Minor additional animation touch ups

[-Variant]

A bit of a different post, this time. This is very similar to my original post about Hound/Varg eating animations, which you can find here!

I'm making this post to bring attention to some of the lesser looked at (or in some cases, outright nonexistent!) animations in the game.
These are some things that aren't exactly high priority or required, but I feel would make for wonderful additions to the game's polish if introduced.

I can start with one that's personally bugged me, and that'd be hanging spider dens lack of a fitting entering animation.
I was never fond of Spiders playing their eating animation to enter dens, but I could live with it. Something that bugs me is that spiders bite the floor and vanish entirely when entering hanging dens.

I've personally been hoping to see them get animations where they ascend to the ceiling. They've got some for lowering themselves, ones for returning would make for a less awkward exit, and give them a flair of personality. 

And now, these are far less awkward, but I've been looking at rabbits a whole lot lately. 
I think they could use an animation for ducking into their burrows. They sorta just vanish!
It doesn't look so bad in motion, but when they're resting on top of their den and you approach, they really do just poof out of existence!

(And fun fact, they've got unused animations for poking their heads out of their burrow and peaking around. I just thought that was neat. They're a bit funky looking, though.)

EDIT: Another one that someone suggested was the unused fishing animations for Puffins!

And an honorable mention that I feel didn't entirely fit into this criteria but wanted to bring up regardless.

Spoiler

Moleworms! It's always bugged me that they dug around in dirt piles when on hard surfaces like wood and marble, and more importantly, wooden docks.

I've always envisioned them as being able to walk around above ground when dropped or walked over hard surfaces. 
I made this very rough mock up for fun. This'd be a lot of work, but still something I'd love to see one day, even if entirely just flavor!

Oh, and someone suggested they could come out like this during the rain too. I'd love that!

Spoiler

Oh. And Spider idles. Or a lack thereof. They literally have no data in their idle animations so they sit there static like a PNG.
Which is more of a bug than anything. I get actual spiders don't dance around but these are funny 4ft tall 6 legged walking stomachs. 
Striders have idles and those look gorgeous. Grah! It hurts!

 

 

[Scrimbles]

Rabbits could be a bit awkward with an extra animation, a split moment is all you would need to kill them before they disappear.

Could just make them untargettable I suppose.

 

It could be neat if talking animations were added for Pigmen and Bunnymen, since they kinda just state at you in an idle pose.

[-Variant]

14 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

Could just make them untargettable I suppose.

Thought about this! You can easily catch them by running at them at an angle so I figured it wouldn't be a big deal, but if needed they could become untargetable in the burrowing anim.

14 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

It could be neat if talking animations were added for Pigmen and Bunnymen, since they kinda just state at you in an idle pose.

Ahaha I hadn't thought about this before, this'd be funny.

[ADM]

The way Dwellers and Striders go home bug me a bit indeed, I would love to see them zipline back in the roof !

 

To add to the list, I think there would be more fitting, existing or easy to cook animations for mobs with houses like Pigs, Bunnymans, or Merms so far only touching grass one last time before hitting the sack :

(could be much better, but a start)

The houses are also way too unfortunately static if you look at it, which is a shame knowing their door can be animated and do have some anims too.

Would be sweet having anthropomorphic mobs clipping in their houses then going behind the door, surely worth it knowing Klei wanted to give them more depth, which can go in so many ways other than what they just said, but at least we know the intention exists.

Quote

We could also see a possible update that maybe adds more interaction with the Pigmen, Merm and Bunnymen where they became kind of cult followers to the survivors. There’s some fun room there where they have early benefits to the players, but then start to become problematic.

(if you want to read it all)

[-Variant]

1 hour ago, ADM said:

(could be much better, but a start)

Oh this'd be wonderful! I admit, I wanted to bring them up but I wasn't sure how to make it look nice. I forgot about this anim!

[HalfEnder776]

1 hour ago, ADM said:

The way Dwellers and Striders go home bug me a bit indeed, I would love to see them zipline back in the roof !

 

To add to the list, I think there would be more fitting, existing or easy to cook animations for mobs with houses like Pigs, Bunnymans, or Merms so far only touching grass one last time before hitting the sack :

(could be much better, but a start)

The houses are also way too unfortunately static if you look at it, which is a shame knowing their door can be animated and do have some anims too.

Would be sweet having anthropomorphic mobs clipping in their houses then going behind the door, surely worth it knowing Klei wanted to give them more depth, which can go in so many ways other than what they just said, but at least we know the intention exists.

Fun fact: In DS when a pig exits it's house a night (you destroy it or set it on fire I think) then it plays the entering house animation.

It happens in DST too but only sometimes...

 

[Guille6785]

I think the lack of an idle animation for regular spiders has a certain charm to it but I'd like to see the other animations

[Primalflower]

3 hours ago, -Variant said:

Oh. And Spider idles. Or a lack thereof. They literally have no data in their idle animations so they sit there static like a PNG.
Which is more of a bug than anything. I get actual spiders don't dance around but these are funny 4ft tall 6 legged walking stomachs. 
Striders have idles and those look gorgeous. Grah! It hurts!

I agree with everything else in your post, but I really hope that spiders stay the way they are. It's just like how spiders are in real life! when they aren't actively moving, they're almost entirely still. as someone who loves spiders a lot, I find the spider anim (or lack of) incredibly charming!!

[lowercase skye]

echoing the spiders sentiment! i love them being perfectly still like real spiders. everything else sounds really nice though and would be great for atmosphere

[Leonardo Cox]

Spiders aren't really still or "spider-like" in most of their other animations or ds media though. They're pretty lively and expressive and I think idle animations, even simple ones, would just make them more consistent with everything else.

[Primalflower]

well, it's different when it's an animated short/trailer. those are like, cartoons. it'd be weird, and perhaps pretty liable to criticism, if an entirely still creature was a focus as often as spiders tend to be in a cartoon, as opposed to the wilderness that don't starve the video game tries to ambiently portray. I think both of these concepts can exist in their own separate worlds like they already do.

[-Variant]

I didn't intend for Spiders to be a highlight of the post, just wanted to bring them up again. Oops.
They play idles on Webber's menu, I think that fits for a perfect middle ground between the games and shorts. Just a dash of both.

EDIT: Another view. I genuinely think this'd be the perfect blend. I'd ideally want both parties happy, it's nice and subtle, too!

[Leonardo Cox]

17 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

well, it's different when it's an animated short/trailer. those are like, cartoons. it'd be weird, and perhaps pretty liable to criticism, if an entirely still creature was a focus as often as spiders tend to be in a cartoon, as opposed to the wilderness that don't starve the video game tries to ambiently portray. I think both of these concepts can exist in their own separate worlds like they already do.

Its not just the shorts though, they're pretty cartoony when they get hurt, scared, die. Webber rework and any new bank based on spiders (striders, scorpions - which gave them idle animations) reinforces that they're expressive compared to real spiders.  I think the animation shown in willow's post would be just fine for spiders to be consistent with not just themselves, but most other living things in the don't starve world.

[Primalflower]

4 minutes ago, Leonardo Cox said:

Its not just the shorts though, they're pretty cartoony when they get hurt, scared, die.

None of these are what i'm referring to! Spiders are very animate in real life whenever they're doing pretty much anything, but when they have nothing to do, they stay completely still.

53 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

It's just like how spiders are in real life! when they aren't actively moving, they're almost entirely still.

 

[Mike23Ua]

This thread is a cleverly disguised version of that older thread where people wanted enhanced ambience & atmosphere to DST. I suppose that adding eating animations to Hounds & Vargs sparked this hope even further.. but anyway I’ll just re-post the things I said in that old thread.

First of All, I’d like to see each of the weather seasons & maybe even times of day effect different mobs, in different ways for example: At night Beefalo Sleep, but Spiders Roam, Spiders sleep in their nests during the Day.

or how Rabbits fur goes from brown to white in winter, Small stuff like that.

I loved all the little details in Hamlet, such as Piko Squirrels scurrying up trees.

Id love to see Spiders react & behave like they did in the Hallowed Nights trailer crawling up and down their nests & fighting over territory. Etc.

[-Variant]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

This thread is a cleverly disguised version of that older thread where people wanted enhanced ambience & atmosphere to DST.

Noootttt quite my intention with the thread! Whilst yes, I'd dearly love an atmosphere based update, the ones I mentioned are supposed to be very minor, quick pick-up fixes/changes they can do that'd have no major impact but would do wonders for the atmosphere. 
Moleworm honorable mention aside, I think requests for more intricate interactions and animations is better in its own thread!

[Leonardo Cox]

1 minute ago, Primalflower said:

None of these are what i'm referring to! Spiders are very animate in real life whenever they're doing pretty much anything, but when they have nothing to do, they stay completely still.

In my post I mentioned that future iterations of the spider bank like striders and scorpions got idle animations. My general point is that them being still is becoming more inconsistent with not just about every mob in the game, but also themselves. Even if we were to dismiss those two examples tho, I think its worth bringing up that even spider queen has animated idles. 

If it were to try and maintain a sort of "creepiness" for what the old DS world was, I'd agree back in the DS days that they should've kept their still idles. But now that we've seen DS evolve by adding several new creatures, some with horror aspects that are conveyed well even with klei's current animation style, I'd say that they just look off and rather outdated. 

If its just because its "charming because irl spiders do it", I think there are better ways to charmingly reference irl spiders and still have them be consistent with the world they're currently in. 

[Primalflower]

22 minutes ago, Leonardo Cox said:

In my post I mentioned that future iterations of the spider bank like striders and scorpions got idle animations. My general point is that them being still is becoming more inconsistent with not just about every mob in the game, but also themselves. Even if we were to dismiss those two examples tho, I think its worth bringing up that even spider queen has animated idles.

If its just because its "charming because irl spiders do it", I think there are better ways to charmingly reference irl spiders and still have them be consistent with the world they're currently in. 

I could make a few arguments against this, namely that striders and scorpions are both repesentative of a different kind of animal to what i'm referring to even if they are very similar, and the same sort of thing could be about spider queens, or that scorpions, striders, and spider queens were all added after spiders, so one could argue that the fact that spiders have remained the same the entire time through those as well as the entire webber rework may lend some kind of an idea that spiders having no idle is in some way intended or accepted by the devs, or maybe that for one reason or another, this trait is fairly distinctive of spiders since nearly no other mob in the game acts this way, and that taking that away wouldn't be world shattering, but would be kind of sad to remove something that is unabashedly "this mob" about this mob, but I don't really care to make any of these arguments, please don't respond to them. I think that absolutely, if klei were to implement spiders today and now, there would absolutely be a chance that spiders would have some sort of minor idle anim, that's just sort of sounds like them.

the truth is that i like this thing about this video game and i subjectively would appreciate if it stayed in, even if it might look janky to others. I don't appreciate it in a "this is a creepy thing" sort of way, I don't think spiders or this trait of spiders are very creepy, i just like it. I think it can exist perfectly well in tandem with X or Y other way to reference real spiders that klei could add.

[Cassielu]

I think one more problem that needs to be solved now is that Varg need a walk animation for their new wandering behavior.

They now use its run animation and look purposeful and aggressive instead of wandering aimlessly.

[Baark0]

I'm still hoping for 4th player sprites. Currently the left and right sprites for your character are identical, which means despite your character always holding items in their left hand, it'll be held in their right hand when facing left. This is much more noticeable when using skins like WX's unfinished skin, or just about any skin with asymmetrical hair. 

[Creatorofswamps]

9 hours ago, -Variant said:

Another one that someone suggested was the unused fishing animations for Puffins!

Thanks for mentioning that

9 hours ago, -Variant said:

Oh, and someone suggested they could come out like this during the rain too. I'd love that

This is done by real worms, so it would be smart and appropriate (they could also use crawling animation on solid cavities in which you can't dig)

9 hours ago, -Variant said:

Oh. And Spider idles. Or a lack thereof. They literally have no data in their idle animations so they sit there static like a PNG.
Which is more of a bug than anything. I get actual spiders don't dance around but these are funny 4ft tall 6 legged walking stomachs. 
Striders have idles and those look gorgeous. Grah! It hurts!

It's not just painful, it really knocks out the atmosphere!: for example, Webber comes to base with a bunch of spiders and they just stand as if stuffed animal with straw 

1 hour ago, Cassielu said:

I think one more problem that needs to be solved now is that Varg need a walk animation for their new wandering behavior.

They now use its run animation and look purposeful and aggressive instead of wandering aimlessly.

I completely agree

[Jakepeng99]

9 hours ago, -Variant said:

Spoiler

Moleworms! It's always bugged me that they dug around in dirt piles when on hard surfaces like wood and marble, and more importantly, wooden docks.

I've always envisioned them as being able to walk around above ground when dropped or walked over hard surfaces. 
I made this very rough mock up for fun. This'd be a lot of work, but still something I'd love to see one day, even if entirely just flavor!

Oh, and someone suggested they could come out like this during the rain too. I'd love that!

  Reveal hidden contents

Oh. And Spider idles. Or a lack thereof. They literally have no data in their idle animations so they sit there static like a PNG.
Which is more of a bug than anything. I get actual spiders don't dance around but these are funny 4ft tall 6 legged walking stomachs. 
Striders have idles and those look gorgeous. Grah! It hurts!

 

 

Edited 8 hours ago by -Variant

They should dig through your boat and  ake a leak.

[Creatorofswamps]

10 hours ago, -Variant said:

A bit of a different post, this time. This is very similar to my original post about Hound/Varg eating animations, which you can find here!

I'm making this post to bring attention to some of the lesser looked at (or in some cases, outright nonexistent!) animations in the game.
These are some things that aren't exactly high priority or required, but I feel would make for wonderful additions to the game's polish if introduced.

I can start with one that's personally bugged me, and that'd be hanging spider dens lack of a fitting entering animation.
I was never fond of Spiders playing their eating animation to enter dens, but I could live with it. Something that bugs me is that spiders bite the floor and vanish entirely when entering hanging dens.

I've personally been hoping to see them get animations where they ascend to the ceiling. They've got some for lowering themselves, ones for returning would make for a less awkward exit, and give them a flair of personality. 

And now, these are far less awkward, but I've been looking at rabbits a whole lot lately. 
I think they could use an animation for ducking into their burrows. They sorta just vanish!
It doesn't look so bad in motion, but when they're resting on top of their den and you approach, they really do just poof out of existence!

(And fun fact, they've got unused animations for poking their heads out of their burrow and peaking around. I just thought that was neat. They're a bit funky looking, though.)

EDIT: Another one that someone suggested was the unused fishing animations for Puffins!

And an honorable mention that I feel didn't entirely fit into this criteria but wanted to bring up regardless.

  Hide contents

Moleworms! It's always bugged me that they dug around in dirt piles when on hard surfaces like wood and marble, and more importantly, wooden docks.

I've always envisioned them as being able to walk around above ground when dropped or walked over hard surfaces. 
I made this very rough mock up for fun. This'd be a lot of work, but still something I'd love to see one day, even if entirely just flavor!

Oh, and someone suggested they could come out like this during the rain too. I'd love that!

  Hide contents

Oh. And Spider idles. Or a lack thereof. They literally have no data in their idle animations so they sit there static like a PNG.
Which is more of a bug than anything. I get actual spiders don't dance around but these are funny 4ft tall 6 legged walking stomachs. 
Striders have idles and those look gorgeous. Grah! It hurts!

Thank you for raising these topics, yes it's not as global as getting new bosses, but updating Missing animations is really important for this game!

Also, at the expense of animations, Grass Gator is very lacking in mouth animations (it's like he's sewn up) he also has a yawn animation, but it happens without an animation of the mouth and eyes!

Besides, it seems to me that the animation of the Varg bite suits him better considering that he is an allegator

[-Variant]

2 hours ago, Cassielu said:

I think one more problem that needs to be solved now is that Varg need a walk animation for their new wandering behavior.

Oh! I missed this earlier, YES PLEASE! If you suggest this, I'll totally back it. I'd love this.

1 hour ago, Baark0 said:

asymmetrical hair

The devs themselves have said a few times that this is out of our current reach right now. The animation engine isn't able to support asymmetrical skins, as sprites are flipped! You can see this in rather everything, actually. There's been quite a few threads about these skins in the past!

I think they might be able to figure something hacky out with all the new FX stuff they've been doing in recent years, but I think even then it'd be a lot larger of an undertaking than a scope even I could imagine. I've ditched a few character designs because of this limit, I'd love to see it tackled one day.

51 minutes ago, Creatorofswamps said:

Also, at the expense of animations, Grass Gator is very lacking in mouth animations (it's like he's sewn up) he also has a yawn animation, but it happens without an animation of the mouth and eyes!

OH YES! Thank you for reminding me, this has always bugged me!
Their animations are super awkward when they don't open their mouths. I would love a biting animation since they don't have a trunk or horns, too!
It'd make them feel way more like gators!

EDIT: Before I forget!

@ADM Had set up a test to show the animations earlier, I think they look super nice!

[Cheggf]

Awesome moleworm mockup, very cute.