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[Olsen]

ahoy chappies.  Thanks for your support, once again.  I shall be posting some lovely updates this weekend.  Got myself into a whole heap of anims this week that are queued up to be implemented as well as some major developments on the core mechanics to get people into the thick of the action sooner into the game. 

[Olsen]

SHIELDY SYSTEMY

Nice chunk of time spent on pulling up the various shield colours and their relationship with the attacks.  Tomorrow I'll work on calling checks as to whether the right colour is being held and taking a chunk out of the health if not.

G'night Saturday!

[wthit56]

Man! The animation and art style is so awesome. And it's great to see how this develops. Keep up the good work!

[Olsen]

SHIELDY DISCO + OBLIGATORY FALL ROLLS TO SHOOTY BANGS

So I got the colour system (3 for now) communicating with the burst emissions.  Was super fiddly to send collision messages from particles but it's there in a basic form now.

Aaaand fall rolls and run rolls implemented and some tracer fire brought in aswell, not in this gif.

All in all a productive weekend.  Now imma rest for a bit before the dreaded work week.

Lataz!

[KaiserCVR]

Man, that mechanic looks like it could be so much fun! Can't wait to see what you do with it. The effects are looking great, and the animations are buttery smooth...

This is gonna be absolutely incredible! 

[Olsen]

Man! The animation and art style is so awesome. And it's great to see how this develops. Keep up the good work!

Man, that mechanic looks like it could be so much fun! Can't wait to see what you do with it. The effects are looking great, and the animations are buttery smooth...

This is gonna be absolutely incredible! 

Cheers guys.  Reworking the idle anims when John's got his gun drawn right now.  Needs more energy, currently looks like he's going to sleep.  Also throwing in some random idle variations.  SOOOOOOON.

[Voltz.Supreme]

Yep, looks pretty awesome!

[Olsen]

THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH IDLE ANIMATIONS

New gun drawn idle + random variations to cycle.  Think i'll stop at 6.  Wish I could go straight up EarthWorm Jim quantities of idle anim though.

[oldblood]

Awesome. You've got really solid animations throughout this entire devlog. Could be a staple of the game so embrace it, going that extra mile with the animations is the kind of stuff that really sells the experience.

[Olsen]

Awesome. You've got really solid animations throughout this entire devlog. Could be a staple of the game so embrace it, going that extra mile with the animations is the kind of stuff that really sells the experience.

Cheers man.  Animation has been my day/night job for most of my adult life so I might as well put it to good use.

[FK in the Coffee]

Loving this!  Picking up on some Kentucky Route Zero vibes in this one.  Animation/art style is absolutely stunning so far, and the movement's looking super fluid, so I'll definitely be keeping my on this devlog.

[Olsen]

Thnx Coffee.  Kentucky really blew my mind and was a major factor in pushing me toward game development.  In it's aesthetic I saw a polish that relied on painting texture with light, sound and movement.  I'm a dire texture artist so that, on-top of learning an engine, kept me at bay but as soon as I saw what was capable without much painting, I jumped on it.  The lo-fi flat shaded meshes and silhouetted shapes also give me a nice canvas to drop some striking neons and dynamic lighting that will become more prominent as the game moves forward.

Tron: Uprising's use of light and neons was also a notable influence.

[Olsen]

POST UNITY 5 BLUES

So with the drop of Unity 5 personal I made the decision to have a massive overhaul of the animation and control systems.  It was coming at some point due to fundamental things I wanted to change in the way the player controls movement.  Namely changing velocity setting on stick input, to physics force adding. Also driving core grounded movement via stick position over velocity reading.  It's resulted in a much tighter feeling of control overall and I'm super happy. 

I'm also taking the opportunity to clean out the absolute MESS of a animator window as it was getting ridiculous. (See below) Into sub state machines, which I should have done ages ago.

Now we're dealing with acceleration and deceleration along a curve instead of stepped increases in velocity I can work on some relaxing transition anims.

I love transition anim'ing as they really bridge the weight that gets lost through such systems.  But it's a fine balance keeping everything responsive.  Unity 5's interruption hierarchy really helps with that and I've had no issues I can't overcome from tweaking things.

All this adds up to, not that much for you guys but I hope to smash through this redesign to get onto more content adding for your eyeballs.

Have a good week!

 

[Olsen]

PROBUILDER IS A BLOODY REVELATION

Thanks to Willy Chyr for a forward onto the guys over at Protools, I discovered Probuilder.  It's rudding fantastic and allows me to bash out levels lickety split.  Above is a super barebones wip of the first environment we start in.  I'm trying to get the entire prologue play-throughable over the next few months in a real ugly form and the ability to build and test my 2D mockups without touching maya is a godsend.  Currently testing out transitioning inside and outside the house and masking off rooms/environments as you see them.

UNMESS ANIMATION SYSTEM

Redoing the entire anim system took longer than I thought but it's 95% done (see above) and I'm finally back into building toward the game again, which feels great.  Ditching the orthographic camera and opting for a long lens has given me so much flexibility for framing sections on more of a screen by screen basis.  The ability to dolly up at some of the vistas is proving hella fun.

Have a good weekend all.

[ChrisN]

looks freaking great, following this thread!

[EnragedCoder]

Wondering if you're from / have been to Massachusetts?  There's a Somerville near Boston

I am aware of the town but it doesn't really play into my use really.  I'm from the UK.  The original reason for John's second name was a place holder for a scottish name I just threw in there.  Then later down the line I did some research and found the origins lay in a Knight of William the Conqueror's and an Irish minister in 1690 who fled to Ireland.  Both who had stories that held values to the character I was writing.

My girlfriend says it's too American a name for a story set in the UK but I kind of like that it encompasses a place, a person and history that relates to the character. 

Long story short, it fits, so I kept it.

Interesting, the first thing that came to mind when I read the title was a British setting. Not sure why, but I guess there's that UK show "Midsomer Murders"... anyway, to me personally, it feels a lot more British than American.

The game looks amazing, by the way, really looking forward to playing this when it's finished!

[Olsen]

Cheers guys!

@Enraged Yeah it seems to have a 50/50 split on to what it brings out of people nationality wise.  I guess that's a good thing.  It has always felt quaint village to me.

[Cristiano Vitorino]

Awesome animations! Really smooth. Interesting mood. I'm curious to see how this will turn out, following.

[Skippi]

I have not followed the devlog for two weeks ..
OMG, this game is crazy !!!! The Best animations ever!

[Pixel Noise]

+1 to the list of people who are in love with the color/art/animations styles! Oh, and the premise/story is pretty darn interesting, too! Definitely following this.