Skip to main content

New project

 Time to talk about new project! We started about seven months ago, right after finishing (or abandoning) a combat prototype. It is a single player, 3d, isometric RPG, nothing original or innovative. Quite a big task, and I will explain why right now.

First of all, we are not veterans. Many of the solutions which might be obvious to some experienced developer are not so for us. For example, I asked several times how to implement equiping items in player: clothes, armors, etc. As far as I remember, the solutions are a few:

1- The WoW solution: armors are a texture, you simply change the material in the body part. You can add extra decorations by attaching geometries. Everybody wants to do this, specially the artists.

2- The simple solution: you put the armor, or whatever, on top of charatcer, attaching it to a bone, or something. Useless for animated things like leggins or gloves.

3- The replacement solution: you switch the body part by the piece of equipment. The equiped part must have the same skeleton used in the character body. It is the best solution, and the code isnt that hard. 

I tested the last one in Unity. The 3d artist produced a player model and an armor set, and everything worked. this time, for Godot, I implemented the code in a couple of hours, two years ago (Godot 4 was not even alpha, I compiled my own copy). Yet, when I told the new artist, the first thing he told me was: "thats impossible, you cant make edges fit, nobody does that, Wasteland 2 doesnt does it that way. The correct way is to put everything on top of player.". After a couple of weeks I managed to convince him that having one skeleton playing animations, and adding 1/2 whatever more skeletons (one per item) and making them follow the same animation was a recipe for disaster (two months later I had to explain him again that it was a big mistake).

The other problem: nobody in the team reads the design docs. Or the script. Technically, I am the design doc and the script. They ask me when they want to know something. 

The bigger problem: we are all volunteers. You think a team of four artists and three programmers is big? Well, I have written 90% of the code. Most of the time, the programmers are busy. Or the game doesnt works and they cant test it and continue working. That wasnt the idea. I am a mediocre programmer, I was supposed to write 10% of the code, design and write. 

Godot 4 is quite incomplete. I have serious issues with navigation and obstacle avoidance, but cant find if it is my fault or engine's fault. We cant use Unity, by the way, or Unreal. 

We have power cuts. The two main artists have a contract with another team and sometimes they work one hour in the project, per week. They think the project is too big.

And despite that, we have achievements! The guys are good (check my twitter and LinkedIn profile for some images of the artists work), they just cant believe they can do this project if they spend more time on it. All the time they complaint that we are not enough. 

Anyway, take a look at our work. We will be releasing videos at some point.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Isometric camera with Godot

Took some effort and some of my sleep hours, but at last, I made it. Here is my first videotutorial: implementing an isometric camera in 3D, with Godot. Useful if you want to emulate the look of old classics like Fallout 2, but with some extra features. Considering that my voice is not so nice, and my english pronounciation is even worse, I also added texts to help you underestand what Im saying. You will also notice some background noise, but cant do anything to solve that. Any suggestion is welcome. Expect another tutorial soon.... or sor tof. This time, will be about my AI system.
Post a Comment
Read more

Unity3d isometric camera tutorial

I had pending this since a month ago, so Im forcing myself to post it today. The goal is to provide a fully functional isometric like system that you can use with few or none modifications in your own game. So, lets get started. Start Unity3d and in your scene, add an empty GameObject, we will call it target . Create a camera object and drag it to target to make it child. The result looks like this: Now select Camera and set the values to this: For a true isometric like feeling, ortho projection is essential. You could use perspective, but it is not the same. Play with Size to suit your needs (we will be using this later, when implementing zoom). Now, lets create an script named CameraController, or whatever, and drag it to target GameObject. Lets implement scrolling, the easier part: go to Update() and add the following code: if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.W)) {             dir = UP;         } e...
Post a Comment
Read more

Testing animation retargeting in Godot 4

 We have finished the project and it is time tostart a new one. This time, I have convinced the team to work on a combat  prototype and try Godot 4. After a month, Im quite pleased with the progress. Specially, we have applied animation retargeting, which is a new feature in Godot 4. In previous project, our main artist devised a clever way to reuse animations, but now we have a native solution. Our first attemp didnt worked, but I found that remapping the armature starting by the feet solved the problem. Weird, isnt it? By the way, you can see the prototype here . WE are keeping it public to let people learn from our mistakes. And, if you need some animation retargeting tutorial, this is the guide we used:
Post a Comment
Read more