How many frames do you use.

Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/How many frames do you use.

Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#1]
I sorta asking this in another topic, but felt it actually would benefit from a topic only on this subject, it's something I am interested in finding out myself, and it might help others..

Question is simple , for your html5, flash, mobile, xbox games written with Monkey, how many frames do you tend to use on average for your work.

I am wondering if there is a standard number used, or a coincidental number used by most people, or if its all over the place.

I personally use as few as possible and it's normally specific to each sprite, anything from 2 upto 10 on average tho I cant recall needing more than 10 frames for myself.

What about you lot ?


Shinkiro1(Posted 2012) [#2]
2 frames might feel a little bit to fast, so anything >= 3 frames is ok i guess.
Also it's a question of how you want your game to feel. Oldschool games mostly have 2 or 3 frames per character only.


FelipeA(Posted 2012) [#3]
I usually use from 10 to 20 frames depending on the sprite. I really like fluid movements. I really like the retro stlye mixed with wel executed animations like prince of persia.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#4]
Yeah Prince of Persia , flash back and another world , had really good fluid animations, anyone know how many frames they used?

Animation's never been a strong suit for me, but its something I want to improve which is a reason for this topic.


John McCubbin(Posted 2012) [#5]
Prince of Persia and Another World both used rotoscoping, Another world used polygons as opposed to sprites so the number of frames would be largely irrelevant.

If you want fluid animations you are going to have to go for around 15 frames minimum, but then it depends on what you are animating, stuff like super mario world for example used 3-4 frames, and what with that being one of the most revered games ever, having so few frames didnt hinder it :P


slenkar(Posted 2012) [#6]
Golden Axe has good graphics and its spritesheets are pretty small:

http://spriters-resource.com/genesis/goldenaxe/sheet/29548


Jesse(Posted 2012) [#7]
when I did the shadow of the beast demo on the average it used 6 frames per animation 6 for walking, six for turning etc Also all of the animations included from different sources were also six frames.
http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/Community/topics.php?forum=1027&app_id=27
Of course if you need to represent some fast motion in the animation you can believably represent it with even 2 frames.
Prince of Persia used between 5 to 16 frames per animation (I have the sprite sheet) depending on the activity. the most being the climbing up a ledge.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#8]
Id love to see that sprite sheet ..


slenkar(Posted 2012) [#9]
http://spriters-resource.com/nes/princeopersia/sheet/13543


Jesse(Posted 2012) [#10]
Shadow Of The Flame


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#11]
ah those are nice, always nice to see how other things get animated, their good for referencing purposes.


Nobuyuki(Posted 2012) [#12]
it all depends on the number of frames I think are needed to make something look good. If you're not using smears and swipes to "blur" fast animation movements, your characters are gonna look pretty static without either making everything use very few frames (so people think it looks oldschool or chibi-ish), or adding a lot of in between frames. Problem with the latter thing is that even at high framerates, this often looks really weird. If you're doing that, you might be better off using motion tweens, puppet warping or hierarchically rigged multi-sprite things.

I'd say 5 is a good number for most movements. Being an odd number, it forces you to be a slight bit more creative in selecting the positions of the character on each frame compared to a 4 or 8 frame movement.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#13]
I actually like to use an Odd number normally as I like having a fixed start, middle and end frame and then fill in the gaps.

Not sure if thats how others do it but I find it easier that way, normally.