Poll: Universal Character Sprite Animations

Poll Question: How much of a focus during A.3.1’s development should be placed on making the character sprites be less static and more animated per the text progression?

Premise

As A.3.1’s two main development objectives are an artistic focus on preexisting and new character sprites and the expansion of the Observation Mechanic, I am wary not to go past those ambitions for the reason of appropriate time management; however, I present a potential solution to a perceived problem that I’ve been diagnosing to find some sort of treatment for.

Through the position I hold as a developer, one of the glaring problems I personally find when playing through the current build of Goddess Maker is that the character sprites are a bit too static in the face of the abundant text, resulting in a feeling of missed potential, that I had hoped the aid of later developed visual character transformations would fix; however, I realized that the events themselves may take the player some time to get through, and although the text is intriguing, reading may bore those with a more visually anticipating taste, so I feel I must include more going on in the visual department.

Taking from my own experience reading visual novels, and excluding something like Muv Luv Alternative that was uniquely ambitious, this static issue of character sprites in visual novels seems to somewhat be resolved by giving the character sprites multiple poses to cycle through, eye blinking, and/or simply using 3D models with adjustable bones.

Of course, while some of these can be incorporated, more leaning to the multiple poses example, Goddess Maker lacks the budget nor the time to stack the development of poses in addition to the transformations, due to the venture primarily consisting of one man’s passion to make an ascension to godhood fetish game in a world without one, so I’m left with coming up with a more creative solution in order to use the most of what I develop.

Therefore, to compensate for the dilemma of the character sprites being too static, but with priority of development focused on transformation sprites as opposed to cycling pose sprites in mind, my brainstormed solution involves utilizing image morphing and manipulation aided with time frames and sound effects in order to convey a simple but visualized character expression. 

If implemented, the ideal would be to replace much of the current character action sound effects with this aesthetic feature overhaul and to apply it in a universal fashion so that all character sprites are embedded across the board with this potential expression of manipulation to their image file.

And although, in the scope of the current build, the partner character is most to benefit from this added feature given her majority screen time, this is a good feature nevertheless I feel to increase the cinematic appeal of Goddess Maker’s overall experience, but of course still reserving that special treatment I plan for the partner character’s higher status within the project through the extra effort on her sprite work and with her soon possessing a unique character sprite format that allows the player or herself in-game to have her eyes and hair to be able to change color, per the Hair Coloring Comb and Eye Dyeing Light manufactured items, adding some more diversity to a playthrough such as waking up to a blonde hair partner character, as opposed to the default white one, complementing the “All” in Allia.

In terms of coding, it’ll use the character’s inactive parameters when calling the expression that displays the character on screen with the first variable opting the type of animation to play, and the second variable being reserved for defining a characteristic of said animation like camera position or if the animation should keep looping or not. 

This, of course, being done through Ren’Py, the game’s engine, with executing it I know would be possible. I just need to learn it and then advance my skill in order to do it well, as even simple image morphing animations need to be done right and naturally in its fluidity else they would look awkward and amateurish to the player.

One of the delightful aspects in terms of time management if I choose to implement this feature is that it won’t involve rewriting the code for all the characters’ appearances, only simply adding a command for when I wish an animation to play.

The drawback of course is the time involved to implement it and with A.3.1 intending to be a quicker developed release, such a feature would likely add to development, especially in the perspective that this feature should be of low priority consideration since it just adds to the aesthetic, and potentially ruining the experience for those who prefer characters to appear static, though I suppose I could always add a global toggle to opt to disabling this feature. 

One fear I have is that I don’t want the inclusion of the animations to make the game's experience feel too cartoony, since the game often goes through serious and prestigious subject matter, though I feel there is a place for more subtle animations, as opposed to the more wacky ones paired to the events where it’s more appropriate to feature.

Anyways, here are some ideas I have for animations that can be applied with image manipulations:

-A Zoom In motion to certain body parts like the top of the body, center of the body, breasts, etc., or to display a character being closer to the player’s POV, complemented by A.3.1 development of uniforming the character sprites such as having a universal y-axis height, in order to help with a more proportionate growth/shrink scaling amongst the various characters.

-A Bounce Effect, for moments of excitement and/or bouncing boobs like when a character’s breast attribute is greater than a certain size, and so then a breast bounce sound effect could be played.

-Head Nodding, for moments of making note of a character’s understanding of the player character’s selected response or in agreement with another character’s point.

-A Nervous or Demented Twitch, for situations where characters undergo a feeling of distress or derangement. 

-A Relaxing Exhale, for subtle situations where a motion to signify an exhaustive release is appropriate.

-A Startle Shake Animation, for moments when the unexpected happens, like going accidentally to the partner character’s room at night.

-Chair Wobbling, for subtle expressions per the scenes where a character is behind a table and is sat against an object.

-A Dopamine Hit, like for scenarios when a partner character is full of herself and incurs a boost to her mental state, and be applied to intelligence gains as well.

-Anxious Jittering, like from the physical response of drinking an energy drink or out of scenario embarrassment.

-A Depressed Exhaustion, like when a character is feeling down, perhaps paired with a cold illustration pop-up and the appropriate associated sound effect.

-Height Stretch and Recoil, an animated morph that stretches a character sprite vertically for scenarios of unproportionate growth and subtle stretching exercises.

-A Deliberate Ground Shake in response to a giant character’s action, that is not to be lumped with the ordinary and more natural ground shake that is intended to play natively per scenarios where a large size difference is present between a displayed character and the player character. Which also factors into the intentional design choice of having the visual novel-styled gameplay focusing on one character at a time so that the background environment is used to bolster the character’s display and the player’s experience of making giant characters feel like giants.

-An Aggressive Expression, for when a character snaps with anger and projects with a motion of force.

-A Knockout Fall, per actions that cause the displayed character to consequentially collapse to the ground and the inverse happening when the fall to the ground occurs from the player’s perspective.

-Sparkles, a simple overlay animation with a sparkle sound effect for when a beauty trope is called to attention.

-A Blush, for moments of romance, either by a reddish coloration on the face, else overlaying the full screen with a tint of red.

-Bloating, for scenes where fattening up the width of a character sprite like in response to an experiment failure is appropriate.

-Blur, like for when the player character is dizzy or nauseous so that the character displayed on screen appears off due to the player character’s sickness.

-Sick Tint, like shading a character sprite with green to signify a bad reaction to an experiment.

-An Idea Bubble Pop Up, or other emoji-like pop-ups that appear to express the other character’s inner thoughts or provocations.

-Call Lines, like for situations when someone is on the phone and the other person on the line causes pop-up waves to display and animate to signify that they are speaking off-screen.

-A Psychic Aura, as although god forms mandate alternate sprites given the apotheosis, for simple expressions of psychic powers through soul growth I feel can simply be represented by an outline of animated aura, perhaps with a secondary characteristic of color based around eye color or whatnot.

-Teleportation Swaying, for characters with the psychic power of teleportation to appear and disappear in a demonstration of their power.

-Off the Ground Levitation, for situations where a character with psychic powers is expressed floating off the ground to aura farm off the player’s reaction.

-Floating Object Telekinesis, for another perspective of psychic power expression to aura farm that involves bringing up debris-like objects up into the air.

-Pocket Dimension Body Insertion, for scenes when a side of a character’s body vanishes because it was inserted between the folds of reality.

-Humping, for when a character projects themselves in a passionate power-propelling rhythm, also being a type of root animated motion that can help progress on what I have in mind toward the development and implementation of some of the sex mechanics as described in this earlier post I wrote: 

https://www.patreon.com/AscensionSimulation/posts/goddess-maker-118311396

Anyways, the poll’s purpose is to gauge the need for such an aesthetic feature and if I should or should not pursue it, based on your experience with Goddess Maker’s lengthy text and if this sort of solution is something you feel will be beneficial or not, as I care to help bolster the quality of your time reading the novel elements.

Also from the community, I wish to hear comments detailing:

- What do you think of this aesthetic feature?

- What ideas you have for other simple animations that can benefit the progression of text?

- Which of the simple animations should be prioritized in the development?

- Should there be more of a visual emphasis to differentiate when someone is communicating as opposed to when they are silent, like being slightly lightened up when they are talking?