Critters

[SirGiraffey]

Critters would be small entities with relatively simple AI and animations. They wouldn't affect the gameplay in any meaningful way, but they would make the game feel much more organic.

Small Fish: They would float around the level randomly, maybe form clumps and wouldn't drift too far from each other. When a player gets too close they get scared and swim away. When a bullet passes closely, they could panic and swim away quickly, completely disorganizing the "group". If hit by a laser or a bullet, they could turn into a tiny skeleton (or sushi for family-friendliness) that drops to the ground.

Crabs: They would walk left-right randomly and stop for a few moments, but they wouldn't walk off ledges on their own. If a player gets too close they would walk away, and drop from platforms if there is no wall to stop them from doing so.

[erlend-sh]

This is for sure happening 👍 Might also be related to #43

And I would welcome more impactful gameplay alterations from critters. These sorts of incremental embellishments are how we add unique character to our game and ensure that although it’s a spiritual successor, it has its own soul 💫

We gotta make sure to have clear visual cues for the difference between static environmental doodads and interactive objects such as these and special tiles. For example some shine, like we already do with mines:

IMG_1311.MOV

[SirGiraffey]

Just made a mock-up of another critter which could serve some gameplay purpose, but mainly be a great ambient feature, the angler fish. It glows in the dark!

[erlend-sh]

Update from @zTecna:

[zicklag]

I'm going to be working on this. If anybody could upload some of the raw sprites for the crabs and little fish that would help, but nothing's stopping me from just using some placeholder sprites, so it's not a big deal.

Also @erlend-sh I wanted double-check on the scope of the MVP. I'm thinking:

• We have crabs:
  • that can be placed on the map to define their spawn point
  • that can walk left and right randomly within a small distance
  • that will try to stay a minimum distance away from players by walking away from them
  • that, for the sake of scope for now, won't have any logic to avoid ledges
• We have fish:
  • that are placed on the map to define the spawn point of the "school"
  • that will wander around, but stay within a certain distance of the center of the school
  • that will scatter when a fish runs through the center of the school
  • that will re-form as a group after getting scattered
• Fish and crabs will be 100% aesthetic and in the background for now.

[zicklag]

@olefasting Do you think critters would be fancy decorations, or a new MapItemKind::Critter?

It seems like maybe they should be their own map item kind because in the future certain ones could effect the player, and a decoration by definition should probably never do that.

Unless they're an Environment kind maybe? 🤔

Edit: For now, for simplicity, I'm just going to hard-code them in as environment items, following the same pattern that's used for sproingers. I'm assuming that's more hard-coded than we want to use in the future, but we can decide on how to make it more dynamic later, and I'll wait until I get some direction from you before I worry about how we'll do that. It will be easy to move the logic around once it's implemented.

[zicklag]

I got crabs working!

I think the simple AI for them turned out pretty nice looking. They like to hang out where they've spawned, and if they get scared away, the'll eventually end up back in the vicinity of their "happy place", assuming they haven't fallen off a platform! In that case they'll just try to get in roughly the same horizontal position of their happy place.

They don't like big scary fishes ( the players ) and they'll run away from them. They apparently even bounce on sproingers with no extra effort on my part, which is hilarious.

I made a rough copy of the sprite above to use for them, but the shading isn't as nice so we can update the sprite later.

simplescreenrecorder-2022-04-09_19.07.38.mp4

It's pretty fun how they panic if you kind of trap them between two fish. 😄

simplescreenrecorder-2022-04-09_19.09.30.mp4

Here's the PR: #417.

[zTecna]

I'm wanting to make a very basic animation of 1-frame for all the critters just to not make them too static.

[zicklag]

Sure thing! I'm not sure how you guys usually add the artwork. Do you usually push a commit with the artwork so that you get attribution in the git history?

However you do it, if you want to, you could upload the animation or push a commit to a fork with the crab sprite in it, and I can integrate it into the pull request. Animating him would be very easy.

In the future me and my brother were even thinking the crabs might be able to dig into the floor to despawn and then dig back out in their spawn point if they got "lost".

[erlend-sh]

I’m leaving the particulars up to @zTecna, but I believe we’re gonna maintain a cloud drive as the default (first) storage of all Fish Fight (and eventually Spicy Lobster) media assets.

Ideally all these files have the correct authorship attribution embedded in the file itself, but we may also need to maintain a AUTHORS.md file for each game (-folder), wherein we list all our media assets and their respective authors.

If there might be a better way to approach this, we’re all ears ☺️👂

[zTecna]

Sure thing! I'm not sure how you guys usually add the artwork. Do you usually push a commit with the artwork so that you get attribution in the git history?

However you do it, if you want to, you could upload the animation or push a commit to a fork with the crab sprite in it, and I can integrate it into the pull request. Animating him would be very easy.

In the future me and my brother were even thinking the crabs might be able to dig into the floor to despawn and then dig back out in their spawn point if they got "lost".

I usually send a compressed file of the sprites by discord because I don't know how exactly the programmer will use and organize them. but i think i learned how to do the pull request i'm not so sure

[erlend-sh]

#417 is merged! 🤗

@zicklag could you make a final demonstration video of this for sharing on Twitter? The more square-shaped and close-up the better, preferably without the hats & shell, as we haven’t yet fine-tuned those attachments to look really good in-game.

[zicklag]

Sure I'll try to get a decent video made, hopefully tomorrow.