[enricozb]

I used to make animations with https://pivotanimator.net/ a lot as a kid, trying to make fight scenes like these. A sort of related thing is ToriBash, which is kind of a multiplayer 3D animation game where you fight each other by making decisions on which muscles to contract at each time interval.

Loved this stuff so much. I miss my summers off from school, where I would never think of a day gone as time "spent".

[mcpar-land]

if you liked toribash, also check out Your Only Move Is Hustle (or YOMI hustle) which is similarly 'turn based' but in 2d. Closest thing I've found to playable Xiao Xiao.

[kipchak]

You might also like 'Stick It To The Stickman' and 'One Finger Death Punch' 1 & 2.

[rl3]

>A sort of related thing is ToriBash ...

If memory serves, the sound effects were a fantastic touch on top of the multiplayer hilarity of that game.

Looks like there's still an active community around it today, based on a cursory YouTube search.

[nidnogg]

Toribash is awesome! I last checked it a year ago but it was still alive then [1]. Worth checking out still. People who were great at it back in the day were legitimately doing dark arts with the tools the game came with. I wonder if we'll have an era of appreciation and rediscovery for pre-AI software.

[1] - https://www.toribash.com/

[alansaber]

Yep, had Pivot on a disk. Countless hours lost making my own sprites, and I remember the joy of downloading other peoples sprites that were actually good

[avandekleut]

I remember spending hours and hours on pivot and forums like droidz.org which used to host animations, models, and forums. I even remember learning about "easing" and different "levels" of animation and collabs as showcased on darkdemon.org[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkqDoAYKG4A

[cyrialize]

I was just about to make the same comment! I never remembered the name of this software. Thank you so much for posting it!

[wpm]

I still have a bunch of .piv files on a CD backup I burned on my PC right before I switched to an iMac G5 in the summer of 2007. I should fire Pivot again and reminisce. If I recall correctly, they were absolutely crude and incredibly poorly done.

[josh-sematic]

This unlocked some good memories that have been sitting latent for probably 15 years or so.

[Hunpeter]

Oooh, I really liked ToriBash! I didn't play for very long for whatever reason, but I did think it was a creative and fun game.