Seguso's Adventure Game Thread

Yeah, that’s a way to say it. But I would play on being selective. If you watch the Eleanor Rigby clip, you can see what I mean: the man is still, the smoke from his pipe moves. There’s a lot of contrasts like this in that clip, maybe one or two examples could be inspirational.
If you can make a whole game COMPLETELY still, ok. But it’s very rigid… and maybe limitating. I’d go for a stylised mood which gives me some ease of expression. Just my two cents.

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You have a (kindly hosted) development blog. You have a (kindly borrowed) community of fans who follow you and give advices. Just make a kickstarter campaign, and you’re done! :blush:
Oh, and don’t forget your old friends for the italian dubbing of your game.

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Would be nice, but unfortunately (or fortunately) I have a job… I wouldn’t be able to make promises and deadlines (even if I could get funded, which is very hard). Also, I would need to change the game radically to make it appealing to a big number of people… it would basically become a job, not recreation.

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Hey, seguso, have a look here:

Ahem, not exactly there… :yum: I mean overall the game, how backgrounds and animations work. Could it be a reference?

I think understand what you mean. For backgrounds, that could be feasible. It’s basically what I meant when I said to oscillate some parts of the background.

For cutscenes, though, this can’t be applied. I need to have complex dynamic scenes, with characters in precise poses, like the girl climbing the statue and painting moustaches on it. Or the girl entering Dracula’s bathroom and finding him on the toilet, and then he starts chasing you and swearing with his pants lowered. I am planning to make all this as comic book slides, with much less detail in the bg, but with the characters in more complex poses. I don’t see any other economically viable way. :slight_smile:

I forgot that we have a dedicated thread for Four Last Things.

Anyway if you go further in the gameplay video, you’ll see how the main character has to sit on a chair, or do other tasks that involve special animations. I also find animations in four last things similar to those you described, if you go to the 1:37 minute, as for the lady near the well. Or the joker dancing, which is basically done with only five frames (I’ve counted them :sweat_smile:).

As for the backgrounds, I also like that there are layers for the paintings, in order to let the main character go behind some elements, like trees or statues, thus giving more depth to the scene.

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the lady pulling the bucket on the well is a special case… he made the animation by stretching (or puppet warping) the original image. Also the joker dancing is made I think by mirroring and puppet-warping, not drawing.

Basically the author first looked at what painting he had, and then asked himself “how can I animate this by deforming some parts”? i.e., the animations are chosen subordinate to the painting. In my case, I can’t choose the animations, they are dictated by the story and puzzles (which I don’t want to constrain). So I’d have to draw many frames and poses. I mean, I can’t create a Dracula running while holding his pants up, by deforming a normal Dracula picture :).

How about this: I first finish the game without animations. Then I ask around for quotes for adding animations, and I’ll see how much it costs. I think I’ll have to sit down before reading the response, but why not? :slight_smile:

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Agreed :wink:

Or… you could learn a little bit of animation, still copying real objects, starting from comic book stripes (like here in fumetti pallosi), and then adding intermediate frames.

Or making a stop-motion cartoon, with less frames:

I could try… seems very hard though. If I had to animate, first I would try rotoscoping (I think that’s how it’s called), that is, I would ask a friend to run holding his pants up, make a film, and then draw over the frames. But putting the face in the right position and drawing the clothes would already be incredibly difficult to get right.

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“Fumetti pallosi” seems funny :slight_smile:

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One thing I like about anime that some people dislike, is that they’re not afraid to do panning shots without movement. That is, I like it when it’s a nice drawing like yours.

Btw, please don’t interpret this as supporting the “Go Animation!” camp since I’m neutral on the issue. :wink: But I have enjoyed games that simply did a fade between character standing and character sitting, or fade walking across the screen in two or three steps (i.e., with two or three different poses), although I can’t for the life of me think of which precise games these were.

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:joy:

Some work-in-progress portraits:

Olivia:
image

(when she solves a puzzle, she makes the clever face. Normally she looks dumber)

Frank Stallone:
image

The two protagonists together:
image

And you can guess who this is:
image

This one is Dracula’s caretaker:
image

Don’t ask if they are animated or I’ll freak out :slight_smile:

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Wait a minute…I don´t think that is Frank…

So are they, then? :grin:

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If you’re going to animate them yourself, certainly!

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Will do! In my head, cause I have fantasy!

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Good! you might have to do that for the rest of the game too! :sweat_smile:

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No problem! I´m already doing that for the imaginary game thought up by @PiecesOfKate!

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in what order do you suggest to watch them?

I am rewatching Duck Soup right now. A trick for @Guga: in VLC, I set speed 0.8x and it’s much easier to follow, as they speak rather quick.

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Any, they´re not connected in any way.

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