Pat Holleman
@patmakesrpgs
Freelance RPG director, writer, designer. (Quartet, My Familiar, Threads of Time, others.) Author of the Reverse Design series of books:
Nowhere is this more true than if you have pivoted from mainstream business to videogames. As I mentioned in the coda to my sample RPG Project Plan:
Final Fantasy X is just a recapitulation of the 90s kids movie "Surf Ninjas," except half the characters are either imaginary or undead.
Not a bad run. My computer started dropping lots of frames because of how many enemies were on screen, so I'm not sure I could get much further.
State 12: End. The shader on the enemy sprite disappears. Crono finishes back in his north-facing hurt frame. This, too, only lasts an instant. The goal is to reuse this frame to make it look like he lands in a brief crouch. This sells the "weight" of his movements.
State 11: resolution. The enemy's hurt frame appears, but the enemy is also shaded with a 100% white overlay for just an instant. Crono uses his basic attack approach frames in reverse on the way back to his launch spot. He used spincut/cleave approach frames on the way towards his target.
State 10: Finishing the attack proper with another transition back to a white overlay shader on the BG layers. Each white "flash" of the BG layers has been more opaque than the last.
State 9: Animation is still speeding up. To emphasize this transition, the BG layers go from a white overlay shader to a black one, again.
State 8: Enemy shaking. As soon as damage numbers start to appear, the enemy sprite is shaken to the left and right, rapidly. Enemy hurt frames don't appear, however.
State 7: another loop. Here's a clearer look at the sleight of hand with the trailing sprites and the lead sprite. Still just reusing existing frames!
State 6: Intensifying the animation. First, there's an 80-90% opacity white overlay shader applied to the background layers only. Second, the rotation and frame changes speed up a little bit. We're still only reusing old frames!
State 5: completing the rotation. Because everything is 2D, making Crono appear to rotate around the target requires some sleight of hand. The lead Crono sprite does move in front of the enemy. The clones spawned by the trail always remain below it. It's so fast that you don't notice.
State 4: transition into circling strikes. This frame is just Crono's east/west prepare frame for a basic attack. There's a 50-60% white simple shader applied to the BG layers when he commences.
State 3: Crono leaps. He's in his north launch frame. This frame is also from Spincut/Cleave (and any of its dual tech version). An effect script causes clones of this frame to appear below the lead sprite. Those sprites "expire" (are destroyed) rapidly as the lead sprite moves.
State 2: Crono enters his north-facing hurt frame, but only for a moment. It's not a new frame, but if used very briefly it looks like a crouch before a jump.
State 1: Prep. The BG layers are darkened with a 50% transparent, black, simple overlay shader. Crono enters the same prep frame he uses for spincut/cleave. He has this prep frame for north, east/west, and south facings, depending on his position relative to the target.
Yes. Hyping games is easy. Actually making games is a fool's errand. To quote Jeff Kaplan, "A game is at its best when you haven't made it. The more of it you make, the worse it gets."
So, this is clearly designed to attract attention by enraging. And here I am, spreading it! But I'd like to pick a part of it out and calmly assess. Valve's devs may be detached from the reality of indie development, specifically when they talk about "player retention."
Don't let AI write your "technical game designer" job ads. (I added a few "suggestions" in the spirit of the original.)
In 8 years of working for first-time game creators, here's the most important thing I've learned.
I stole this from David Vinc who stole it from who knows where. But MAN is this funny.
This is the internet equivalent of becoming a made man in the mafia.
And here's an example of Thomas using this very technique for the tilesets in Quartet.