Wrong AnimationCenter behavior ?!?

  • #1, by Philipp StumppSaturday, 28. October 2017, 19:54 7 years ago
    Greetings!

    I've encountered a strange behavior when setting the AnimationCenter for my different cursors and made a test which you can see in the images here.

    If you have different cursor-images with their AnimationCenters away from the actual center of the image (let's say in different corners, to make it an extreme example), Visionaire will not place the cursor images at the same location with different AimationCenters. It moves the images so that your AnimationCenter will be at the exact spot the cursor of the computersystem has. 

    If you use the "Right-Click-changes-the-Cursor" Interface, it leads to a very disturbing situation because it will look like as if your cursorimages "jump around".

    As you can see in the images a made, i placed the AnimationCenter for Cursor 1 and cursor 2 in their red corners and in the game itself it looks as if the images do a "jump" because the AnimationCenter is supposed to stay where the cursor of the your system will be.

    I am not sure if this a wanted by the developers, but it would be a more beautiful solution to keep the images in place and to really redefine their Clickspots.

    It would be great to hear your opinion about that smile

    Greetings, Phil

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  • #2, by afrlmeSaturday, 28. October 2017, 20:12 7 years ago
    Hmm... I think you are over thinking things. The animation center you specify is the point of the image that will be positioned where the absolute x,y of the cursor is on the scene/screen. Of course the image is going to shift if the animation center isn't in the same position for each mouse cursor.

    P.S: the animation center has absolutely nothing to do with the center of the image/animation.

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  • #3, by sebastianSaturday, 28. October 2017, 22:25 7 years ago
    works as designed i guess...

    You could add to the global rightclick action a lua script which also repositions the cursor directly, so it will work like you intended. 

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  • #4, by Philipp StumppSunday, 29. October 2017, 12:38 7 years ago
    @AFRLme: Yes, you are right. Sometimes i dig too deep in little things. Recentering Images for characters is totally right and should be like this, of course. But i think using this bahavior for cursor images is not the guiding principle because it leads to this "Jumping behavior" which is not good for a gaming experience and not very beautiful to look at. But yes, i will hold back in the future. My premisse is: better bring everything on the table when it is in your mind as never spoken out smile

    @Sebastian: Yeah, i will use Lua scipting in the future. Your idea is good and will lead to a solution. I am working with your tutorial videos right now and there you also say to redefine the Animation Center for the cursors, especially when there is an obvious clicking spot in an image like an arrow or something. 

    Maybe they will implement this backshifting of cursorimages in the future. Thanks anyway for your listening!

    It's great to have you guys here with all your help. It helps a lot to have you all as a backbone!

    Greetings, Phil

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  • #5, by afrlmeSunday, 29. October 2017, 13:46 7 years ago
    Right, I'm confused as to why you would not have all cursors with the same general interaction point. i.e, the top left. This is why I'm a fan of cursors containing some form of clear arrow image in them, even if the cursor graphics/animations themselves are complicated. Here's the animations Marian created for the A Little Less Desperation demo...

    https://i.gyazo.com/98e79f78f9bae8c070d9d2bee19310cb.png

    https://i.gyazo.com/d434d6fdee780797cb9269c941d58188.png

    https://i.gyazo.com/685d1d0138c305ccd3d9b92a609cbb7c.png

    https://i.gyazo.com/0438ee473b86bf2ebb1067b44a1c3a77.png

    What you can't see going on in those still images is all the moving parts. The gears move, the little hammer bit on the gear section is also moving, the center part opens & closes like a camera lens, etc, but as you can see, we decided to keep them all very similar. Originally we tried having completely different cursor styles, but they were horrible & didn't work out so well in the game.

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  • #6, by Philipp StumppSunday, 29. October 2017, 14:20 7 years ago
    AFRLme, this is so brilliant! Why, oh why did this idea not come out of my own mind? Yes, that's it! That is IT!

    But ...

    For now I'm working with one of these Icons. (Temporarily, because I've just created a test project for learning purposes). As you can see, when you use a hand and a lense as classical Icons, you get a problem because the user would try to align the lense icon in a different way than the hand icon. Because the position of the lense is much higher than the two fingers of the (GoTo)hand. You would automatically place these two cursors on a different position because you would want to use the lense in a way you would do it in real life. 

    That is: clicking on an objekt with the lense, not with the hand holding the lense. 

    I hope you got what i mean. (And yes, sorry for my typical german accurate awareness. Every bit of deviant behavior is worth investigating! wink )

    I just love the Cursorgrafics you showed me! And i didn't know about the team around a little less Desperation! Is it a German team? I thought you where from england?

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  • #7, by afrlmeSunday, 29. October 2017, 15:08 7 years ago
    What you could do is open up photoshop, make the canvas area larger & then align each animation in the image where you want it to be so that the offset is in the correct place for each one - I'm sure you could figure something out that way. As you probably noticed, our cursor animations are not touching the top left of the preview window. If I remember correctly, this is because our exit scene/room cursor involves the arrow extending outwards & we wanted to use the same canvas size for each of the animations. Actually took us a while to figure out what to do for the exit cursor. Marian originally created this really complex swirly thing, but I wanted to simplify it & the pneumatic arm like extension made sense & fit with the machine like design of the cursor.

    https://i.gyazo.com/f5c9beaa7212242b79253553eb730385.gif

    As for the ALLD team ... I'm British, but I live in Spain. Marian is from Germany - kind of.

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  • #8, by dionousSunday, 29. October 2017, 22:01 7 years ago
    I'm British, but I live in Spain.
    Spain where? The normal one or the rebel one??

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  • #9, by afrlmeSunday, 29. October 2017, 22:30 7 years ago
    I'm British, but I live in Spain.
    Spain where? The normal one or the rebel one??
    Darn saaaaaaaaaaarth! as the Cockney Londoners would say.

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  • #10, by esmeraldaMonday, 30. October 2017, 09:19 7 years ago
    @Philipp Stumpp - you should look at it from the player's perspective. If the image stays at the same place an the cursor position (the click spot) is jumping, you had to reposition the cursor quite a lot while playing. Imagine the player has the cursor hovering above an interactable object. Then he changes the command by rightclicking (like in your case). If the object isn't as large as your haystack, he will have to reposition the cursor to execute the command, because the cursorpositon jumped outside the active area. In my opinion that would be annoying as hell. Same would happen, if you change the cursor by entering the object area.

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  • #11, by Philipp StumppTuesday, 31. October 2017, 13:09 7 years ago
    @esmeralda: Yeah, i thought about what you said and talked to a gamerfriend of mine. It seems that it occurs to be a question about Gaming-Philosophy. So here is my conclusion:

    1) In my case, i use very big Cursorimages. So when i rearrange the clickspot for more than 20 Pixel in any direction for the different Cursors, the grafical "jumping" looks annoying because my images are so big. The jumping is too obvious. So when i decide to use just one clickspot for all Images so that all stay at the same position, that also could lead to a wrong experience when, for example you want to hover over a text in a textbox. When your Cursorgrafic is (for example) a hand with a pointing thumb a human player would automatically think that when the thumb enters the text, it highlights. But when i choose the middle if the image as the clickpot for all cursors the text does not highlight when the thumb enters the textarea, it hightlights when the middle of the hand enters the text area. (I have added two pictures to show you what i mean). That also is a frustrating gamers experience.

    2) In your case you use small Objects and maybe smaller Images for the cursors than i do. In this case you are absolutely right! When you use one clickspot for small Images, it doesn't matter either there is a clickspot on position x: 20 y:20 and the other at x: 22 y:22. You can't make the difference at all because everything is way too small.

    So i would like to see BOTH implemented in VS. A Clickspot with two options (whether you use big or small Images). A consistent Clickspot with jumping Images and consistent Images with a jumping Clickspot smile Because both possibilities lead to different experiences. Both can be annoying but it depends on the Interface you choose as a game designer.

    @AFRLme: Yes, now i'm digging smile But that's good. The biggest diamonds can only be brought to the surface from the deep.


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