Thread by @proximity_sound

For the last part of my #gamedev journey, I’m going to detail the last thing I tackled before play testing - the opening logo!

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I knew I wanted something to catch the players eye when they first booted up the game. First impressions can massively impact if someone plays a game or not. For example, the clever reflection in the water of this opening really drew me in:
unairequejo.itch.io/elorri

I thought that the @WarpWorld logo emerging from the “portal” would be cool. They’ve used a similar animation in their branding, but how to pull it off?
@GBStudioDev has many cool features, but background animation is not supported (not yet at least).

I initially tried using the overlay tool to simply have the logo “wipe” appear, but it wasn’t convincing enough. Then I thought about the frame limits and wondered, could I actually animate this with sprites? Turns out I could!

First task was to create a layout. I took special care into the size of the logo and it’s placement. I could still use the camera to make a simple movement from right to left. I then created a grid to help me keep everything lined up correctly.

GBStudio uses 16x16 sprites, so I moved a “window” over 8 pixels at a time and copy/pasted that to new sprite sheet. In the sheet I also placed a circular overlay to represent the portal. This would render transparent in game, giving the illusion that the logo is passing through.

Now I placed the background without the “Warp” into a scene and placed 8 sprites lined up in 2 rows of 4. The idea here was I would animate it frame by frame through controlling when each sprite would appear and which frame they would render.

So “frame 1” made the sprites to the right appear first. Then wait for .1 seconds, then “frame 2” increments the sprite frame to show the logo moved 8 pixels over. “Frame 3” makes the next sprites to the left appear and increments the existing sprite frames.

Yes this was tricky to manage, and the end result still shows some errors when you play it back slowly or frame by frame, but I am quite pleased with the result. And the music? That’s my rendition of the “Papergirl” track that’s played every podcast.

So some pretty advanced animation is doable in GBStudio with a little foresight and some diligence. The game is now getting close to a stretch goal to make the next game! Check it out.

kickstarter.com/projects/warpw…