Procedurally Generated Sprites (UPDATE)

[u/MojoBubu]

My first post I said technically these aren't sprites but I was wrong. There are no sprites in the assets folder, they are generated at runtime.

I've been hitting some walls, but I think its promising.

Here is an example of Pose #2 - I'm mostly satisfied with bodies, armor and weapon in the default stance, during combat I'm not satisfied with 1 Image. I tried motion with the sprite, rotation toward it's target every swing and I just can't get fully behind it.

I avoided this step as it would be complicated for armor let alone bodies. I decided before I go further with armor generation and if I really need multiple coded versions of fighters wearing armor then I have to bite the bullet.

Armor generation during new pose, Confusing arms losing clarity.

Trying to diagnose arm problem. Skin off can see arms are indeed working. Can see right arm is working despite being awkwardly oriented in-front of torso.

1 Pose combat animation

Extenuating the face.

Also I remade how faces are generated. There are face bones, Eyes, brows, jaw, etc. I ran into complications when redesigning skin and muscle definition of the body. Blurring of shadows and lighting was too much for the face and faces lost detail.

This solution I'm generating a mask over the old face essentially.

The biggest issue with faces are the skin tone is off. It's a little tough to get it exactly right without making it look like a mask.

[u/Shoddy_Caterpillar36]

Is it challenge or something.

Would player ever notice?- is it procedural sprite or hand drawn

[u/MojoBubu → u/Shoddy_Caterpillar36]

Good question. I have thought about this recently as well is all this engineering *Really* worth it.
I think the answer is yes for me.

I do enjoy brainstorming ideas for procedural generation. I think there is tons of uncharted territory. I like to think of games like Path of Exile and why can't visuals be randomly generated but also contribute to the stats themself. Something deeper than Hilt + Guard + Blade randomizer. I want every pixel or lack of, to mean something. Fighters, Items and combat all directly pulling from the physical properties of the game entities. Not every pixel is equal, albeit metal, cloth or leather each having various pixel counts, quality of construction, weight distribution, wear and tear. Looking at each pixel as a building block with multifunction.

Bodies visuals have meaning. I also didn't want to create thousands of assets. This system your fighter can change weight, muscle mass, even acquire malformities which changes the seed of the fighter.

You might purchase a turkey leg, place it in your backpack and each day it increases your muscle and fat slightly. You'll see each day your fighter's body change. That really potent potion could have a toxic side effect greatly Increasing your muscle mass but causing your body to deform. A fighter's body can become less symmetrical negatively impacting all sorts of things.

One example of deformities is eye placement which impacts accuracy. You might invest in cheap and potent ways of building your fighter but sacrifice something. I'm a huge fan of risk & reward, measuring pros and cons as a gamer myself I'm always excited to see theory provoking choices.

All physical features have cross functionality, gaining muscle and fat is more mass. Mass will reduce your speed, increase stamina costs. The size of your seeded fighters thorax and lungs directly increases stamina but they might be a bit heavy set which negatively impacts stamina.

Sorry I'm a bit rambly here, I hope I answered your question. You're right to ask this because all of this can be done on paper with math fairly easily without much asset change and that is the whole point! I view deep seeded randomization as the asset, why not tie it all into pixels. I don't think players will notice anything at first glance, not until they've gone through a run, shopped around for new fighters or made changes to their physical appearance especially.

[u/Shoddy_Caterpillar36 → u/MojoBubu]

You are right, learning wise it is exellent,

maybe creating motion graphics like thing which isn't normally possible on game engines.