Weapon animation suggestions

[SharkD]

I have two suggestions vizaviz weapon animations:

1) Give the projectile its own animation. Currently, the projectile sprite is really the second frame of the explosion animation. I suggest it be given its own 8-frame animation--one frame for each direction, just like mecha.

2) Currently, there's only one projectile/explosion animation for all weapon types. I suggest that each damage type be given its own set of animations. This would make it easier for players to keep track of what is going on during combat.

[Joseph Hewitt]

I think this is a good idea. I'm not really sure about the implementation- at first I thought one sprite for ballistic weapons, another for missiles, and so on. However, ballistic weapons can include things like flamethrowers and flare guns. It may be better to have one default projectile image and to assign special images to certain weapons.

[SharkD]

Well, you could have them all point to the same file to start with, and then have them point elsewhere as we add animations--just as long as we have the ability to configure them when required.

I've completed several animations already, if you want to take a look at them. Off the top of my head I can think of animations for...

a) projectile guns
b) beam weapons
c) non-beam energy weapons (plasma maybe?)
d) missiles

e) energy/plasma explosions
f) firy, gasoline explosions
g) concussive, stun explosions
h) explosions with lots of shrapnel

[Phil Munoz]

for projectile guns, how about a default ball/bullet/slug looking thing?  for beam weapons, a short trailing beam.  The colour should be swappable, (maybe a tag for the colour can be placed on the ammo)

as for burst fire, maybe a cloud of bullets or a cloud of beams

missiles can be done similarly, i think.

[Francisco Munoz]

You should also create variations based on the BV used...
 with 1, 2, 3 and 4 (5 or + could use 4)

at least with missiles, if you plan to use images like the one with alpha channel posted on the forum.

[SharkD]

Quoting: Phil Munoz

for projectile guns, how about a default ball/bullet/slug looking thing? for beam weapons, a short trailing beam. The colour should be swappable, (maybe a tag for the colour can be placed on the ammo)

You can see some examples in the mock-up I made in the other thread. However, I only included the burst variants. Also, I'd planned on only making one sprite to cover all BV values [sic. not including the single-BV variant]. Maybe there's some trick that can be done in SDL where you clone and offset the single-BV image multiple times to generate the multi-BV sprite. Otherwise, I think only having one image for BV is ok.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: SharkD

Maybe there's some trick that can be done in SDL where you clone and offset the single-BV image multiple times to generate the multi-BV sprite.

The trick would just be to draw the image multiple times, with an offset determined by each image's index.

[SharkD]

Quoting: Phil Munoz

for projectile guns, how about a default ball/bullet/slug looking thing? for beam weapons, a short trailing beam. The colour should be swappable, (maybe a tag for the colour can be placed on the ammo)

Currently, for the ballistic weapons I have a tracer streak, which looks pretty good. I use the same, except green instead of orange, for non-beam energy weapons. I haven't made an animation for flamethrowers or beam weapons yet. I have a POV file for a flamethrower effect on my harddrive, which I'll see if I can adapt for our use. I'm not sure what to do with regard to beam weapons.