Desolate Echo – Week 8

So, here we are.
The final week. The final post.
Alright, here we go.
This week I would like to present the bane of my existence, the death animation for the Prowler. It looks like this:
Eight separate animations that need to follow the same general movement while still looking like the body parts have weight and momentum? Sure, I didn’t need to sleep anyway.
Boy, did I bite off more than I could chew. I understand now why so many enemies explode in games that […]

Desolate Echo – Week 7

So, I’ve been working on an animation for an energy shield for the hovercraft, specifically when the shield is recharged and re-activated again after being depleted by an enemy’s attack.
This is what I ended up with:
(and it’s looking pretty cool if I may say so myself)
A slow flash followed by softly flickering panels
I used GraphicsGale as usual, as the ability to create layers with opacity really is a big help in making this kind of transparent shield.
Design-wise I went with a bubble […]

Desolate Echo – Week 6

This week I worked on some animations for the Spyderling – one of the enemies in the game – and specifically on its death animation. I am really satisfied with the result.
A more crystalline creature
A creature of flesh and blood
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
When we first conceptualized the spyderlings, we envisioned them to be either creatures made up in part of crystals or to be creatures that had crystals growing on/into them.
This affected the death animation, as we would have to decide whether to have […]

Desolate Echo – Week 5

So, for this week I present an attacking Prowler, one of the hostile creatures found in the caverns of Echo Six.
It looks like this:
Prowler and hovercraft comparison

 
 
 
 
 
 
As usual, I used GraphicsGale for this. The animation is 16 frames long and each frame consists of four separate animations: the arms, wings, head and body (this is the order in which I animated them). The animation is only played when the Prowler comes within a certain range from the player.
I began with the […]

Desolate Echo – Week 4

This week I’ve been working with Victor Kristiansson on a re-design of the sprite of our player avatar.
(note that only the hull will be addressed in this post, as the turret is a separate entity)
Original sprite
New sprite
The original sprite received some feedback saying that it looked “too box-like”  or “like a screw”, and needed to look more “like a hovercraft”. So how would we achieve that?
First off, the hovercraft is designed mainly for mining metals and minerals deep underground, where monsters and […]

Desolate Echo – Week 3

This week I’ve been working on some art and animation for our game, Desolate Echo (subject to change). We’re going to have a giant crystal-encrusted, spider-like boss that can perform various types of attacks, the most common being swipes and stabs with its front legs.
One of the artifacts that I’ve been working on this week is an animation for one of the stabs. So far it looks like this:

This is the “praparation-for-attack” animation that will give the player some time […]