Getting a proper swing animation working was actually more difficult than the swing itself, that might say something about the swinging mechanic being too simple but it feels fun at least. That’s my main goal for any action, for it to be fun. I added a hanging state to the basic locomotion animation of idle/run/jump/falling/etc. From the knowledge I collected in various YouTube tutorials this seemed to work the best for me. And I added a blended jump and blended hang. Basically depending on the speed of the character the animation will change. The blend space is where you plug animations so the engine does the hard work of transitioning from one animation to another. It’s up to the designer to figure out what values to plug in the animations at. This is why there’s an image below with numbers on the left. I was getting the velocity of the character to see which values were best for specific movements.
I adjusted most of the starter animations and the free animations from Mixamo to fit my needs. I also based some of it on Sekiro again. I noticed to pointed his foot towards the direction he was landing, so I wanted to do something similar. The jumping animation I have now is based on speed, while in Sekiro it’s probably based on movement and speed, but at least I have one of those going for me. Simple and stylish is my current motto. I’ve finally put up a video showing all the current moves of the Haunter, it might classify as a very early gameplay preview. I don’t think I’ll be adding any more moves to the character. All that will be added is for his actions to affect more things in the world. Such as the whip doing damage to enemies and objects.
Besides ironing out some of the character the next thing I’ll probably learn and work on is the level design. I need to start building a space for the player to traverse and with that I can figure out where the lantern will fit in. It’s time to say goodbye to the good ol’ default third person example space. Is it too soon for me to start building the first level? I’ll find out soon enough.
GoldenGratus Games 