I REGRET Trying to Make a Souls-Like
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- čas přidán 30. 06. 2024
- Let's take a look back at my game's development. What initally started as 1 thing, has evolved and changed into something much different. sometimes that is good... but sometimes, you very much have to stick to a vision... which is not something that I've done in this project, and now... it is time to pivot before it is too late!
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A cool title would be the Little Warrior
Dude massive respect for creating all these things yourself. I also agree with you about soulslikes needing incredibly polished animations and enemy AI in order really look and feel good. And those two things also need to go hand in hand in order to work. I feel like a hack-and-slash is a bit more forgiving in that aspect. The animations still need to be pretty good, but I think you're going to need far less, since imo a soulslike also needs way more enemy variety than a hack-and-slash. And with every unique enemy you need unique animations for that enemy to be exciting.
I enjoy both genres and have tried creating a tiny soulslike myself and quickly found myself overwhelmed by how much didn't go to plan lmao. The game I'm currently developing is much closer to a hack-and-slash, which overall seems more accessible to me personally and also more fun, because progress feels easier to make and individual encounters don't need to be as tightly balanced. That's obviously just my experience, not an objective fact. Though it's still a ton of work either way.
Let's be real though, indie dev is like having 10 jobs at once, so playing to your strengths is key. Nice video dude!
yeah i can pretty much share that expirience. I find that as an indie (especially solo) dev, it's best to play to your strengths. if I wanted to just make any game, this project wasn't the thing to go for XD but by taking on something so massive I find myself being able to keep focus a bit better BECAUSE i'm doing like 10 jobs, so when i grow tired of coding, i can do animation, or level design, or some art. Slowly getting better at the thigns i'm not very good at (which means i'm also redoing a lot of things like 3/4/5 times..).
But with animation i think i have simply gotten to a point where I feel that i shouldn't rely on it being good. because it likely never will be actually good, so better to pivot than spend the next year making little to no progress on my wider skillset and the game as a whole, just to get better at animation.
I'm more of a programmer anyway, so the fact that i'm making an action RPG by itself is already crazy enough XD
making a souls like has been a pain... especially when you get to the saving system.
Making a Souls-like atm (although recreationally). My solution is to start off with animation asset packs from creators who have good base animations like WEMAKETHEGAME that have weight in the strikes. I can then tweak these animations by stretching out parts to emphasize windup, impact and follow through. Seems like you're going for doing everything yourself, which is intense. Respect!
One day I'll learn Cascadeur and learn to create some animations myself 😬
cascadeur will surely help a lot! I should also experiment with it a bit more.. it being limited to just human shaped armatures feels like it's sometimes holding me back a bit with what i want to do. I hope they can somehow manage to get their software to work more broadly in the future! that would be the best!!
@@thegamedevcave That is a good point. Most asset packs would also be humanoid so my approach certainly has limitations.
who hasn't thought about making a soulslike after playing a fromsoft game.
i honestly dont even like souls games very much personally to be honest XD (well, i like parts of them)
Nintendo obviously😂
Not sure if this would help, but I've learned so much from your channel that hopefully I can offer something useful in return. I'm an artist-turned-dev that has more experience on the creative side and I entirely get where you're coming from, and don't think you're too far from where you want to be in terms of animation - a basic foundational understanding will see you through 80% of the work and you can pick that up in a relatively short amount of time, so long as you know what you're looking for.
From the gameplay you've shared in this video, the largest issue I'm noticing is a lack of weight in the movements... If you watch the footage of KH, watch how Sora swings the Keyblade and how his body rotates/counter rotates to compensate for the heaviness of it even while in the air. Compare that to your tiny character swinging a relatively large sword and it almost seems as if he's flailing around a twig, like the swing at 1:08 for instance: the arm is doing a lot of the work but the body is relatively still for both the lunge and the strike, with that much momentum you should have a lot more energy being dispersed. The animation of the enemy at 1:17 has a similar issue where you have the charge-up and swing, but the body barely rotates towards the end of the animation so it looks like more of a love-tap than a murderous strike (the movements should be even more exaggerated for anything floating as they don't have a ground to stabilize themselves on).
As for visual effects, hoping shiny sparkles and visual cues (ie screen shake) will cover for a lack of experienced animation is kind of like adding details to a picture when the anatomy is off - it might help, but it's always going to feel wrong on some level while you have those foundational issues. You're doing an awesome job so far, and again I feel like you're far closer than you probably realize! Just try incorporating additional weight to what you have and you'll probably notice a massive change in the way things look and feel. Heck, if you have the room for it, you could also try replicating the swings with something reasonably heavy like a vacuum cleaner and you should get a good feel for what's needed... Just be prepared to apologize to any pets...
thanks for the insight! the current set of animations for sure needs a lot of work too, this is by no means acceptable to publish, but... the level of quality needed to make things work for a hack n slash style game is simply lower than a soulslike game. in a hack n slash game, the animation is just there to convery that " yes, you have pressed a button, now the character does something". rather than soulslike games where the animations very much are part of the gameplay mechanics themselves (not to say that that's entirly missing in a hack n slash, just that is it way less of a primary element).
so if an animation is just "okay" , a hack n slash game will get away with that a lot more, as the animations are just there to deliver impact, not actual player feedback (again, for the most part, of course they still somewhat have that function).
all that said though, again you're right that the animations as they are now need some work, pivoting away from souls-like into hack n slash isn't my way to call my work on animation done, it's just me seeing that even with putting in more work, i'm probably not likely to get to the point where they will work as a souls like at a 9/10 quality. instead, if i do a lot more work and get better, i may be able to lift these... idk, let's call them 5/10 animations? up to a decent enough 7/10 which will work for the satisfaction in hack n slash combat :)
the largest issue that i'm running into at the moment mostly is to do with the windup of the animations, a common issue with game animation as i understand it, if you spend too much time in your windup, your game doesn't feel responsive (my main problem with many souls games), but creating impact without anticipation is proving to be rather difficult. you're probably right though, i might need to compensate by creating larger body motion and larger motion in general, that's a real good direction to start experimenting in!
@@thegamedevcave Hey, my point was more that you're already pretty close to the level of quality needed - more than you seem to think based on your scoring! Those are great foundations to build off of and you already understand the stages of the process, so a little more insight and polish will likely take you where you want to be. I get the distinction between traditional combat games and Soulslikes but they're ultimately still just button-push-weapon-swish games with more methodical pacing and tighter hitboxes (saying this as a huge Soulsborne/Miyazaki fan, no disrespect intended)... You'll for sure be able to get away with more animation errors in a faster-paced game where the player isn't having to track movement but from what I've seen I don't think your level of competency is as big an issue as it probably seems. You really are doing a fantastic job, it's just hard to see sometimes when we're constantly striving to be better than we currently are.
Regarding animation wind-ups, I wouldn't be overly concerned as players typically adjust to the delay and learn to time themselves for the eventual payoff. KH has much more responsive combat because the system is designed to be fast with combos that can be chained into other abilities, while Soulsborne games have far shorter combos due to the stamina limitations; a long charge ahead of a heavy swing is acceptable as long as the connecting hit is satisfying (and you have the option to cancel out with a roll so you aren't a sitting duck). One thing you could try if you haven't already is to record gameplay of the weapons that feel best to you in your preferred Souls game and go over it in video editing software, timing each stage and replicating it in UE with the animations you already have to see how they "feel"... Copying things that work in general is a great exercise as you'll often find what you're missing when trying to reproduce something.
Having said all of that, speaking of "larger body motion"... I think a bigger potential issue in making a Soulslike will be the size of your character, lol. I mentioned tracking movement earlier and it's kind of hard to watch the placement of a smol dark object with little legs, players will end up just watching the weapon and the head while struggling to keep up with their world position (which is kind of crucial if you're also looking for that sweet Soulslike difficulty). I personally think that kind of character would be better suited for KH-styled gameplay but I've written enough of an essay already - either way, hope I shared something of use and that CZcams doesn't eat my comment again!
Animation is really hard, I respect the grind!
it really is! it' one of those things that's really badm, unless it's really good.. very little middleground to work with there
hi, i also make souls like game but literally just learned how to set control rig in ue5 so i'm extremely early in project. At the start i tried to make user interface and equipment but it was way harder than i though so i decideded too focus only on animations. its hard as well but i think thanks to many tools in ue it becomes way esier to learn then this damn user interface( i realy hate ux). I hope that if i show good animations and i will master it people will be more optymistick about this projekct and i will find people that would like to help me. Plus i think i have super fresh idea for this genre soo people will be more intrested in helping me, from desing on paper site i spend like a god dam motnh. Btw great viedo
After playoäing a single non fromsoft soulslike i have conceded that it is way harder than it seems. Those guys are incredible
really a team of insanely talented people that I have the deepest respect for!
You should give Cascadeur a try, it really does make animating easier.
i've tried it before, and i'll probably try it again to improve the animations (because a lot of my animation still needs improvement regardless!) I have struggled a little at times though to get it to work with my armatures so i need some more experimentation to see if I can get it to work.
For anything non humanoid, i can't rely on it anyway sadly.
@@thegamedevcave Ah yeah, well the Auto-Posing only works on Humanoid Skeletons made a specific way. However, the Physics Tools and the Ballistics still work on Non-Humanoid Rigs although you may need to learn to rig them yourself. There are a few videos that show how to do that though. Their rigging workflow is a bit odd I'll admit. I've only rigged things manually a couple of times but It's a really great tool so I've decided to start spending more time on the side working on getting it down better.
@@unrealdevop true! there are a fair few reasons to switch to cascadeur aside from just the auto posing. like the physics, unbaking animations and being able to see the trajectory of a bone (seriously, why do blender and unreal have such a hard time showing that? it's a super useful tool!)
But i also very much like being able to rig and animate all in engine, being able to update something, save it and instantly try it out in gameplay. Makes tweaking animations a lot less of a pain and since i am pretty bad at animation, i need to do a lot of tweaking XD
so i'm personally a bit stick between the 2 options, unreal and cascadeur.
Also because for a lot of character i'll want to have some rigs in unreal anyway for possible real time IK. It's a tough choice to make on which animation tools to use for what
@@thegamedevcave Yeah I agree, animating in engine is a lot more convenient and I've wondered the same thing....like why don't Blender and Unreal have Ghosting and some of those other tools? They are very helpful.
I'm making a souls like game too. 😅
hopefully things are going better for you than they were/are for me at times XD
@@thegamedevcave it's been a year now since I started. Same as you, I also make devlogs for my progress. So far so good. ☺️👍
Have you tried cascadeur?
that'll surely help with parts of the issue but isn't a full replacement for being able to make good animations for a whole game.
@@thegamedevcave Thats fair
The truth is you will need animation ether way. :(
The good news is though AI animation is just a few months away.
Which is something I can't wait for as I am to trying to make something like a souls like game as well and while I can do everything ells including particles I just suck at animations lol.
you need animations either way yeah but the is a huge difference in the detail of the animations needed. if youre doing slow readable animations, the animations need to actually be good, well crafted and follow a bunch of artistic rules that, i know they are there i just suck at implementing them
With hack n slash you need to animate your attacks still but they dont need to deliver nearly as much animation since theyre not the central gameplay mechanic and there is a fair bit of effects covering up any rough bits of the animation.
@@thegamedevcave You should try Cascadeur.
i have, and i plan on experimenting more with it in the future too. But it's not a fix for a lack of talent in animation in general. it can help with posing, and some with physics. as long as your armature matches what it expects, a humanoid figure.
I'm experimenting with tricking it into allowing me to stretch that a little and maybe let it work on my character models, who in general dont have hands or feet for instance... in a lot of cases also don't' have legs. And there is a fair few characters that dont' resemble a humanoid shape in any way, so for those i'm out of luck if I need to rely on cascadeur.
but at least for my player character, i need to redo a lot of animations anyway, so there it might be worth my time to make it work with cascadeur!
@@thegamedevcave Yeah I have spent many an hour in cascadeur myself. Sadly despite the many hours my hand animations look like crud...
And your most likely right AI animation will be limited to bipeds in the beginning. Hopefully in time they will expanded though. From what I understand once a training method is established it is easy to add new data but who knows...
Greetings. I’ve been watching you for a while.
I’m working or rather, we’re working on a game implementation. What a multiplayer Rougelike ‚inspires with a bit of fall guys and is a little dark souls inspired and from many other games. We are a larger group is now six people in number. Some of us take this as a hobby project and some as a ‚life task‘
I would be happy to tell you more about it if you are interested and maybe there will also be questions that apply to answer.
Greetings from Bavaria (Germany)
Animating is pretty difficult, though.
it really is :(
Aside from souls like or not you should not write off the impact and importance of good combat. People often emphasize the difficulty level as a top factor in why games like souls are good. I remember I was about to beat the first God Of War on hard and I thought "let me start over on god mode"(it was enabled because of my friend's memory card) because I though I was getting really good at the game. One second into the new game I was dead. Another 10 deaths in, I was really getting sick of Kratos scream about the depths of Hades and I remember thinking "wow you have to literally almost never get hit!" and also "wow I actually suck at this". Now this game that I was about to beat 10 minutes ago was a totally different experience where you have to learn the visual and auditory cues each enemy performs before their varied attacks and dodge, block or counter(with a timed block) and know the appropriate time for each, only attacking once there is an opening between your enemies' attacks. Now you start to not only be more immersed but you start to have a feeling that you actually earned your victory through involved and skilled combat based on not only reflexes but observation and anticipation of your opponents.
You can still achieve that regardless of having elaborate animations and also don't have to rely on difficulty to get the same feeling. Mike Tyson's Punch Out on the NES has a very limited amount of animations but you still were able to learn each move and how and when to counter or dodge them. In the spider man games when you fight, you have visual cues from the spidey sense and from slight movements before certain attacks but you also have other assists like auto facing your enemy that make combat easier while still feeling dynamic and involved. Of course we are not on the NES and a spider man game with only robbers to fight would get boring pretty fast so there is a middle ground to find.
Certainly animation still need to be good! Hack n slash with all its fancy particles isn’t a substitute for good animation but what “good animation “ means for either genre is a pretty different standard of quality and I am simply not going to get to the point where a souls like will work. In hack and slash, an animation’s purpose is to create a feeling of impact and action. In a souls like, the much slower animations also need to actually convey much more gameplay info like timing, and a fair part of the game balances comes from the animations and their speed. That means that the animations need to be readable and generally also are slower. With slower movement comes more attention to detail, which is not something I should be investing time in, my attention to detail is better served in an aspect of the game that I can actually deliver good results in
Dude you just want to work on something a bit more abstract and experimental, something set in platonic space or something -- even if that means niche
it's not so much about having a wide reach vs being niche, it's more about playing to my strengths and avoid things i'm bad at
@@thegamedevcave Precisely, here's a challenge: a game that would be made only of special effects (spawned on skeletons for the player part)
@@flymacseamus3474 i did see a game dev do a video like that a while ago, where everything was a particle system. it's kind cool actually, i might try it as a practice run to improve my VFX skills.. good idea! thx!
@@thegamedevcave Hope that ends up in a set of videos!
I've come to the conclusion that game genres are nonsense - kind of like music genres. Every game you ever make, no matter how different from each other, will invariably be referred to as either Soulslike or RogueLike, I guess because these are words that people hear a lot, so they just repeat them with no rhyme or reason.
a genre is mostly just a combination of mechanics.
like "roguelike" for instance. that could be the binding of isaac, a bullethell dungeon crawler or slay the spire... a card game. Roguelike itself only describes the format of a game, it by itself is meaningless but when we describe slay the spire as a "roguelike deckbuilder" now we have communicated the basic needed info about this game to let people know what it is about. of course not with all the ins and outs about how the game functions. But someone who has never seen the game, will now know roughly what to expect.
Genres are a marketing term, not a game design term (for the most part) I'd say. they're used to communicate and often will need more than 1 genre label to really tell you much about a game!