashed and stretched just by dragging a peg around. Also notice how the mouth has its own Two-Point-Constraint node which is informed by the bottom pegs of each cheek. So as you move one of the cheeks' pegs, not only does the cheek squash and stretch, but the mouth moves with it and squashes and stretches itself.
Please login to see this picture.
Here's my PokerEel rig, which uses a lot of deformers. Notice how when I deform the body, the flipper, frill and head all adjust accordingly. And notice that masks are applied in such a way that the bottom teeth are hidden by the upper jaw, while the upper teeth are hidden by the lower jaw
Please login to see this picture.
Apropos FX, I highly recommend the book Elemental Magic Volume 2 by Joseph Gilland. It's a great (non-technical) explainer of how things like splashes, waves, fire, and explosions work and how to animate them, by a real expert in the field.
Display MoreThanks! I love nothing more than talking about my workflows, so your wish is my command X)
I use Toon Boom Harmony for animation. It's expensive, but fantastic. It has the best vector tools of any program I've used: powerful, but much more fluid than Illustrator or Photoshop, in a way that encourages natural freehand drawing and sketching.
In addition to a frame-based timeline, it uses a node system, which can seem overwhelming at first but you quickly learn to love it because of how powerful and flexible it is. You use it to rig up your characters in way that lets the various parts interact with each other in lots of useful ways, in complex ways that wouldn't be possible with a top-to-bottom layer-based system alone. This enemy has hundreds of nodes. Even just the pink jelly 'bullet' has a lot:
Please login to see this picture.
It might look like a bird's nest of cables and rectangles, but it actually means that everything is kept super modular and non-destructive, which ultimately makes life easier.
This type of workflow is well suited to my skillset. I'm not a particularly gifted illustrator, so I can't just throw down some art and have it look amazing on the strength of the drawing alone. But where I shine is with my use of complexity and intricacy, and when I can experiment and iterate to test ideas and tweak them as I go. Toon Boom Harmony is great at this. I've set up my MFA to automatically import new PNGs for all key assets when it runs, so I can iterate frequently and test in-game almost instantly.
So have a look at the bullet in the below GIF. Each of the bullet's blue tendrils has its own nodes (those of one tendril are shown in the pink box, top-right). The light blue node is the actual tendril drawing. The topmost Peg node can control the movement of this drawing, as can the three bright green Bone nodes. Rotating one bone affects the others bones (like a shoulder > elbow > wrist hierarchy).
This tendril's nodes are themselves connected to the pink jelly's nodes elsewhere, which allows the tendril to move up and down in sync with the jelly, which you can see in the GIF.
You animate these movements on a timeline (bottom) using keyframes and automatic tweening. And you can fine-tune the easing with bezier curves (top-left).
Please login to see this picture.
You can include various effects and deformers as part of the node network. In the following GIF I isolate some of the nodes that were used to create the explosion effect:
Please login to see this picture.
Here's an example of a neat node called the Two-Point-Constraint. With it, you can place 2 simple pegs on a drawing, then as you move the pegs it automatically applies squash, stretch, and rotation to the drawing. Notice how each cheek can be independently squashed and stretched just by dragging a peg around. Also notice how the mouth has its own Two-Point-Constraint node which is informed by the bottom pegs of each cheek. So as you move one of the cheeks' pegs, not only does the cheek squash and stretch, but the mouth moves with it and squashes and stretches itself.
Please login to see this picture.
Here's my PokerEel rig, which uses a lot of deformers. Notice how when I deform the body, the flipper, frill and head all adjust accordingly. And notice that masks are applied in such a way that the bottom teeth are hidden by the upper jaw, while the upper teeth are hidden by the lower jaw
Please login to see this picture.
Apropos FX, I highly recommend the book Elemental Magic Volume 2 by Joseph Gilland. It's a great (non-technical) explainer of how things like splashes, waves, fire, and explosions work and how to animate them, by a real expert in the field.
Looks amazing and really looking forward to Spryke and happy it is still progressing. You are really great with explaining your workflow and methods and it is really interesting to follow it. After you are done with Spryke maybe you should consider writing a book about the development of the game and all your methods. It would be an interesting read. Something like Spelunky by derek yu
Here's an example of a neat node called the Two-Point-Constraint. With it, you can place 2 simple pegs on a drawing, then as you move the pegs it automatically applies squash, stretch, and rotation to the drawing. Notice how each cheek can be independently squashed and stretched just by dragging a peg around. Also notice how the mouth has its own Two-Point-Constraint node which is informed by the bottom pegs of each cheek. So as you move one of the cheeks' pegs, not only does the cheek squash and stretch, but the mouth moves with it and squashes and stretches itself.
Please login to see this picture.
When making this GIF, I exaggeratedly moved the pegs around just to make the feature obvious to see. As a result, I ended up with a 'longer' face than I'd ever used in the actual animation, but I actually liked how goofy and dumb this expression looks. So I've updated the in-game animation to give the critter this expression just after the moment it shoots. I think it adds a nice bit of extra character for such a quick change:
Please login to see this picture.
When making this GIF, I exaggeratedly moved the pegs around just to make the feature obvious to see. As a result, I ended up with a 'longer' face than I'd ever used in the actual animation, but I actually liked how goofy and dumb this expression looks. So I've updated the in-game animation to give the critter this expression just after the moment it shoots. I think it adds a nice bit of extra character for such a quick change:
Please login to see this picture.
Those Bezier tools look like a great fit for Spryke, gives a jelly bone effect that you'd expect from underwater creatures.
Have you come close to fusions RAM limit?
No, I haven't hit it yet. I used to come very close to it a few years ago, but that made me optimise many things since then, plus the 2.5+DLC optimisations helped a lot. So far the RAM usage is about 800MB, and slowly creeps up from there if I keep loading new levels in new worlds, as it's a single-frame engine. Currently if I load most of the levels I have available one after the other, I can get it to about 1.35GB. I would hope that Fusion eventually purges the content from previously-destroyed objects. If not, I guess I'll have to forcibly exit and reload the frame from time to time to properly purge everything, which should bring the RAM back to ~800MB.
This is a little embarrassing but how do one check how much RAM ones game takes up?
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