[spine] Only sideway animations - opinions/suggestions?

Game Play & Game Design
#1

Hello,

I’m working on a top down game and bought Spine around 2 weeks ago. I’ve completely forgotten about the fact I wouldn’t be able to animate walking animations for going up and down. Now, I have two questions:

  • Would you find it annoying that animation for walking is horizontal, but you are moving vertically?
  • Is there any solution using Spine that would make it look like it is actually moving forward and backward (swinging like the walking animation)?

If the only solution is to animate frame by frame, then I will only have sideway animations.

Sideway animation, just for context:

r_uApuxfzJ8

#2

Without a Z Axis you’d have to have some trickery. Can you scale bones in Spine2D?

#3

http://s33.postimg.org/es9sv49pr/spine_transform.png

This is the transform for Spine. I originally thought about using shear, but realized it doesn’t produce anything useful for me.

But, would you find it annoying/not polished enough if there were only sideway animations?

#4

Short answer, yes.

Depends on what your goal for this game is though.

Anyway, if you have scaling you can fake a forward/backward movement by making the arms and legs bigger and smaller.

#5

Hmm. I guess I could split legs and arms into more images attached to bones for front/backward animations and scale them.

Well, I’m looking to create a bomberman game that focuses more on the content in the game than the usual bomberman clones available. You, as a player, maybe wouldn’t mind it much if the content was rich. But, as I’ll try to also polish this game in every way, would you find it weird/annoying/not polished enough if sideway animations had swinging arms, but front/backward animations only seem to go forward-backward (no rotation in non-existant Z axis)?

I don’t know if this is overthinking, as my girlfriend usually says when I ask her things like these, but this game needs to be perfect. :stuck_out_tongue:

Ah, how I wish I have knowledge of 3d programming, but I guess there is always time for sequel in 3d. :smiley:

#6

Just do separate forward/backward models with their own animations and switch them accordingly?

#7

Look up a game called insaniquarium. Check out how they make fish turn different directions. I think its aesthetically appealing.