Animated sprites.

[kinougames]

We're all familiar with sprites that change pose and appear to move, as well as lip flaps and blinking.

What I'm talking about is not too far removed from that, but definitely something with lip flaps, eye movements, maybe some basic arm movements. Maximum the animation loop would be about 5 seconds.

My group did a tiny, for fun test with a sprite. It's a loop animation done in flash on a whim by one of our Riku-loving ladies. xD

What are your feelings on stuff like that?

[Morhighan]

Just look at that face. I can eat him, right? Totally Mako-colored eyes, too.

I really like it, it brings the character to life. I'd love to see more.

[Raijenki]

I'd feel weird playing a Visual Novel with "animated" characters.

[kinougames]

Why's that?

[papillon]

You've looked at the Shira Oka demo, right? They have a certain amount of animation... There was also a discussion on a game using 3d magics to make characters animate slightly.

I suspect it's a hard thing to pull off well. Making body parts move draws attention to them when they're not moving, and how realistic that movement is, and can make the rest of the body look strange if it's not also shifting. To get a really good effect on movements larger than lipflap/blink you'd need to time it precisely to the dialog, and doing that throughout the game is an impressive undertaking. It might be more manageable to do animations for special-CG-moments only?

[kinougames]

I have seen the Shira Oka demo, and I actually thought the sprite movements came off a bit awkwardly.

We're definitely not attempting FULLY animated sprites (since yes, as you said, the movements a person can make without their body shifting are indeed small), but for smaller things it might be something to look at in the diiiistant future.

Doing it for CGs is definitely another great idea, though.

As far as timing it to the dialogue, I suspect it won't be much different than programming sprite movements over all, at least, it's not for our engine.

[Abeiramar]

I'm animating the sprites of my visual novel too. Just eye blinking and lip flapping. So far it looks A-ok .
I recommend you to animate your sprites too, it makes the characters look more lively! However, don't make the characters blink repeatably in a short amount of time (like in this image), make it slower, like 4 or 5 seconds .

[kinougames]

Well, the entire loop is only 5 seconds in this picture, but I'm not sure the time it'll take will be worth it, at this point.

We'll put some animation in, just not for the massive amounts of sprites we're gonna need. xD

I'll totally be interested in seeing yours, though!

[machinist]

theres this free japanese doujin game called Machi de Uwasa no Hakushaku-sama
and i like the eye blinking on that one...

chaos;head did real nice job doing mouth animation as well..

i thought whole breathing animation at hakuoki ps3 looked a bit weird though

[LordShiranai]

I think what you have right now looks great. I'm not sure how elaborate you were thinking of making it in the final phase. I guess if it is too animated it could become a distraction, but i don't think blinking and minor hand gestures would be bad.

[kinougames]

@mechnist
"The Rumored Count about Town"? HILARIOUS name for a game xD

@LordShiranai
We just wanted thoughts on it. I'm almost 1000% sure that doing this isn't possible for us for this game due to time restrictions, but we'll probably put a lot of time into small chunks of animation. That will be special.

[fortaat]

If we're already talking about animation - what's your thoughts on animated backgrounds?
I might add limited background animation to my game. Nothing too fancy, just some light effects, and simple moving objects (cars, clouds, elevators).
Will it help the game, or accentuate that everything else isn't animated?

As for character animation - I don't really like it, as the most you can do without taking heaps of extra work is limited eye movement.
I feel the same for BG animation, which is why I need some input on the subject.

[Raijenki]

If we're already talking about animation - what's your thoughts on animated backgrounds?

Animated bg would make sense if they were RANDOM. Having a car passing on your screen at exactly each 5 seconds is retard. I'd just delete the Visual Novel.

[LordShiranai]

If we're already talking about animation - what's your thoughts on animated backgrounds?
I might add limited background animation to my game. Nothing too fancy, just some light effects, and simple moving objects (cars, clouds, elevators).
Will it help the game, or accentuate that everything else isn't animated?

I might be careful about it for the reason you mention. Minor things such as lighting effects will probably look good. However, if there are large, incidental background elements that are heavily animated while the character is not, then it may end up looking a bit jarring/distracting. There are probably times where it is appropriate, and times where it is not.

Animated bg would make sense if they were RANDOM. Having a car passing on your screen at exactly each 5 seconds is retard. I'd just delete the Visual Novel.

Yeah, it would probably also need to look believable, which may need randomization as mentioned depending on what you were doing. Somethings it would work for to have the same object come by at a fixed rate (say, an assembly line), where other things would be weird (like the same car flying by over and over again). Though, I probably wouldn't stop playing a VN over it.

[kinougames]

@Raijenki

What you're talking about is not really hard to program with a few tricks.

@fortaat

I actually LOVE the idea of moving backgrounds to a point.

I think that as long as you don't have a part loop for eternity (like maybe only have the animation run for a few clicks of the mouse) it'll draw just enough attention that people will think it's a cool addition, but not make them roll their eyes. (And you could make an option in the beginning to turn them on and off.)

As far as the work involved, we're not using Ren'py, so I can't say about Ren'py, but there are plenty of ways to cheat on it and get a similar effect. xD The first one is making sure it's drawn in a way that doesn't interfere with other things that happen in the game.