animation techniques
Background
Initial animation techniques required the animator to draw individual frames of a movie, with each frame differing in some minute, but perceivable way. When hundreds of these frames were put together, and shown in quick succession, the illusion of movement was created. In this project, you will put this concept to work, and create an interactive animated movie (aka, a game).
·animation – the process of stitching still frames together to create illusion of motion
·frame – a single snapshot of an animation. It is a still image that is a part of a sequence of images
·pixel – a pixel is a single “dot” of a frame. Individual pixels come together to form a frame. A pixel is also used to describe a unit of measure. e.g. draw a circle at the pixel located at (300,400), where 300 and 400 are the number of pixels from a fixed location on the x and y axis, respectively
·background – the background of a frame is an image/drawing that is shown as the backdrop of your animation
·sprite – a sprite is a smaller animation that can be placed in a frame. It can have a separate set of movements (related or unrelated to the overall frame). You can place many sprites on the same background and move them independently. It is initialized with an image/drawing. Each sprite can have a different image associated with it
Design Phase (Milestone 1)
In this phase you will not be doing and coding. You will be designing how you want your game to function. You will be given code that has the following functionality.
Display an image as a background image in your program
Change the background image
Create foreground sprites
Display an image as a foreground sprite
Change the foreground image of a sprite
Move a sprite location to some coordinate (x,y)
Receive text input from the user (IO.readString())
Think about how you would use this code to create a 2D animation with interaction (i.e. a game). You should utilize a technique called “storyboarding” to help with this process. This involves drawing out frames of your animation and drawing arrows from frame to frame to show the progression of your game through various states.
At the very least, for full credit, your game should have the following functionality (this is the minimum set, you are encouraged to exceed these requirements).
Creation of a background
Change of a background upon some “event” in your game
Creation of at least 3 independent sprites
Autonomous movement of at least 2 sprites
Changing the game state based on user input
Discovering of two sprites are occupying the same location on the screen
Identifying some winning and/or losing condition
You should also, in your submitted design, answer the following questions. These should give you some inspiration as well. This is a non exhaustive list and not every question will be applicable to your project. You may need to come up with additional explanations that are not in this list to make it clear to the reader (grader) that you have given sufficient thought about the direction of this project.
What is the theme of your game?
What is the goal of the player?
Will your game be a side view (a la Super Mario Brothers) or a top view (a la Pacman)
Are there obstacles? What kind? Do they move?
Are there villains/bosses? What kind? Do they move?
Is there a puzzle to solve?
What is the interaction level of the player? (choose your own adventure story vs. fully interactive game)
What are the instruction sets that the player should know about? e.g. How does the player interact with your game.
Resources
At this time, you may also wish to start gathering the resources for your game. Namely, what types of images/graphics do you want to use in your game? You may create your own graphics (draw/paint/photoshop) or you may seek out other images. I encourage you NOT to simply copy another game’s images and game play. Use this opportunity to engage your creativity and come up with something new