Frame Rates

[cheese_phantom]

I was recently thinking of animations and a thing came in my mind.
The higher the number of frames you use to animate a certain action, the smoother this action looks. This means when you have two warriors which do the same act; by changing the number of frames per second that make up their act, you could make the action of one look more hasty and "mechanic" and the other one look more "floating" or calm.

Imagine a game like Pac-man where you have to escape from some chasing enemies. Animating the escapee with more frames per second might make him look like he walks slower, while the chasers that you animate with a lower number of frames per second would look like they walk faster since their steps would look more mechanic. But actually both advance the same distance per second. This might add to the fear of the player since he might feel he isn't as fast as his chasers.

I wonder if you have used such things in your games before, I mean playing with the number of frames to give the character a certain "personality". Or is this something that each animator knows and I just discovered something that everyone out there knows?

[Christian]

Everybody knows that (everybody that has made a game before), but its good that you are growing in knowledge :)

[mahlzeit]

I have never used animation rates in that manner before. Usually I give the more significant sprites (i.e. the player) more animation frames than less important sprites, but this is just to save some effort. :)

[soniCron]

Everybody knows that (everybody that has made a game before), but its good that you are growing in knowledge :) Let's try to be a little more helpful here. Just because you know it doesn't mean "everybody" knows it.

@cheese_phantom: In my (somewhat limited) experience, it's usually best to get the walking animations looking as natural as possible. For example, if the enemy walk animation is running much faster or slower than the character is actually moving, it can look as though he's sliding across the floor. However, animations that don't imply an actual physical connection to the game world, like the rotating lights on a marquee, can often be used to increase or decrease the sense of urgency in the player's mind. You just have to be careful that modifying the animation's rate doesn't cause artifacts.

[Ska Software]

Silent Hill 4 deliberately slows framerates for certain cutscenes. I don't really like the effect, I think it can look better in movies--where you know it's deliberate--than on computers, where your first thought is "I can't believe my graphics card can't handle this!" Because once the game emphasis shifts from the game world to the world of hardware and money and optimization, even if its a subconscious, split-second affair, you lose the element of immersion.

This probably also looks better on PS2 because you know with PS2 the designers have perfect control over cutscene framerates so any change must be deliberate.

A little psychology there. :)

[dntoll]

We use (almost) the same thing to do "slowmotion" in TimeBreaker, but we manipulate time deltas instead... So by multiplying the time elapsed with some value before using it to animate thing we can slow or speedup time.

;) Check it out in next version of TB, iteration 27 will be released tomorrow...

[cheese_phantom]

However, animations that don't imply an actual physical connection to the game world, like the rotating lights on a marquee, can often be used to increase or decrease the sense of urgency in the player's mind.

"Sense of urgency" is exactly what I am talking about. So it's not so much recommended to play with avatar or NPC framerates as it might disturb the overall natural feel of these animations and might be a risky thing? Instead play with other things in the environment.


...its good that you are growing in knowledge :)

It really is; I am really glad to discover certain things by myself, even if everybody already knows it.

But mind you, revenge is sweet. :) I'll keep that sentence for the future. Don't give me a chance to use it against you; I will. (hysteric laughter) :D

(Btw, soniCron, I don't think that Christian really wanted to tease me here, since we have this learner-teacher dialogue with him since a while. I think his response was based on the background of one of my other threads where I stated that I am a beginner and his remark was built upon that former dialogue between us. But I am also glad to see that there are people around that won't hesitate to defend the necessity of mutual respect. I must really say that this is a very friendly and caring community, in many aspects. I feel lucky to be here.)


Silent Hill 4 deliberately slows framerates for certain cutscenes.

I think you talk about the overall frame refreshment rate. I think that's a bit different from the animation frame rate I talk about. But general frame refreshment rate is of course a method to use for same purposes.
Overall frame refreshment rate sets also the upper limit of number of frames I can use for an particular avatar or NPC animation, right? I mean technically that must be so I think.



Well, the thing with frames came in my mind when I watched a documnetary on film history today. They were showing some fragments of the Lumiere Bros that have been shot with 78 fps. Very smooth pictures. Then when they came to early US cinema (before even Beverly Hills knew that it will be center of the movie industry) framerate had been dropped to 24, sometimed 16 fps. And now everything looked gaspingly or sporadic. And I thought if they did it on purpose to make the slapstick movies more "slapstickish" maybe it would help in certain situations for games. And I was wondering if anyone out there did some experiments with that, and I wanted to know for what sort of effects in particular.

[electronicStar]

I was recently thinking of animations and a thing came in my mind.
The higher the number of frames you use to animate a certain action, the smoother this action looks. This means when you have two warriors which do the same act; by changing the number of frames per second that make up their act, you could make the action of one look more hasty and "mechanic" and the other one look more "floating" or calm.

Imagine a game like Pac-man where you have to escape from some chasing enemies. Animating the escapee with more frames per second might make him look like he walks slower, while the chasers that you animate with a lower number of frames per second would look like they walk faster since their steps would look more mechanic. But actually both advance the same distance per second. This might add to the fear of the player since he might feel he isn't as fast as his chasers.

I think you are mixing up "frames per seconds" and "frames of animations" which are two different things , according to your FPS you'll have to create more or less frames for your characters' animations.
If your game is running at 50 FPS and you have a character animated for 1 second, you are not obliged to draw 50 frames of course.
The more frames of animation for each character, the smoother it will look but you must not over do it. More animation doesn't always add more "personality", do you remember Jar Jar Binks?