I used Flash for all my games, and one thing about Flash that’s different than most game making software is that it is actually an animation program before it became capable of creating websites and games. So you can say that not using animation in Flash is like wasting one of its most useful capabilities.
Speaking of animations, I like to divide them into 2 categories.
The first one is the type that you draw each frames differently. This is traditional animations, and it is what people like to call a “Real Animation”. The problem is this method is very time consuming. Imagine drawing 12 pictures for a mere 1 second animation. (Flash used 12 frames per second for its default setting.)
The second one is what I call “Slide Show”, which involve with sliding pictures, fading in and out, masking, and perhaps random particles. Basically it’s the cheapskate animation. It’s not capable of making a true moving picture, but if you are good at this, you can fool many into thinking things are animated.
My partner, Nitarou can’t use Flash nor can she animate. So all animation in Zeiva Inc Games fall into my hand. Unfortunately I am nothing more than 1 person. I have very limited capability of how much animations I can add into a game.
My earliest games relied heavily on “Slide Show”. Most of the cut scene movies are nothing more than just sliding pictures with simple animations added such as glows, eye blinking, lip syncing, etc. I like this method very much because it is very convenient, and if I used them cleverly, it could produce nice cinematic effect in a matter of days.
And then… One day, I saw Nitarou playing Summon Night 3, a Japanese Playstation 2 game. It is filled with colorful animations and it really make the entire setting to come alive. I was very impressed that I determined to add as many animations as I could for the next game.
Unfortunately that was ultimately the reason why Genetic Glow III ended up as a dead project. Not only there is an explorable map, this time all the chibi are animated. They will do random things like sleeping on spot, walking, blowing bubble, eating pork bun, drinking tea, etc. It’s truly a shame that GGIII will never make it online. Despite being a 5 years old project, it is still remain the most colorful project I have made.
Animation is really a powerful tool in game making. In my opinion it helps to set apart what constitute high budget vs low budget games.
So what about OASE? Is it just like my older game with less “Real Animation” or is it like Genetic Glow III which is rich of moving characters?
Suffice to say, I think I manage to make it in-between. The biggest lesson I learned from GGIII is that “Don’t be too ambitious!”. Although I don’t think I completely learn that since OASE still took me over 3 years to make. ^^;;;