Hey, buncha new animations coming atcha!


All of the possible slide angles, both positive and negative. You can slide backwards if you're so inclined, HA


The Long Leap, which launches Ez horizontally after a hefty running start. It's... basically the long jump from Mario, yeah.


The apex of the High Hop, which continues this blatant Mario theft. Fun fact, cartwheeling through the air is the most hellishly difficult thing I ever drew her doing, which is why she doesn't do that.


Quack


The Satchel Slam, which continues this blatant alliterative naming convention. If she lands on something while doing this she'll High Hop off the thing, but also shown is the whiff animation if she doesn't.


Avoiding CERTAIN DOOM!


HhbbBblbBblbb b bbb bl


Ez laughs at the failure of bosses who can't defeat a teenager. This also completes the 1st page of animation frames!

Edit: here's how the victory march is planned to work with its theme!

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Yes, one animation at a time, it's getting done. While 133 animations across 760 frames are planned (plus however many other actions we can create using recycled frames), Ez's relatively simple design makes it easy to take certain actions and smear their sprites around until she's doing something else. There's no need to redesign things from the ground up.

I'll note the cheeks, though rounding them out makes it lose the effect of holding air in her mouth (or just looks comical if they're puffed outward more). Shading the outline should fix that.

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Thank you both! From what I could mock up, these are likely to look even nicer in-game (where some of the bigger seams can be obscured by movement).

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I have my assurances that they should, even if it's going to use a hefty 8-12 lorom banks.
However, at the moment this has been as far as we've taken these in-game; we need a complete skeleton to wrap the animations around, so it'll likely be a long while before you see these where they belong.
If anything does happen though, it's at least easier to pare down from a big list than to fill up a small one.

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Also, one more thing that I've never said anything on even though it was really complicated to make:

The demo's title screen was really lousy, so have the next generation of fancy words.

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A while back Aether was featured in a Self-Made Island video, courtesy of Berserkx33's recommendation. Very nice of you, my dude! If you're frequently looking to this thread for updates, then I'm really due for one.

As mentioned before, we're working on a rehaul of the physics first so I'll show off some of that.
Returning from the demo is the High Hop and Long Leap, which are handy little tools for getting around. However, there's some added functionality we're working with as well:


Thanks to a very precise amount of control the new physics gives between speed and jump height, you can perform a Big Bound if you time a Long Leap correctly, which gets you some serious distance.

In addition to that, you can search all over for special areas that bestow new power ups. You have a permanent choice between two, and are locked into that choice for pretty much the rest of the game. With four of these locations, you can have 16 different permutations by the end of the game!

So here's one of the sets:
Blasting Bangle

This gives an extra bit of oomph to your leaps and hops, and also creates an explosion under your feet as well (to be implemented)! That can let you access areas that would otherwise need a bomb to blow open.

Blinding Bracer

You can enter the Sonic Sprint when running by pressing R, which greatly increases your max speed on the ground and in the air. You also are not nearly as affected by momentum in this state, which lets you make hairpin turns even in midair. Eventually, you will also be able to glide on top of water!

Given the choice between the two is tricky, so you have to make the best of what you're dealing with.

Oh, and if all you want is top speed:

Exploding across the land is your best bet, as usual. If this doesn't sync up, it's a 176 vs 216 frame difference to the finish line.


One little extra detail before we get into animations: gravity is a harsh mistress, and you now have to be careful on any descent in an unknown location.

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If you stand still for a bit, you may get overpowered by curiosity or cleanliness. We should all get overpowered by curiosity or cleanliness every now and then, I think.


This is how the Sonic Sprint looks. Not... quite sprint-like, actually, but it's alliterative!


No rope will be unshimmied within her sight


Horizontal beams will not be spared


The Bag Bash, bashing. Her rucksack delivers the pain in air or on the ground, and this move replaces the punch that was in the demo.


Food and Drink! What's planned is the ability to store stuff and consume them at any time. The heartiness of what you're noshing on will affect how long it takes to use up, so lighter meals that heal less may be better in some situations than a full course meal.


Eszett is used to delivering the hurt, but there will be plenty of times when that hurt is returned to sender. Taking a meaty enough hit or hitting the ground hard enough will make Ez much more vulnerable to another hit as her movement is cut drastically.


Too bleak? Sorry, here she is swimmin'


And lastly, a little thing I foresee is making some areas absolutely colossal-looking by making Ez a teensy little thing.


Poll Edit:
I'm pretty well into animations, but I did have a sudden realization that Eszett's design could be spruced up a bit with a pair of gloves. Mind giving your thoughts one way or another?

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Yeah, I personally think no gloves look fine as well.

Either way, the animations are sick and so is the hack itself. I can't believe I haven't kept an eye on it before. Please finish it~!

While it won't quite be homebrew, it's still one of the design goals to have a game so drastically different from the original. A lot of World's DNA will still be recognizable though, so if this ever became a "real" game, then there would still have to be plenty of more changes so that it's not quite a ripoff.
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Honestly, it took about 30-40 minutes to add gloves to her sprites. Considerably less time than a single animation, that's for sure. Perhaps I'll lean towards 'no gloves' for the time being, but when a build of the hack has animations in it, then I'll definitely try both and see how they look in motion.
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Animations, while pretty time-consuming, are only a small part of the game. The actual game has to do those animations proud! Hopefully whenever the demo is made, the animations are a big enough draw to get a whole lot of critical eyes on the project.
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While I'm leaning towards 'no gloves' after all, I'd counter-argue that the gloves can have extra details that highlight Eszett's character. Delving into a bit more detail, she is a courier wearing a company uniform for "Pilcrow Packages" and you interact with other mail people plus at least one other company as well. While the others are very pristine, Eszett scuffs up her uniform and gloves, and has a poorer reputation for it.
You've assessed her pretty wisely as someone who doesn't mind a callus or two, and if the animations alone can suggest that, then I must be on the right track!

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Actual animations!?
Well, we've had "actual animations" in the game a while back, but this time it's using the framework that Maarfy has been developing - everything animated will eventually use this dealio.
There are some animations that aren't here just yet, but I hope that when there's other progress reports in the future they'll be a little more enticing with Eszett around!

Oh, and also no gloves here yet, but that's not decided for realsies just yet.

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one of the best arts in smw hacking great sir I love it

More animation-type deals! Also a showcase on various outfits she can wear - the sky's the limit as far as what can be made, since it's not limited to a powerup state. The intent is for a tailor to be able to sell alternate colors as a bit of spice.
In the short term, it's also a nice way to jazz up the animation showoffs!


Various cresting animations are in place, which might not be super obvious, but it definitely feels more natural than having nothing at all. The pain of really detailed animations is that everything around it also has to be pretty detailed, like how the lack of a landing animation kind of sticks out (we're working on that).



More bonking, followed by a hint of the defeat animation. Eszett is more interested in cussing than concussing, so don't count on donking her head over and over leading to her end in the actual game.


Ez pirouetting through the air off her long leaps and high hops. It's a nice visual flair just to differentiate these actions from regular jump.


The Sonic Sprint also has some new graphics attached to it - I was going for something with an air of mysticism to it to justify the surreal physics.

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These kind of animations is something I'm really missing for tripple and long and u-jumps because SMW lacks a proper way to add in new animations (this is a game which compresses its player graphics, after all, so you'd need to use uncompressed graphics for a proper system and rewrite the player VRAM system if you don't use 32x32 player graphics). It's also interesting to see other kind of animations such as head bops.


It certainly reminds me of different to Sonic CD's idle animation which when it finishes causes an instant game over. It's also quite a hilarious easter egg. This does run on a timer (i.e. bop the head x times in y seconds), doesn't it?