PolarBearLeLe in Game Dev: The Animations of Immortal Sword

仙剑奇侠传四 ( Immortal Sword Four )

Today i will talk about this Immortal Sword (仙剑奇侠传) game series which most people doesn't know about O(∩_∩)O~

Overview

Immortal Sword is a very famous PC offline RPG game series from a Chinese game company called SOFTSTAR. SOFTSTAR are making Immortal Sword since 1995, the story of the game series are set in ancient China with traditional Chinese culture and myth as a game background. All games that made under the same title are connected to each other in the storyline. Today I will talk about the Immortal Sword Four that published in 2007, a very good 3D RPG game and the last game made by Shanghai SOFTSTAR (Shanghai SOFTSTAR combined to Beijing SOFTSTAR and still making Immortal Sword series) using RenderWare 3D graphics rendering engine. Immortal Sword Four is a 3D Turn-based game, the animate component are Cinematic Animations, Conversation Animations and Character Animations.

Cinematic Animations

The Cinematic Animations occur throughout the game during major story when character touch the storyline, the Cinematic Animations in the game are mixed both 2D and 3D key frame animation and really short. The characters and backgrounds are all 3D models with different camera angle, character movement and character facial expressions to make an animation scene to show the main story, the Cinematic Animations are small movie but really short.

This animation is opening scene for Immortal Sword Four, allow the players what happened and make them curious that what really happen in the story.

Conversation Animations

Immortal Sword Four is Turn-base game, so there are a lot of conversations in the game, and the Conversation Animations are reacting only with story NPCs, this animation is based on the same background with the game, with additional character movement in the same location, character 2D facial expressions picture beside the text box and character to finish the Conversation Animations. This animation is in the games without load a Cinematic Animations, so this animations doesn’t have any 3D facial expressions, SOFTSTAR perfectly combined 2D facial expression picture with text and 3D character movement to show the story, when player read the story and click next, the character in the game will react and load character movement with camera angle change to finish the Conversation Animations as a Cinematic Animations.

The first have are Conversation Animations that occurs before fighting the boss, after 2:50 is the battle scene. You can see the combination between the 2D graphic and 3D movement.

Character Animations

Character animation occurs when player walking around in the map and in the battles. For every character they have walking and running, and the movement when enemies run towards you. The battle animations are combined 3D movement and 2D graphics to make the effects.