Developing a high quality 2d point and click advenure game from scratch.

Hi there,

In the next months, I will be developing my latest 2d point and click adventure game: Hercules Adventures.
I will start from the beginning, use the latest Unity and as little assets as possible.
The title of the game is self explanatory but I will write more info about it later on.
For now I would like to focus on the developing tasks.

The game is designed for Desktops - Steam...

I will be sharing my work through this forum. Why is that?

• To get feedback and ideas. Most of you are more experienced than me.
• To give something to the community, to the rookies at least.
• To get some exposure before the game is released.

 

Lets start with the main character, Hercules.
I was experimenting with 2d dynamic lighting and I wanted to try normal maps to see how that looks.
I bought Sprite lamp to test it and I made some custom lighting profiles to the characters body.



It doesn't look bad.

 

It even has a pseudo Z range of light:

 

The face is different. It looks like crap. Like its a wooden doll 'Pinocchio'.
I tried many different lighting profiles and all look like crap in the face.



I also tried automatic normal maps generations (Sprite illuminator) but it looks like its a balloon...

 

Normal maps are too much work and in my game the end result is not good. I will drop this and go with standard diffuse lighting, its way easier requires no work at all. .

 

About the face: A high quality 2d game should have:

• Voice over, with perfect lip-sync.
• random eyes to feel alive.
• random blinks
• gravity movement (eg hair)
• Many poses, I will add: Profile, Portrait, 3/4 front, 3/4 back, and back!

Lets start with the profile pose.



Now it has baked shadows in the hair. It looks better.

 

For the hair I made them meshes, and with Puppet2D I made a spine for the main hair, ponytail and front hair. I made the hair dynamic skin and control them with bones. Some bones are stable and some got gravity with Hinge Joints and limited angles. I think its looking good. What do you guys think? Should I work the hair differently? I want a simple movement.



The only problem is that some areas are moving and I cannot stop them. Eg the sideburns. How can I lock some bones?

 

Now for Lipsync I bought Lipsync pro. Its a nice asset that supports 10 phonemes and the outcome is pretty good. I used s Blend tree with type direct to open mouth, move llips and narrow mouth. I mimic these from the 3D world in my effor to make the mouth move at 60fps. The outcome is synced and nice. Its much better if I manually detect the phonemes and export them in an xml. I also have 3 different emotion talking poses, happy talking, serious talking and sad talking. I will add more emotions while talking later on...

 

To make this possible in 2d I made an upper jaw to mesh and FFD.
Then I made another lower jaw mesh and FFD.
The lower jaw has teeth and FFD tongue attached and the upper jaw upper teeth behind it.

See the image that explains the FFDs.


This was I can narrow the mouth or move the tongue by moving the FFDs points.
I make these by Puppet2D and its a little tricky to make them right.

 

Very impressive. Thanks for sharing your work in progress!

 

What thoughts drove your decision to begin working on visual elements instead of starting with core mechanics for a point and click adventure?
Just wondering if you already have core mechanics in place or if you are going to incorporate a system already designed for this type of game.

 

With core mechanics you mean the pathfinding system? Or all the gaming system? I have one already developed from my last game, it needs improvement but its already working. That is why I started from the character...

 

I am still working on the lipsync. Made some details and other poses. Working on emotions too..

 

I am back! I am working on each pose walking animation. Here is the first outcome. Any thoughts appreciated.

 

I actually kind of like the more "balloon" style of normal-map support that you demoed above. I agree that it would probably not be appropriate to use throughout the game. The more flat shading is a good look for a classic point-and-click title. But I would hang onto the work you did in getting that normal map working, and perhaps use it in any room where you need the character to be walking around in a darkened room. (possibly carrying a torch, or lantern, or other light-source)

Your standard walking-animation is decent. I might actually suggest reducing the animation on the rear arm. There seems to be a discrepancy between it and the forward arm, and it makes his walk look a little lop-sided. I realize this is probably to make the back arm show up more from behind his body, and that's fine. I'd just tone it down a little bit.

 

I think if you added a little lag on the wrists it might improve the arm swing slightly. Not so much like Shaggy from Scooby Doo, but just a little bit to show overlap and follow through.
May also consider a little motion with his pony tail, and maybe just a little more volume in the butt area when his legs are extended back.
But looks pretty good as is.

 

I have listened to all suggestions and changed it. I have also added a little more movement to the neck x, is it too much?

 

If the head and neck goes to the other direction is like this.

 

I think I prefer the first one.

 

No something is still wrong.

Check this out.

 

This is the walking animation with the bones and handles on:

 

thanks for the video, I will remake the animation and see what happens.

 

Yeah I'm not sure how you're doing it? Are you using spine2D, basically I found there are only four poses to set in the video. Once you have those you just tween between them all.

In reality there is only 2 poses the other two are just flipped. After following the video the walk cycle should look much more natural. Also, I'd personally move the bone on the heel down so it is horizontal with the floor.

Other than that, good job, it's coming on nicely.

I don't know if the following will be of more help because it actually shows the placement of the bones, it is in 3D but can be applied to 2D

 

I made the walking sequence from the beginning using the rules of the first video. I made him lean to the front a little for more relaxed walking. I am thinking of adding different walking for normal, happy and sad emotions.

 

The feet looks better and he also looks more natural. What do you guys think?

 

Yeah it's a lot better, there's still something with the arm sway that's bugging me. Maybe because it is not quite symmetrical or as accentuated as the other walk cycles.

 

I have done the sad walking too. I will blend normal, sad and happy waking depending on the mood.

This is -1 mood, and normal is 0. All the values in between are gradually morphing from one animation to another with mecanim 1d blend.

 

Maybe because now the arms go a little faster?

 

And the happy walking.
Please share your thoughts...

 

Excellent, I think you've captured it nicely now. This has inspired me to work on my 2D animation now

 

Yes, these are some very nice improvements on the walking animations. I like the fact that you created two additional "emotive" walking states as well. They really help to add personality to the character, and can be used as an effective detail in-game.

It's looking very good.

 

thanks, now I will have to do the same on the other poses as well.

 

I am using Puppet 2D

 

I have made the 3/4 front pose walking but there is something wrong with it... Do you agree?

 

Maybe its impossible to do pseudo 3d movement to the front with 2d sprites, even with FFD meshes, what should I do? The feet and hands look as if moving to the sides and not a little front and back... Also the sorts is wrong...

 

Isn't part of the issue simply that it's difficult to see the depth movement without anything to relate it to? With a background or rather, "in context", it might be easier to determine if it looks good or needs more work.

 

maybe you could try to do something with scaling? As in the hand being bigger when it is in front of the body and smaller when it's behind.

 

I think I made it much better, I moved all the FFD points and created a little depth when moving the leg in and out. What do you guys think?

 

Maybe you can see it better with a background.

 

And straight

 

Any comments are highly appreciated...

 

I like it. The scaling was a good suggestion.

 

Still a little off. The lower torso should be "rotated" to his right a little more.
A good indicator to see what Im saying is to look at the direction the knees are pointing. They should be pointing more to his right.
I like the direction you are going. Nice progress.

 

His right arm and shoulder looks wrong to me in the 3/4 front pose.

I'm thinking you should rotate the arm a little bit and make it a little bit thinner. It looks as if the arm is a little bit to high. Also I would expect to see a little bit more of his cloth on the upper right shoulder when he rotates towards the camera.

 

I considered all suggestions and made the lower torso and knees rotate to his right. His left foot was more problematic. Its better now. Also I changes the walking feet animation a little. I changes the right arm and made it slimmer like suggested and also start a little more down, more cloth is shown now in the right upper shoulder like suggested. Also I made the palms and arms to scale a little to better show the front back movement.

 

Here it is walking on a background.

 

New comments are appreciated. Thanks for your help.

 

Made the sad 3/4 walking too.

 

I have done some last corrections to the left hand, it is shorter now.

 

To sum up. So far I have made 2 walking poses, profile and 3/4 front with 3 mood walking: normal, happy and sad. Here is walking straight and then turn and walk in 3/4 front. To do next: Amfas pose walking. (This is looking at the camera.).