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[redlamp]

Related but unrelated. This dev log has kicked up my nostalgia and pushed me into a pet project I've been putting off for a while.

Raspberry Pi running Mini vMac running Dark Castle. Inspired by this blog post.

[dukope]

Player's Hand

Click for an annotated development timelapse

The player hand stuff is finally done for now. That wraps up the groundwork for all the major technical features in the game. From here it's hopefully just about filling in the content and dealing with the occasional technical hiccup.

At some point I noticed that the development of this feature followed the trajectory of an entire game. It started with an idea I was excited about, had a fairly rough implementation up and running quickly, then spent ages adding features, running into problems, and polishing the results. A sharp peak at the start, dropping into a long valley in the middle, and a slow climb back up to the end. Game development is a fractal.

The timelapse is over 30 minutes long so props to anyone that makes it through. Recording it kept me focused, but I don't think I'll do another timelapse like it any time soon. It's a lot of extra work to annotate and I personally prefer text and pics over video for explaining stuff. The way everything is a video tutorial these days drives me nuts.

If you check the

, you can see how bad the dithering looks when compressed onto YouTube. I think this is a serious problem so I'll experiment with ways to get that looking better. Maybe less contrast in the two colors, a special non-dithering mode, or something else that compresses less terribly.

[Quarry]

It seems like the hand doesn't have a "grabbing animation", will that be fixed because it currently looks like the hand is sticking to the doorknob, instead of looking like the smooth arms movements?

[jctwood]

It is wonderful to see how far this has come since I saw the original concept and title. The aesthetic approach is refreshing and to see it running on a pi is wonderful!

[kruxus]

It seems like the hand doesn't have a "grabbing animation", will that be fixed because it currently looks like the hand is sticking to the doorknob, instead of looking like the smooth arms movements?

Can't say that it bothered me that much. But maybe the way the arm points at the doorknob could be a bit more relaxed, it felt a bit stiff. But overall it looks really nice, and it would definitely work as is.

[Cloudiest Nights]

Looks good! The way the hand moves already looks great too!

EDIT: I think it looks fine without a grabbing motion, at least for now and in that clip.

[dukope]

Hah. I need to pay more attention to how many messages are on a page. That's not the first time I've posted at the bottom of a previous page.

It seems like the hand doesn't have a "grabbing animation", will that be fixed because it currently looks like the hand is sticking to the doorknob, instead of looking like the smooth arms movements?

The hand does blend from touching to gripping, but it's based on the palm's distance from the handle. I guess you'd call that blend a grab - the fingers close around the handle. When walking up to the door quickly, you won't see much of the touch frames and the gripping happens in just a few frames. I set it up like this to match how I grab a real door handle. I don't slowly grasp it; my fingers slip around it as soon as possible. In-game, it feels pretty good in practice.

But maybe the way the arm points at the doorknob could be a bit more relaxed, it felt a bit stiff. But overall it looks really nice, and it would definitely work as is.

There are no indications that an item is usable, the only clue that you can interact with something is seeing the hand point at it. Since it's actually functional, I figure it's better to make the pointing part clearer and give up some of the naturalness. You're right that it's a bit stiff though so I may tweak that balance a little bit later.

[dukope]

Hand Tweaks

Made a few updates already to improve things a bit:

• Added an intermediate "curl" animation between touching and gripping. This makes the fingers curl around the handle a little more naturally.
• Slow the player's movement down after they touch the handle. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. It always bothered me that you can zip around while the IK is gripping the door. Much better now.
• When gripping the handle, set a max speed for the blends so the hand doesn't snap closed. When releasing the handle, it's still only distance-based to keep the fingers
  from passing through the handle.
• Keep the elbow bent a few more degrees at its straightest configuration.

Result

(with a touch of slo-mo)

[Cloudiest Nights]

Looks better! It kinda almost looks a teensy bit robotic, but that could just be from how  you approached the door.

[Magnesium Ninja]

The way your arm stretches out to reach at items feels a little bit too straight, as if you're stretching your arm as far as the elbow can go.

I absolutely adore how smooth everything in that sequence is though. The fingers clenching and unclenching feels incredibly natural.

Keep up the good work!

[dukope]

The way your arm stretches out to reach at items feels a little bit too straight, as if you're stretching your arm as far as the elbow can go.

Yeah you're right. It's still bent 10 degrees at its straightest but the elbow is aimed directly away from the camera so you can't really tell. This is one of the issues with trying to get the arm to look ok with the FOV but also be able to interact with the environment. Normally your view weapons/hands can be in their own little world and don't need to reach out and touch stuff so you can mess around with forced perspective more.

In this case I think the tube-like modeling on the arm wasn't doing any favors. I don't think I can ever completely get rid of the "long pole" effect of the FOV but I added some detail and it helps a little.

[Rebusmind]

Don't know if it helps, but did you take a look at how they handled it in Trespasser? It's the only game I know with a similar arm controlling feature and although it was clunky at times, I really liked it back then.

[dukope]

Don't know if it helps, but did you take a look at how they handled it in Trespasser? It's the only game I know with a similar arm controlling feature and although it was clunky at times, I really liked it back then.

I played a lot of Trespasser back in the day and I think their arm is why you don't see hand+environment interaction much in games these days.
It was a fun game but probably for the wrong reasons.

The arm is fully automatic in Obra Dinn, which means I have more control and can hopefully make it look less like a long thin noodle swinging around the screen.

I'll go back and watch some TP vids though to see if there's anything useful there. Thanks for the suggestion.

[mushbuh]

Cool - Im assuming your ludum dare game was a test for this style?

Will you be using any other colors for effect in game (emotional effect - not like tinted yellow because of a yellow light)

Glad to see more games from you, can't wait to play this

[Magnesium Ninja]

Arm definitely looks better with more detail, and the slightly more bent arm + shading does wonders to make it look more natural!

[gamerzap]

The arm animation looks great, but I think the black lines on the hand look a little odd.

[ｍａｓｏｎ]

incredible shaders. great stuff man. I appreciate how political your games are.

[Actionman]

Awesome looking game so far man, really loving that 1 bit effect

[kleiba]

Now, this might make me a bit unpopular in this thread... but to be honest, I'm not quite sure yet what to think of the 1-bit style.

The thing is -- and I kinda had a feeling that it might come to this point -- I really love the stills you posted on the first couple of pages. They really give a feeling of nice pixel art, like this was an adventure game from the DOS era. But when I look at the animated GIFs, the pixel art impression somehow is lost. Right now, they really just look like some kind of filter applied to standard 3D rendering. I don't know how to better explain it... does that make any sense?

I can't really put my finger on what it is, either. Perhaps the resolution is too high? The frame rate too fluent? I can't tell really what exactly it is that kind of bothers me...

[DeadAlienCult]

Yo Lucas it's Andrew (Marquis)! Just stopping in to say I'm loving what i'm seeing here w/your new project. 

Can't wait to see more dude!