Nov 12, 2017
Continuous improvement
Hey guys, it’s been a while. I’ve been working on Rick (one of our 3 heroes), giving him new moves, redrawing a few old moves from scratch, and improving all of his animations.
So you can see how much Rick has evolved over time, here’s Rick very first sprite from early March 2016, next to his current sprite from November 2017.
It’s not just about looks, as his gameplay has evolved similarly. We’ve been polishing his combo, jumps, grab attacks and other movements to make them as natural and responsive as possible.
Earlier this year, when I talked about improving Rick’s design, I mentioned he had a total of 84 frames. He now has 127, and this number is still going up. It’s hard work to make sure each frame has a consistent style and quality level, but it has to be done, and it’s especially important for main characters.
A few months ago, I mentioned we now have a free-form combo system. Here’s what all of Rick’s combo attacks look like at the moment:
The first kick might look a bit weird, because Rick is actually supposed to hop forward while performing it. It’ll look better in game.
I still have a few more animations to draw for Rick before I’m done with him. Thankfully, enemies require much less work than playable characters (each of them have like 30 frames or so), so things will hopefully go faster later on.
Ta-ta for now!
