Tree action: level 2... Help!

[InCreator]

I'm still struggling to animate top-down trees.... last fight ended with a victory and custom generator.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=41752.0

This time, it's about 50 levels harder: palm trees!



Now, animating this one will not work with simple leaf clumps moving over each other.
I have no idea how to make palm sway in the wind. Anyone?

Also, how's that sprite? Did I miss something major?

[Wonkyth]

It looks rather feathery, perhaps you should try making more leaf and less gap.
This would also make it much easier to animate.

[Anian]

It looks rather feathery, perhaps you should try making more leaf and less gap.

Indeed, most palm trees have several layers of branches, but you can just make this thicker/fuller and it'll look bette.

About animating, have you tried just distrorting the image, like set a line that's vertical to wind direction and then the part closer to the wind is compressed, while the part on the other side is stretched out a bit...maybe I'm just being lazy cause I'm tired.

[Wonkyth]

Actually, I was talking less about the number of leaves and more about the leaves themselves, but good point anyway.

[Mad]

I guess you could do it quite similar to the way you animated your trees, with which I was very impressed btw, since it's all voodoo to me!

But instead of letting the single clusters of leaves move independently, you could let the palm fronds twist around the central axis (stem), and then let them sway back and forth again depending on the direction and strenght of the wind.

Since my ramblings are hardly intelligible, let me try and illustrate:



I don't know how difficult this would be to implement on your existing tool, but I think the effect could be quite neat.

[InCreator]

Mad:
That's an excellent idea: I think I'll animate tree leaves to rise and lower a bit (basically stretching), and dynamically make whole thing rotate and offset a bit depending on wind direction and strength. I made something similar with rain on temperate maps -- the point where raindrops aim, moves from windless center depending on wind. Worked fine!

Will try this out tonight!

Anian's suggestion - make it act like a floor mop in the wind - would be of course much more realistic, but it's impossible to do it with changing wind direction, unless I model each leaf as a vector with 4-5 points and make fully dynamic.

...which would be cool to do, but overkill for just a room decoration (honest reason is that I suck at physics). There's a game to save resources for!

[Ryan Timothy B]

It doesn't actually look like a palm tree though.
Here's some google images:





It's dense in the center, with the odd opening between the branches/leaves (whatever they're called) here and there. Add some yellow and orange here and there.


That video you posted, is that your game? Looks good. Is it made in AGS by any chance?

[InCreator]

* That's my game. Very early video though, looks a lot better now.
* Not AGS.
* Had to redraw palm anyway (thanks to previous replies here), thank you for images.

[Chicky]

Inc, that video is bloody great. Don't give up on this! If the palms twisted as Mad suggested that would look spot on. I suggest adding the yellow highlights seen in Ryan's examples.

[Alun]

It doesn't actually look like a palm tree though.
Here's some google images:
...
It's dense in the center, with the odd opening between the branches/leaves (whatever they're called) here and there. Add some yellow and orange here and there.

That all depends.  There are many, many different kinds of palm trees.  (Well over 2000 species.)  The pictures you've shown are of one particular kind (well... the top and bottom pictures may be different species; I'm not an expert), but there are other kinds of palm trees that do look closer to what he's drawn.

[InCreator]

It worked quite nicely, I think. Pity I cannot show animation, since most of it is dynamic...
I like new trees better too!

[Anian]

Not to nag on the brilliance of this screenshot, but aren't those tanks, shouldn't the palms be a bit smaller?

[InCreator]

duly noted, thanks.
I'm imitating height with size and shadow offset, but that one's a bit extreme, I agree.

[cianty]

Yes, the sizes are a bit off but the screenshot is beautiful nonetheless! How about zooming during the game?

[Ryan Timothy B]

Too bad you don't have alpha channels on the palm trees. It would match everything else like your explosions and such.

[InCreator]

Pixel interpolation is universal option for this game and anti-aliases everything anyway.