Development

Today I tried skinning and animating a quick model I like to call Block Felix and so far everything has gone without a hitch! It’s almost surreal that I’m finally doing it in 3D. Currently Block Felix just slides across the modeling studio and I use the xbox controller to animate him. In a way, I’m preparing for the game engine. I’ll be using Block Felix for a while until I feel I can make a real model without needing to redo anything later.

Much of this probably isn’t impressing anyone, but for something I’ve wanted to do so long, yes, I’m going to make a big deal out of it! Everything I did in 2D was actually planned in 3D first. My whole policy was to think in 3D. I drew this  some time ago to get an idea of what Felix may look like in the city and how talk indications would be displayed.

I’m  probably rambling now, I think I’m just antsy to see how it turns out. Personally, I think this is going to to be quite a show.

For a while now I’ve been trying to add support for a lot of things but I’ve already crossed over into march and I’m still only on 1 tool. I’m much too far behind so I think I’m going to have to cut the experimenting short. Here are some features I was thinking about and my verdict on them.

UV Texture Mapping

With a little help from a document from http://limegarden.net/ I was very quickly able to import .obj files into my tool as well as understand how the obj file works. And if I can import a file I can just as easily export one. I plan to do any major texture mapping outside of my tool. The teapot to the right was done hastily as a test run inside Wings3D . I’ll need to add support for where the seams are textured but that’s a minor issue.

One good thing about the import feature, is I can download and use free models. Why didn’t I think of that sooner.

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Today I decided to try out my new tool and make a foot. Everything feels so sophisticated now : )! What you see is a foot made up of about 133 triangles. I don’t think there’s a good reference as to what my poly count should be so I’m really just following my gut. I kinda cheated in the image by having per-pixel lighting enabled but I wanted to get the full effect. This style of lighting is expensive and I’m really skeptical of its use.

Next is one of the main reasons I avoided 3D, texturing. When I make it out of that nightmare, I’ll move on to the entire body. Worst case scenario, I have to set the texture of each vertex 1 by 1.

The month is almost over and much of my plan has changed over that period. I was supposed to do the modeling tool and level editor both this month but I know THAT won’t happen. They’re so interwove with one another I doubt that makes much difference. Really though, the month has been all about tools and getting familiar with my programming structure.

My first assignment going into next month is to make an animated block man! This will give me a chance to familiarize myself with 3D models and animation. After that, I’ll probably begin swapping out the block man for a real model. I hope to have some representation to give an idea how characters will look in 3D next week. Quite honestly, I don’t even know yet.

I made this terrain yesterday using the old tool. The old tool had no indexing for terrain and that created a lot of waste. I plan to pull no punches towards graphics this time around and so file sizes are something I’m wondering about. Probably nothing to be worried about of all but if I can save a great deal of space simply by restructuring things, I don’t see why I shouldn’t.

I think to really achieve something commercial I may need to look into bump mapping or shadow maps and per-pixel lighting and definitely into more multi-texturing. Looks alone will get me nowhere but it most certainly help!

When I began using multiple viewports, I decided to look at an even older level editor (tandem tales), for a few thoughts. Then I looked at a few levels and decided to compare editors. I think its fair to say there’s a large line of improvement between them and that really didn’t hit me til’ now. I think if this pattern keeps up I may be able to do something of mainstream quality.

From the top would be the dream master editor, which was terrible. I could only work from the top view and the camera view was orthographic. The entire game was composed of boxes. The lower two are two versions of the same scene in the editors of the later games. Ironically I ended up taking it out twice for different reasons! Maybe next time ; D

I’m beginning to lag with the project. I’ve been incredibly bored with my current assignment. If you look on the screen, you may notice that my modeling tool is beginning to look a lot like the level editor I made, but under the hood a lot has changed. I’ve also began testing out multiple viewports within the project.

One feature I’m interested in seeing pan out, is the ability to play with the character while the level is being created in the world editor and dropping models next to each other for comparison or testing it out with animation in the model editor. I want a lot of integration to avoid the task of loading up the game a million times to see how it turns out.

These are programs I don’t plan on releasing but its what’s keeping me busy nonetheless.

The addition of bones has made things much more efficient but it somewhat complicates my current setup. I may actually begin using 3D models. My biggest fears is that they’ll look terrible or outdated as this would be my first time doing a real 3D model. I know I was suppose to be cutting back but things  have gotten so messy it may be easier to bite the bullet and move forward with 3D.

I’m going to attempt this and most likely I will end up using models in 3D but this is definitely one of those things that will dampen spirits if it doesn’t go right. It’s to early in the project to have a loss on my record. Even at its worst, I do think I could figure out some way to make this work.