Castle Paradox

[ShakeyAir]

-----skip first paragraph if you don't want some off-topic blabbering------

Well first, let me say that The Aftermath is on hiatus. New maptiles and such have been made, and the contrast has been much increased, but I don't want to tease you with screens because, well it might seem kind of selfish, but I stopped working on it solely because of the 20x20 walkabout size. I can't create the world I want with characters that size. Plotsprites are possible but not worth it because the feature is apparently coming eventually? So I'll wait for it, and make maptiles from time to time.

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Ok, so I have been working with a friend who is learning Unity, a 3d game development tool.

We have a townsperson prototype, unskinned and blank, and I want to do a bunch of 'nondescript townsperson animations' first, so that when I make new files from the basic one i can just delete the animations i don't want (i am unsure if i can import animations made later back into the base file)

So, what are some basic townspeople animations?

I was thinking:

Idle
Walk
Run
Speak

with maybe 3 of each? (sad, normal, energetic)

those 12 animations would be the male ones, then 12 female ones. probably slightly different builds, and of course different textures.

does that seem like enough to make a town of perhaps 15-20 characters different enough?

of course the hero's walk and animations would be different from any of em.

[Moogle1]

Rather than just having some assorted animations, you should consider giving townspeople "business." A game that does this excellently is Illusion of Gaia for the SNES: townspeople there are going about various tasks, such as gathering water from a well or feeding chickens. (I don't remember if either of those were actually in the game, but you get the idea.) Nothing they did required all that many animation frames, but it made the towns feel more like towns.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[ShakeyAir]

i had thought of this, but i think that more specialized animations can be made when the npc itself is designed and its purpose in the game is decided. i want animations that will be used commonly enough to make it a good idea to make into the base mesh that all other townspeople will be based on.

but maybe it would be more fun, to ask what sort of stuff would you love to see the (unimportant storywise) townspeople in a videogame doing?

modern setting.

first thing to come to my mind is hanging laundry, haha.

[Baconlabs]

I've been working on this sort of thing lately in my own game. Some highlights of townsfolk activity included some people looking at posters and appearing to chat about them, a fellow watering plants, and children playing a ball game. Ordinary things that add flavor to the town.

But you said modern setting. Well, there's lots of modern settings. Are we talking rural college hippie-town, some ordinary cul-de-sac, or a downtown plaza or something?

It'd probably be better to actually go out into the setting you're imagining and observing what Joe Public is doing outside of work.