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December 24, 2006

Animation 403 ()

by fluffy at 9:20 PM
This is one of the things I was working on last night (and am mostly done with now, though I need to draw a person in running and jumping poses): new 403 error page.

I also have a 404 one in the works, and an oh-so-cute idea for a 500 page (for those rare but sunny times that I break something). I can't do the 500 one until I'm back at home though since I don't have my Logic XSKey with me (and so I can't record the song for it).

(Yes, that is multi-layered sprite animation with parallax scrolling and procedural behaviors done entirely in DHTML.)

Comments

#8101 12/25/2006 12:07 am
Flash: overrated?
#8102 12/25/2006 01:20 am
zetawoof:
Flash: overrated?


Extreme annoyance. Smile
#8103 12/25/2006 08:31 am
Heh, I could have sworn I wrote "Flash is so overrated" as part of this post. I must have removed it or forgotten to put it in or something though.

Actually Flash is a lot better as a general-purpose animation tool. I'm just doing this in pure DHTML for shits and giggles. Also I could never figure out how to make Flash do anything other than be a really crappy vector graphics program.
#8104 12/25/2006 08:40 am
Though the one thing I don't like so much is that there's no way to do a gapless mp3 loop (at least not in <embed>), which is why I did the soundtrack as a 32KHz IMA ADPCM mono, which is about 128kbps but at that sound quality an mp3 would have been a lot smaller (and I could have done it in stereo without any appreciable size increase). The 404 jingle is much shorter so it's a lot smaller, though, which is also convenient since 404s also occur much more often than 403s. (And by that same token it'll be okay to have something fairly large for 500.)
#8106 12/25/2006 04:28 pm
Now it has Jumpman starring as 'the guy.' Now it's taken on a new meaning, as clearly he's in the wrong video game and that is why the bees must be attacking him.

It must be hard being a C64 guy in an SNES world...
#8107 12/25/2006 09:09 pm
da-hang. color me impressed.
#8108 12/26/2006 12:14 am
I have a mostly-complete 404 posted, but not activated for the site yet. http://beesbuzz.biz/error/404.html (go figure). There's a couple things left to do on it but they shouldn't take long.

(Tomorrow.)
#8111 12/27/2006 12:01 am
I added dying (or at least stunned) bees to 403, and the contents of the thought bubble to the 404, which of course only someone who knows anything about bee communication will get. Whee. Of course, my humor is generally nothing if not obscure.
#8112 12/27/2006 03:30 am
Hmm. The bees need a bit of extra practice at chasing the guy - I don't think 10 frames is quite enough time for the bees to follow the swarm leader.

Thoroughly amusing, though Smile
#8113 12/27/2006 09:07 am
They seem to sting him enough on my screen. But I'm also running just at 1024x768 (tiny laptop). I guess I could make the stinging another state variable, but I wanted it to act a bit more organically, where each one is an attempt and if they happen to attempt it when they've caught up with him they succeed. And sometimes four bees manage to sting him at once and he jumps WAY high. (I used to limit it to just one jump worth but then I found it was really funny for him to disappear off the screen for a few seconds and then land on the left.)
#8115 12/27/2006 03:57 pm
Actually, it looks as though the problem is a little different than I thought at first: the bees act as though they have way too much "momentum" in following the leader, and end up overshooting the targeted position a lot. (I tried pinning the leader to the guy 100% of the time, and they ended up circling him instead of attacking. Silly bees.)
#8117 12/27/2006 04:04 pm
It was a piece of art which utilizes basic flocking behavior. swarm.x and swarm.y are a location to follow, not a "leader" per se. The main thing is it's intended to be a silly toy, and not, like, implementing an ultimate evil stinging machine. Sure I could make them more efficient at tracking down the guy but it's the chase I care more about.