Design Ideas on object / sprite visual modifiers?

[Timze]

Been curious about this for a while and entertaining the idea in mind...
Lets say you have a character which has a poison attack. which will C_Green every enemy it collides with. Would this be too demanding, i've read somewhere that GMS2 will store a C_green sprite for every enemy or player object.

Found myself thinking about the old Mortal Kombat Trilogy game which had a fairly large roster for the time. Where your fatalities had babalities, animalities, and even just the main finishers. Would one have to draw all of those extra assets, when any player or enemy object is attacked with that fatality/animality & in turn would that hog up memory in game? or can some trickery be used to modify the sprite in GMS2, say cutting the head off each sprite and store head coordinates in an array to access?

If we go a little more efficient on memory and say... have our player toss out a lasso which wraps around the enemy objects, then throws the enemy up in the air and slams them into the ground something like that could probably be done with referring to the enemy as a parent object then messing with the x and y values, hspd, vspd gravity while the enemy object is colliding with your lasso? If we simplify even more could a certain attack just send the enemy object into the air and back down, like a little pop up?
or even a sprite inversion

I may have terminology wrong on this one (attack modifier) but i'd like to hear your approach or ideas on implementing attacks which will modify enemy objects. (Whether that's their X and Y positioning, bounce effect, unique death animation, modifying the sprite, whatever)
Share your ideas if you like

 

[Famine]

Well, I worked on similar games that have had same concepts. For example, Age of Conan. We had various fatalities depending on weapons used. Take a peek on YouTube, I'm sure you can find a reel of them all together. But ideally, yeah, need different animations for each fatality.

http://ageofconan.ytmnd.com/

(Link is my former Boss talking about fatalities.)

On another similar note with multi-user dungeons (MUD), which is a text-based online multiplayer game. Having weapon flags was extremely common. This is where you would have flaming, poison, disease, lightning, frost, and even sharp and vorpal flags. Even though this is text based, you would still have to add those bits to the objects as well additional flavor text to give feedback to both parties the flag is working. In the graphic engine space, that would be some type of visual effect that would show on the weapon when it's being carried as well another visual effect when it strikes either for a hit or a miss. Maybe different ones depending on hit or miss.

In a sense though, you would not want these to modify the existing damage type of the weapon. You want it to be an extra attack and or some type of additional affect on the target. For example, poison flags on weapons are not doing extra damage to the target when it hits. It's actually debuffing the target with a negative modifier to their strength that stacks which each successful hit. For the disease, it's negative modifier for dexterity and for frost it's negative for armor/ac and lightning it was a flee_daze effect to prevent the enemies from running away so easy.

Damage types on that note were set on the default weapon. So, you would have a sword that does slashing damage with a flaming flag that simply fire_blinds the target. The damage is still slashing, but the weapon flag debuffs the target by blinding them for a round or two.

Hope that helps!

 

[Timze]

Well, I worked on similar games that have had same concepts. For example, Age of Conan. We had various fatalities depending on weapons used. Take a peek on YouTube, I'm sure you can find a reel of them all together. But ideally, yeah, need different animations for each fatality.

http://ageofconan.ytmnd.com/

(Link is my former Boss talking about fatalities.)

On another similar note with multi-user dungeons (MUD), which is a text-based online multiplayer game. Having weapon flags was extremely common. This is where you would have flaming, poison, disease, lightning, frost, and even sharp and vorpal flags. Even though this is text based, you would still have to add those bits to the objects as well additional flavor text to give feedback to both parties the flag is working. In the graphic engine space, that would be some type of visual effect that would show on the weapon when it's being carried as well another visual effect when it strikes either for a hit or a miss. Maybe different ones depending on hit or miss.

In a sense though, you would not want these to modify the existing damage type of the weapon. You want it to be an extra attack and or some type of additional affect on the target. For example, poison flags on weapons are not doing extra damage to the target when it hits. It's actually debuffing the target with a negative modifier to their strength that stacks which each successful hit. For the disease, it's negative modifier for dexterity and for frost it's negative for armor/ac and lightning it was a flee_daze effect to prevent the enemies from running away so easy.

Damage types on that note were set on the default weapon. So, you would have a sword that does slashing damage with a flaming flag that simply fire_blinds the target. The damage is still slashing, but the weapon flag debuffs the target by blinding them for a round or two.

Hope that helps!

Impressive accolades you got and nice to see the implementations. I guess since most of the characters were human it was probably easier to work in the severed limbs outside of skin tone matching?

Been looking into this a little more and if one gets creative can avoid having to draw and animate all those extra assets. (Currently developing a 2d game solo but it has a lot of enemies) Added a classic example in the original post (Sabin train suplex) but also one could cast a black hole spell for example creating an obj_blackhole over the enemy with some transparency or under without transparency and then manipulate the height and width of the enemy sprite if it's colliding with the black hole, for a short duration. To give it a space-bending visual. But i wonder if those adjustments would be stored in new sprites within the games memory. Since nothing has to be redrawn and it's just manipulating the object sprite for a short period of time should be fine i think....

Aside from manipulating hspd vspd, x and y axis, size and color is there anything else that can be done without having to draw assets for every enemy or player object?

 

[Yal]

@Famine has a great point in bringing up elemental weapon flags... you can get a lot more mileage out of limited resources if you can combine them, if you have enough independent variables you start getting an exponential explosion effect where you have millions of possible combinations and every new thing you add can have thousands of new combinations that all feel different. For instance, to keep going with the weapon flags idea, you could have weapons be either swords, axes, or spears, each which comes in 3 different sizes (small tool repurposed for battle, ordinary weapon, and two-handed ridiculous anime weapon), may have one elemental effect (fire, ice, thunder or dark) and one other effect (such as blocking attacks better, being slower but more powerful because it's made from a heavier metal, etc), and then you could texture it with one of 5 material textures (wood, bronze, iron, steel and silver) which also affects its price, weight and power. And finally you could have them potentially be inlaid with gemstones that alter them in some other way, or whatever.

But from the core properties alone, we get 3 x 3 x 4 x 3 x 5 combinations, which is some 500 different weapons. You could use the same attack animations for each weapon type, the same idle animations for each size (since the big weapons need to be held in both hands when you idle and you'll hold the tool weapon more awkwardly), the same glow effects for each element (just color the attack particles according to the element and spawn a flame when you hit with fire weapons etc), and so on, the same material texture for all types, and so on. You save a lot of work in the end if you make content reusable and combine-able like this.

 

[Timze]

@Famine has a great point in bringing up elemental weapon flags... you can get a lot more mileage out of limited resources if you can combine them, if you have enough independent variables you start getting an exponential explosion effect where you have millions of possible combinations and every new thing you add can have thousands of new combinations that all feel different. For instance, to keep going with the weapon flags idea, you could have weapons be either swords, axes, or spears, each which comes in 3 different sizes (small tool repurposed for battle, ordinary weapon, and two-handed ridiculous anime weapon), may have one elemental effect (fire, ice, thunder or dark) and one other effect (such as blocking attacks better, being slower but more powerful because it's made from a heavier metal, etc), and then you could texture it with one of 5 material textures (wood, bronze, iron, steel and silver) which also affects its price, weight and power. And finally you could have them potentially be inlaid with gemstones that alter them in some other way, or whatever.

But from the core properties alone, we get 3 x 3 x 4 x 3 x 5 combinations, which is some 500 different weapons. You could use the same attack animations for each weapon type, the same idle animations for each size (since the big weapons need to be held in both hands when you idle and you'll hold the tool weapon more awkwardly), the same glow effects for each element (just color the attack particles according to the element and spawn a flame when you hit with fire weapons etc), and so on, the same material texture for all types, and so on. You save a lot of work in the end if you make content reusable and combine-able like this.

It's not a game that will have different weapons though, with the design it would redundant... Hmm... It's more like the example video. The character attacks the train by suplexing it / inverting the image then slamming down. It's unique to that characters attack and that animation yet it effects all enemies the same way. If he suplexes a rabbit, the rabbit image will also be inverted then restored after being lifted up then slammed down.

I think there's been a misunderstanding.