Fate of Io: Current mechanics

Current mechanics

2002/12/12 11:20:58 PST by Black Squall [0/5]

3der, those are some really good points, but I think that our span for time of this game is still a little ways out. You have to look at the whole picture and realise how much we have left to do. There's no script, no scripted events. We have a general idea due to the 4 chapters, but we also have to look at everything else that were going to have. If we're going to script ALL of the NPC's it could be very time svaing to have lots of the inimportant one's say something "....", "I don't know you. Leave me alobe.", or "howdy." That could be pretty pathetic having 90% of the NPC's in the game say the same 3 things over again. We also only have an official design for 3 of our main characters.

There's lot's of little shortcut's that we can do to save time with the final product, but I don't think that one of them is having 5 or 6 Syne's in every town that are characters stop at.

2003/02/04 18:26:14 PST by Dev [manager]

Everyone note that current gameplay proposal has been slightly amended to reflect my recent decision: FoI will move forward as a 2D RPG development project.

We've already talked about quite a few pros and cons of both alternatives (2D or 3D) and I thank everyone for their opinion and enthusiasm given to this decision. As always, you can IM me or e-mail me or something to ask questions if you have them, or just talk about the 2D choice.

Or you could continue to argue on in this thread, though it'd be a somewhat mood point. ;D

2003/02/05 02:51:21 PST by mystik3eb [0/43]

Even after only reading that one changed paragraph, I'm already excited about the 2D change. For some reason, I always remembered being really attracted to games (RPGs, really) that implemented anime-like styles (or characters who looked that cool) in them, but that's me. Like, for example, I immediately thought the look of Chrono Trigger was more beautiful than any other game, including FF6, SoM, Tales of Phantasia, etc. It just looked...awesome, like the characters were more "real" (since anime has a way of doing that somehow...for me, anyway).

I go for the isometric deal. Course, I would hope that our environment wwould look detailed and quality even comapred to the purity and cleanliness (for lack of better terms) of the animated characters. Not like BoF3, Xenogears, FF Tactics (kinda) or others like that.

2003/02/11 01:36:05 PST by 3Der [0/7]

Sounds good to me. I redid Ko's hair,textured and rigged him,and was half done modeling brooke when my harddrive crashed and lost everything>_<. And since i dont feel like remaking them Im glad were going 2D.:)

2003/05/19 14:39:15 PDT by TheGreatJohnzo [0/11]

I was just thinking.... Most 2-d characters arn't all that detailed. Probably because it's harder to animate a high detailed character from all 8 sides (or 4 if you cheat). So how are we going to translate the current art to gameplay art? The current drawings we have are great, and I would hate to see them changed but, I imagine it would take a while for someone to draw a pic for every frame of animation for a character. Plus if we decide to have a high frame rate, wouldn't the be more work for the artist's / animators?

Thoughts, answers, cheap abuse?

2003/05/19 19:46:52 PDT by Temporal [manager]

Doesn't an animated movie or TV show usually involve at least 15 such drawings per second? :P I think the artists will be able to crank out the necessary images, once the designs are finalized and all.

2003/05/19 20:31:17 PDT by mystik3eb [0/43]

You know some of those pics that they have at car websites where you can circle around something and see it from all views? You know those little figurines that Disney uses for their characters so the artists can see the character from all perspectives? I'm making that connection. I think we should be capable of that. And often, I like 2D graphics better than real life, and most the time more than 3d. Anyways...ok.

2003/05/20 03:35:42 PDT by Morpheus [0/5]

I do beleive 12 FPS is what tends to be used (correct me if I'm wrong, cus I'm not 100% sure). But I think our animators and artists are capable.

2003/05/20 07:32:39 PDT by TheGreatJohnzo [0/11]

Macromedia flash uses 12fps as its default, I think tv cartoons and such run at 24-30fps. Live action is higher too I think mebbe 36. Read it in a my flash5 book one time. I'll double check later.

Anyway, I just wasn't sure if everyone knew how many drawings were needed for the whole shehbazz. Coolness...

2005/05/19 05:49:54 PDT by BioKupo [0/0]

technically 24fps is it for tv etc

cos thats whats broadcast, but thats different in each region. (NTSC and PAL)

2005/05/26 07:04:25 PDT by Bahamut ONE [0/4]

animation is 24 fps, tv is 25, the human eye can only see 10 images per second tho, so as long as the frame rate is above that it'ld look "animated". (that was probably the most useful fact of the day XD). Don't know how it'ld turn out if you directly incorporate the drawings into the game... the best thing would probably be to model the craracters and then turn them to sprites, bleh, I don't know...

2005/05/26 12:55:45 PDT by Temporal [manager]

The human eye can tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps. I once saw a demo showing a 30fps and a 60fps version of an animation side-by-side, and the difference was quite clearly visible. Of course, creating 60fps sprites would be unreasonable. However, if we go 3D, this is a non-issue.

2005/05/27 18:44:26 PDT by Morpheus [0/5]

Yeah, and even if we have to choose and FPS, as long as it is reasonable and constant it should look fine.

1 post deleted.

2005/05/31 18:32:19 PDT by Captain Vimes [0/13]

I have to interject that if we're doing 2D that the basic sprites for characters usually clock in at about maybe 4 pictures per if you're standing still, and maybe a series of 4 images for attacking.

It's not really an issue about fps, but rather about the number of images for one animation (Say, 2 as opposed to 6 walking images.) that would be necessary to prove it smooth

Even if we were going for larger sprites, say, in the 100x300 range we still wouldn't need 10 pictures for one action. I've seen an example (The White Chamber) where they incorporated the larger sprite version and made do with a low amount of pictures, roughly 6 for walking. Granted, they probably were animating at 12 frames per second, but the fact is that it looked smooth with six. Or passable, anyway.

See, it's probably true that the human eye can see only 10 images per second, but even if we lower that (say, breathing animations) we could get away with only 4. Of course, that'd depend on the complexity of the base sprite, since a 100x300 would require more frames to look smooth.

Long-winded blithering aside, I think that unless we were going for larger 2D sprites, we probably would not need to go above 10 frames for one action.

If we even approach 20 images for one action (spread across all of our characters), I think our artists would probably bail out on us.

2005/05/31 20:10:29 PDT by BioKupo [0/0]

it all depends on how in depth the sprites are.

I personally want to go 3d, in which case this is a moot point :p