Animating inflation in 2D

Submitted by Lopni on Wed, 07/20/2016 - 23:03

Fully-drawn sprites

64% (16 votes)

Soft curves stretch on uninflated body (how to call it?)

24% (6 votes)

Spring model

12% (3 votes)

Other?

0% (0 votes)

Total votes: 25

Wed, 07/20/2016 - 23:52

Lopni

In a way, it's a revisit of what people like most - to see inflated characters, or to see characters inflating - but now from a "how-to?" point of view

Most characters are around 100 pixels high when not inflated and usually within 200-300 pixels when at their absolute limits, a 1920x1080 screen shows a piece of the field which is nomally a 5 seconds run for them

+ Full-body sprites - that's a stop-motion animation. It's easy to change for everyone, fully customizable but huge, and you need extra disk space for every extra animation. Each picture can be gorgeous if a talented artist draws it, each picture stretches smoothly, however picture change is visible and abrupt.

+ Soft curves stretch on uninflated body - that's how Spine, Spriter and the like work. You have several sprites for bodyparts of the character, and you stretch belly and boobs independently of other parts. It doesn't need any extra game size for showing any motions and inflations (like inflating while running, or deflating while rolling), looks perfectly smooth all the way, but is utterly unrealistic even for a fantasy - buttocks won't squish, boobs won't rest on the belly and so on.

+ Spring model - that's like "Tet-a-tet". In an old DOS game of mine ("Tet-a-tet") I have a female body drawn with a single brush stroke looking like a closed pattern. Each straight and curved line of this pattern is an elastic string, "soft parts" like back and bust curves stretch better than "more rigid" spine and toes. It shows inflation perfectly smoothly all the way from uninflated to bursting, has two dozens of parameters which let describing any bodytype at all, and I can copy-paste it from DOS game into Inflation Formation - BUT it's just pattern, it's not a colourful picture. Who would want to look at a stretching of a single brush stroke?

+ Maybe all that is crap, and something entirely different works better in 2D?

Sun, 07/24/2016 - 07:27

Phobos001

What I'm using right now for an inflated charater is soft-body physics, which is similar to the 'several sprites' method, but instead of sprites it's invisible physics objects tied together with Fixed Joints. The only drawback with my implementation is that the amount of bounciness comes from how precise the physics simulation is. Not precise at all leads to very fun animation for the character, but the physics simulations becomes just about as stable as a coffee shop at a cookie-wafer jenga competition; Things break fast. I've found a good middle ground though. I'm using a flat 3D mesh for the body and changing the verticies to match the position of the physics objects, so that makes things a lot easier on me.

I'll try to get a video of what I've got done so far to show you guys...

Here you go! [VOLUME WARNING]

Sadly, the size of the object cannot be changed dynamically without breaking everything. I'm happy with the results though!

Sun, 07/24/2016 - 08:21

pballooned

Congratulations Phobos!

I'm happy with your results too. That game looks very good. It is very creative. A character in normal state attached by string to an inflated character looks fun to play and probably brings very interesting challenges :-) :-)

Sun, 07/24/2016 - 10:03

pballooned

Regarding Lopni's original question.
I think any of them might be good options.

+ Full body sprites
At the pixel size you use, I think it would be better to animate on paper and then scan the drawings.

+ Soft curves stretch on uninflated body
Maybe to decrease the "utterly unrealistic" effect, you can have different parts of the body drawn in different ways, and with different shapes. Example: when the inflation reaches a certain point, you replace the non-squished buttocks by the squished buttocks. Maybe some changes might look a little abrupt, but it's a matter of experimenting.

+ The spring model
Sounds interesting. Maybe you can add a separate head, feet and hands to it if these parts don't expand. It would be cool if the brush stroke could contain patterns inside it, like flowers or dots by instance.
.

This Dig Dug game seems to have some kind of combination of all the methods you described. I think it looks pretty good: https://youtu.be/mNi4GdzugVg

You could try implementing all three methods into your engine. Test them and use the ones that work best for you.
When you get an artist to help you with your project, you can let him or them choose their preferred method for working on their part.

Sun, 07/24/2016 - 11:17

Lopni

Many thanks for feedback, dear friends, much appreciated!

Phobos, your game looks amazing! I love the bounce!

PBallooned, many thanks for input and food for thought!

---

I guess "Spring model" wasn't very clear. Here:

https://yadi.sk/d/duUYBuoPtadMo

Warning: it's an ugly old DOS game of mine, recompiled for Windows
Warning2: contains popping

Basically, a character is simulated as a thin shell under pressure, with each part having its own elasticity. When you generate a character, you can invest points into becoming more "stiff", then press "SPACE" and see how long your characters inflates to capacity. After you generated two characters, you can make them inflate each other

Sun, 07/24/2016 - 12:25

(Reply to #6) #7

pballooned

Ah, I see.

Well, it has it's charm too.

I like it's retro feeling. It's a black screen with colored lines that draw the shapes. It's like chalk on a blackboard. Had some difficulties creating a new character and got a little lost in the menu. But it's nice.
If I were to add something to this game, is premade faces and haircuts, which you can choose. Other accessories too, like shoes, bracelets, etc. Everything being color lines over the black background.
It is true that having an empty space inside the inflated shape kind of loses the effect of mass, though

Note to anybody who downloads it: You can download all the files at once in a zip file at the right side of the screen, with the "download" button, under the text "2008". One exe file is for creating characters, and the other to have them "fight".

Mon, 07/25/2016 - 00:47

Lopni

i tried to draw characters this weekend, one even with a pattern on her tummy ^_^ ugh graphics is killing me! ^_^

characters: https://yadi.sk/d/_X9eU3V1tbELi

items: https://yadi.sk/d/kESZ8BzctbEca

I hope people will add the characters and items they want to see

---

Apologies for a hectic Tetatet post yesterday - it was past midnight

You need only Tetatet.exe - it lets you to generate characters as well. You can hit "Space" to answer most questions

Tet-A-Tet is a "swell-dance" game, it shows how inflation via dancing "works", just like VSG is about "puff-kiss"

There are 7 scores of swell-dance:

- Passion: when you dance, your passion inspires another character to inflate

- Calm: The higher your calm, the easier you can stop inflating and deflate. Besides, when you become very big, you will want to become only bigger and bigger. Calm helps to not lose your head

- Breathing: breathing helps a lot in a dance! You inflate slower, you deflate easier. Also, when you get inspired by another's passion - you inflate via inhaling. Breathing training gives you a degree of control over how much you inhale

- Agility: agility helps to not receive another's passion. It also helps to dance (and inflate!) another, and to deflate yourself via massage. If you are agile - you might be able to move even when very inflated

- Massage: massaging your own sides deflates you faster - the better you are at it, the easier you deflate

- Size: you can train to become bigger, giving you longer inflation time. When you inflate very big, you might lose your calm and will want to only "become the biggest balloon in the world!" If you can inflate for a while - this might never happen

- Resilience: become more stiff and you'll inflate much slower. Larger parts will inflate first anyway, so for instance if you know that you're a "hourglass" (large butt, large boobs) - then it's reasonable to train resilience of those body parts to inflate them more evenly with the rest of you. Also, when you become too big, you body might not be able to retain its shape, and will become a helpless ball. A ball can't dance and can't massage itself - meaning, that's it. If you are resilient, you might never become a ball ^_^

There are two basic actions a dancer can take:

- Attack - use your passion to inflate another

- Defence - use your massage to deflate yourself

I never showed this swell-dance idea because it's too generic - converting passion into inflation and reducing size by massage is looking too much like accumulating energy for a powerful strike and counting fatigue in some fighting simulator. Besides, now i have a new game mechanics, which is more flexible and inclusive than this 1-vs-1 thingy ^_^

I pictured ladies the same way in my old minesweeper. This mechanics exercise is best done in 3D - then it looks really good! (if i ever find a willing artist) ^_^

Mon, 07/25/2016 - 15:50

pballooned

Downloaded characters and items

Looking at them, I'll say your taste for women clothes is in general quite similar to mine.

Later will check how it looks in game when I have a little more time

Mon, 07/25/2016 - 23:48

#10

Lopni

Well i won't target neither arcades nor shooters anyway, keeping to my niche of rpg ^_^

Also, found one more detail in the code of swell-dance game. As a lady inflates, her passion increases. This allows a tactics of letting yourself inflate first - and then channelling your passion through the dance. Your opponent will be overwhelmed and will inflate too fast losing control - it's a sort of "instant win" trick (if you don't lose your head first)

Tue, 07/26/2016 - 17:43

#11

pballooned

Are these characters and items supposed to go with "Tet-a-tet"? Placed their folders in the same folder as the exe file, but the game seems unaffected

Tue, 07/26/2016 - 21:14

#12

Lopni

no no ^_^ But it's possible to put them into VSG2. Scenario "Easiness of a guitar" has many characters, you can substitute all of them. "Visit places" lets you to go directly to inflating them instead of playing the story

Just in case - here's the link to VSG2 with these small sprites:

https://yadi.sk/d/q3F-rlv_tf5BA

Tester player character has password 1

Tue, 07/26/2016 - 23:46

#13

Lopni

Also - good news! - I'll (at least try to) make stop-motion animations for everything - running, pumping, poking and so on. Then, in the spirit of Dig-Dug, there will be four pictures of each character - normal (0.png), inflated (5.png), full (f.png) and oooh! (big, translucent f.png). Then pictures 0 to 5 for instance will be an animation of inflation that runs for half a second, and a character will look normal until she -bwoomph- inflates.

Those who prefer to move figures on the field will use VSG-style continuous inflation, and those who prefer to have an (unbearably ugly) moving character will use stop-motion. And maybe some day someone will say: i can't look at it, it's terrible, i'll do it better! Then finally we'll have a decently looking game, this or another ^_^

I do realize this "game" is just a quick rules check, and it's best to save the zeal for 3D, but we have what we have, right? ^_^

Mon, 08/01/2016 - 16:39

#14

Lopni

Edit: second and hopefully last take.

Running: https://yadi.sk/i/uUc4mP2atpyyf

Towing: https://yadi.sk/i/1idQSH29tpyyo

Please note these ones are 4 times larger than they'll be in the game. 143 more animations to go ^_^

inflating-deflating - done

running - 1 character out of 6

towing - 1 character out of 6

tumbling

rolling

engaging

pumping

tinkering / distracting

dancing

massaging self

eating/drinking

throwing

shooting

breaking / fighting

slipping (field view - deflation)

slipping (big screen - CG cartoonish pop)

bursting (underground - actually popping)

Thu, 08/04/2016 - 10:42

#15

Lopni

okay, first inflation try in default screen size: https://yadi.sk/i/x3kfEtBItvNFk

It's the same bigger girl in white, but now she's inflated. As advised - inflated body parts mostly retain shape, but might also wobble or exchange air a bit. She starts displacing air so she starts feeling lighter and can jump slightly higher

this is the default size of the sprite on the field

Since i draw in x4 size, I'll make it possible to see original drawing size as well: https://yadi.sk/i/gIOjhQS0tvQMN

It won't make much sense to watch large running size because the character will run away from the piece of the field we're watching too quickly. But once she's settled up and doesn't run away it might be handy ^_^ Or one can simply wait until she inflates even larger and the small sprites becomes actually bigger ^_^

Edit:

also, if you are inflating someone merely with a hand pump, then

1. either this someone is _{really small}

2. OR your hand pump is really BIG ^_^ https://yadi.sk/i/vUCYU0pVtveKt

Sat, 08/13/2016 - 06:27

#16

Lopni

Animations are finished, thanks for advice!

Each character will occupy 3 MB

Mon, 11/07/2016 - 02:25

#17

Lopni

after tearing much hairs i'm about to choose 2 views:

1. for platformer encounters - side view (this entire thread above). Because Left and Right is the same image flipped

2. for tactical encounters - top view (http://fav.me/damjhv3). Because it rotates 360 degrees and saves me from 8-direction animations

Views have to be cut in stone.

Edit: Going with 8-direction animations. For the great sexy look they have if drawn by a professional artist (not me) ^_^

(and because one top view is almost as much work as entire 8D)

Animating inflation in 2D

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