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Author Topic: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!  (Read 10153 times)

mikejkelley

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Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« on: December 26, 2012, 08:16:15 PM »
Hi everybody!

I thought I'd introduce myself and my game Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots! Here's some of the art so far;




From some of the comments I've seen it seems 2DTK is the way to go when making sprite based games using playmaker. Any tutorials on this?

I've just discovered Playmaker and decided it's the way to go. So far, with just about 0 programming experience, I've been able to set up a scene where the player clicks where they want Yoshimi to dash to. To accomplish this I set up a bunch of invisible tile meshes and used mouse pick and move to actions. Soon I'll need to figure out how to restrict her movement in 4 directions and how to match the animation length to her movement. As lacking as my programming skills are, I expect to be a permanent resident of the help section. Visit me there, won't you? Thanks!

shinodan

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2012, 06:12:32 AM »
I hate people who are awesome at art, those sprites are top notch!

mikejkelley

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #2 on: December 30, 2012, 03:45:26 PM »
Thanks! If it makes you feel any better, I "cheated" by rendering the sprites.  ;)

Here's an updated version of the bajaBaht!



I worked for weeks just assembling the reference materials to make sure everything, even individual engine parts, were highly accurate. This is still WIP, it needs additional rigging and wiring. It's also lacking the rocket launcher which will be remedied shortly!

digimbyte

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2013, 06:43:01 AM »
that's an abomination

what not to do when making a 'sprite' game, you'd probably be better making it as a 2.5D game
with the real models (lowered poly count)

maybe look real sprite games and learn from them...
an animated gif doesnt mean its the right way...

sorry for being so critical, but someone has too

kiriri

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #4 on: January 03, 2013, 07:01:56 AM »
what not to do when making a 'sprite' game, you'd probably be better making it as a 2.5D game
with the real models (lowered poly count)
Care to elaborate?
I know of a lot of games that use rendered 3D models. It has even become commom practice in modern western cartoon films. And if it looks great, why shouldn't he use his rendered sprites? Real models would look edgy, take more performance and need a lot of work to make the textures look good from all sides. IN sprites this can all be done by an optimized shot with a line renderer.
Best,
Sven

jeanfabre

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #5 on: January 03, 2013, 07:07:51 AM »
Hi,

@digimByte: Not sure that it's such a a clear cut case. Making sprite animation based on pre made renders has some exceptional benefits that 2.5D games with real low poly will never be able to come close in terms of visual quality.

--  total freedom of rendering quality ( you don't rely on Unity rendering engine for materials, shadows and effects)
-- No aliasing of meshes for the various parts
-- Totally awesome outlines, that are simply impossible to get using shaders.
-- Less drawcalls, meaning exceptional performances on mobile.

With sprites, you can basically achieve incredible visuals. Yes it's very limited in terms of "3d" movements and freedom, but if done well, it will work just fine for the purpose of the game.

I have built a ipad application some time ago relying heavily on pre rendering sprites, and while I agree this is a lot more complex, expensive and difficult to handle, the result is something that would be impossible to achieve with just the Unity rendering engine, simply impossible. This app runs perfectly on iPad first generation ( a real challenge indeed)

http://www.kakimediadesign.com/2011/05/applis-ipad-cfm/

00:14 -- this is a real mesh: we struggled for days to compromise on the accuracy, rendering, ipad perfs, etc etc for a mediocre result in the end really... It can get a lot better, but at what cost really and for what benefit.

00:27 -- sprite based set of anims composed together to allow for some dynamics. Perfect blend between the purpose of the page and the visual quality, this type of render can not be achieved with Unity rendering engine ( no shadows, no smooth material shader lighting, etc etc). And with some clever coding ( ;D )  it can still be very interactive indeed :)

00:49 -- This engine is sprite based rendering in hd, the engine is all there with incredible details, difficult to implement because of memory issues, but visually stunning.

So it's really a matter of requirements, if the viewpoing over a model allow for sprites, you will get better results, else you will have to compromise on rendering and accuracy of the model to allow for real time rendering.

Bye,

 Jean

digimbyte

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #6 on: January 03, 2013, 10:15:27 AM »
sprites arnt typically 512x512 larger unless its a scenery piece, most common sprites that are animates follow strict guide lines to develop a clean spreadsheet and making them all unison
there are reasons for those guide lines

rendering full 3D to sprites isn't bad, but it has to be done right, take CnC for example
the problem with these sprites is that they are way to large, follow no form of consistency and above else consume a large portion of MB

a 3D model would be about 50-200kb, animations 20-40kb each when compiled
2D sprites that follow a formula (rendered or hand made) have set builds and construction, some break that mold and do special animations and even then, they break it up

an  example would be that last sprite of the 360 rotation, that was 9MB, for a simple rotation
and on top of that, its animated poorly, not giving a clean rotation


and a final thing about rendering - even if its a 2D sprite it will always be rendered using unity and its shaders as anything will be rendered in 3D space, even the GUI has a render pass

so in theory its a nice idea, but the truth is, its a heavy load on space and ram and it sacrifices flexibility for nothing
« Last Edit: January 03, 2013, 10:18:33 AM by digimbyte »

jeanfabre

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #7 on: January 03, 2013, 01:00:50 PM »
Ahh, I think I see.

You may think that the media he's sending on this thread are actually the media that are going to go in the game. I doubt it really, I think it's just to show the model on this forum, I doubt these animations will be used as is in the game, if so, yes, it will quickly get problematic.

With the very optimized 2d framework that are available now for Unity, you only need one or two draw call for your 2d even for many different sprites spread around the screen, something that is not possible to achieve with normal meshes, even with mesh combinations tricks, and the shaders used for 2d sprite are far more optimized ( actually aggressively optimised for mobile performances) then shaders used on meshes to achieve all the lighting effects, texturing reflections, etc etc.

 As far as memory, as long as it doesn't reach memory warnings, you can load it up just fine without any performance issues or texture size limitations ( within the platform permitted limit of course: the app shown on my last post use many 2048*2048 textures atlases uncompressed just fine), in total, I just checked, I have 50Mb on disk of png atlases for one of them app. IOS ( I don't know about android) handle this very well, as long as you properly release your textures between scenes and all that. Unity is a bit more of a struggle on that matter and requires some tricks to properly unload textures from scenes to scenes.
So when you design apps using sprites, always check the profiler and watch for memory warning fired by IOS, this is the limit not to go over. If it fires once, it will crash on users devices, so during tests, it must never fire, not once, then you can release in peace.

bye,

 Jean

Spiffy664

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #8 on: January 03, 2013, 11:38:52 PM »
3D vs 2D pre rendered sprites all comes down to a stylistic choice as a game designer, as well as the needs of the game design. An animated, pre-rendered sprite character is exceptionally cheap computationally on mobile platforms versus a rigged, bone animation for a 3D mesh. Going full 3D is also extremely time consuming, and a waste of effort for any game with a fixed perspective (isometric, top down, side view, etc.) - the only advantage you get is true parallaxing, which can be faked in 2D sprites anyway.

The outcome of the final animation quality, and the style of the sprites, has everything to do with the artists ability to achieve the results in their preferred 3D package, texturing skills, etc. It has nothing to do with the technical process.

As a game designer, what process should you use? Whatever works best for your needs. That is all.


On Topic:

excellent art!

mikejkelley

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #9 on: August 25, 2013, 04:40:49 AM »
Thanks! Been awhile. Here's some promotional artwork I've been working on.



WIP. Fuller image here:
http://www.nickelcitypixels.com/yoshimiBeautyRenderB&W.jpg

Unfort, I have trouble w/ colors, so I'll prolly end up wrecking it from here on out.

Mayhem

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2013, 09:31:15 AM »
Is the game inspired by the song of the Flaming Lips? :D
Looking great!

mikejkelley

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #11 on: August 27, 2013, 12:48:03 AM »
Thanks! Lol, yeah, I got into a pseudo-argument w/ a youtube commenter who claimed the song was about a girl fighting cancer and I was like, "nuh-uh, it's about a girl fighting robots, it's right there in the title!" So, this is a very literal interpretation.

NinjaX

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #12 on: September 18, 2013, 05:24:48 PM »
It looks really great dude! I also used 3D models to make my sprites for my "FISH STAR" game which you can play on kongerete... Anyways looks great! :D
XCO is the ULTIMATE IOS Ninja, Beware for he sees Everything and Nothing all at once!

mikejkelley

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Re: Yoshimi Vs. Face Punching Robots!
« Reply #13 on: June 15, 2014, 08:34:01 PM »
http://nickelcitypixels.com/yoshimiVsRedacted.jpg

Here's the colorized version, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out but might revisit it later to give her a less ambiguous expression.

I recently had a publisher express interest in the game but I don't have a suitable demo to show yet. :( I will recapture this opportunity soon.