April 17th Weekly Update
Added 2016-04-17 07:45:09 +0000 UTCThis past week I tried to stay pretty busy, and got a lot of boring stuff done. So next week is onto the fun stuff.
I finished porting the new skeleton for Meridiana into unreal engine, and was able to transfer all the animations over. Because I ended up moving bones, I wasn't able to simply retarget the animations in Unreal. I was able to transfer them all to the new skeleton, and then tweak them as needed. This allowed me to go back and correct a few, and add motion to Meridiana's bag in a couple of them.
I also got Meridiana's new dress in the engine, with the APEX cloth physics MOSTLY working. To make it look best, I'm most likely going to have to change her bag when she wears that costume, but we'll see as I tweak it.
I had previously written a lot of detection for the enemies myself, and came to find out that Unreal actually had AI detection stuff built in. I took a break from Maya and converted everything over to use their system. This allows for a cleaner blueprint, and it'll probably end up being more efficient to boot.
I finally did some more animation for the Fish dude. He'll be getting a lot more animation in the coming weeks, but I knocked out his charm animation and basic death animation.
Regarding death animations, I do want to look into use ragdolls to try to make deaths a little more varied.
Now that he can be charmed, I can start doing the fun animations for him ^_-
Of course, as always I'd love to hear any comments, concerns and questions?
Comments
Mithos56, Great work once again! I really like the cute and playful charm animations, suits her really well.
2016-04-18 17:52:35 +0000 UTCThe new animations look great! I think you might have a good idea trying to use rag doll physics for the death animations. That would definitely make for a more dynamic experience. The new dress looks good in action! Did you mention that you're planning on leaving the old/current demo outfit in the game as well? Both look pretty great on her. As always, thanks for the regular and open communication with us! I support 3 other creators, and their communication isn't nearly as frequent and transparent as yours! Keep up the great work and I can't wait to see what you have for us in the next update!
Eric
2016-04-18 13:52:39 +0000 UTCYou could have her simply jump up behind him, sort of like a hug from behind, and kiss him on the cheek that way to charm him. That would still look good, and you shouldn't have any environment collision issues. Just a thought!
Eric
2016-04-18 13:45:41 +0000 UTCIt is but it's kind of hard to tell without panning the camera around/looking closely. There's overall less personality to it in my opinion. The goblin one feels a lot less fun, which isn't to say that it's bad. This new one is just better lol.
Snizzlefit
2016-04-17 18:16:33 +0000 UTCKissing the goblin on the forehead wasn't cute? :(
Mithos56
2016-04-17 17:38:23 +0000 UTCI had planned on using a quick camera cut to position them back to their start positions, but I honestly got so caught up in the animation I didn't think about possible environment. I think you're correct here, and I'll go back of the next few weeks and rework after the kiss to make it more compact.
Mithos56
2016-04-17 17:37:52 +0000 UTCI'm so glad you decided to go with something cuter for this charm animation. I can only hope a similar trend continues with future enemies.
Snizzlefit
2016-04-17 17:29:32 +0000 UTCStill love her new dress! Maybe if the bag causes too much trouble at her side, it could find a cozy spot nestled in the small of her back? The charm animation looks great! I love the amount of personality that comes through! But from a gameplay perspective is the change in position from her starting position to her ending position potentially going to cause trouble for stealth gameplay? She moves what looks like a good three or four feet to the right of her starting position, which seems like it could be frustrating in certain situations. It is a really nice looking animation though :P
Tinybone
2016-04-17 10:40:37 +0000 UTC
