Reduce animation choppiness

[Trevor]

I'm making a fighting game similar to Mortal Kombat (1992) and as such I used stop-motion photography for the sprites. Unfortunately, some of the sprites don't have enough frames and look choppy while animating - changing the delay helps, but it's not enough. I know this isn't the fault of either LOVE or AnAL, but I was wondering if there is something that can be done programmatically to improve the look of these animations.

[kikito]

"Choppiness" is a very generic term. What do you mean, exactly? Can you create a .love file showing the issue?

[retrotails]

I'm making a fighting game similar to Mortal Kombat (1992) and as such I used stop-motion photography for the sprites. Unfortunately, some of the sprites don't have enough frames and look choppy while animating - changing the delay helps, but it's not enough. I know this isn't the fault of either LOVE or AnAL, but I was wondering if there is something that can be done programmatically to improve the look of these animations.

Maybe have in-between frames made up of the frames before and after blended together with love.graphics.setColor(255,255,255,128)

[Trevor]

The main game is now 15MB because of the sprites and music, so here is just one sprite animating. Perhaps the delay could be better optimized, but I think it gets the idea across.

[Trevor]

retrotails, that sounds like it could work, but I don't know to implement it. Can you provide a small example? or a more detailed explanation?

[retrotails]

retrotails, that sounds like it could work, but I don't know to implement it. Can you provide a small example? or a more detailed explanation?

I've never used an animation library other then my own, so I don't know if it's possible with AnAL. Also this is nearly seizure inducing so its not that great.
edit:
Change love.update to this to see the effect more clearly

Code: Select all

timer = timer + dt/8

[Trevor]

Nearly seizure inducing indeed. Thanks for the help. I guess there isn't anything that can be done for a poorly made sprite. It has an interesting effect on the animation, but it doesn't appear to improve the smoothness. Thanks for suggesting slowing it down to see it more clearly.

[kikito]

The only thing I can think of for making it "less choppy" is making it smaller.

While smooth animations are always a great thing to have, a small number of frames is quite noticeable on big animations.

Here, have some inspiration:

http://www.fightersgeneration.com/characters/dan-a.html

[Trevor]

Thanks kikito, where possible I'll reduce the size.

[vitaminx]

There's a free application called SloMo Video for Windows and Linux:
http://slowmovideo.granjow.net/download.php

I've tried it once and it does a *very* convincing job in calculating frames "in between" and producing a smooth animation.