The Adventures of Felix Fox

I think I’ve just had the most sluggish two weeks out of the whole time developing this. What pray tell have I been doing?  I’ve been fidgeting with Felix’s design again. I even went as far as to update the old game with a more accurate design so I’d have something better to work off. 3D isn’t very easy. Skinning is hard, animating is hard, and I still have very little idea what the heck I’m doing with the inverse bind pose. I’m almost certain it’ll jump up to  bite me in the neck later.

But ever since I’ve updated my sprites, I’ve been able to pick up the pace and it’s only a matter of before those problems are nailed down. Right now I’m attempting to finalize the skinning and animation. It’s hard to move ahead in-game when the model isn’t exactly moving right.

I haven’t filled in the eyes yet so Felix has the look I use in concept art.

Although a lot of my code is potentially cut and paste worthy, I don’t think I’ll be making that May release, maybe not even June. But of course, I made this pretty obvious over the past few months. The very essence of 3D coding is all so familiar yet riddled with things I haven’t quite put into practice. I’m attempting to place my peak quality in this so expect delays.

I’ll be moving ahead soon with a colored but non-textured 3D model and starting up textured level building.

3D Test Model from December

Artistic design has always been a critical hurdle of mine in terms of progression. With a seemingly endless capacity to try and improve on something, it’s as if  I can never finish. I can finally say I’ve finally got over the hump! I mean, sure, the model isn’t completely finished, and tweaks will be inevitable, but I’ve reached a point where I’m happy enough to move forward. I’ll probably end up thinning out the lower half a bit more later and the hands are blocks cause I really don’t know what I’m going to do with them yet.

I still have bone rigging, facial animation, and uv mapping but in my honest opinion the worst is over! How long this took wasn’t that my tool was hard to work with, in fact it performed brilliantly ; D, but the problem was I was unable to fully conceptualize the character in 3D which in turn caused a lot of revisions to take place. I really didn’t think I’d need reusable clay but I”m glad I got it!

After I rig the model and place it in game, I’m going to move back into the more advanced side of collision detection.

A message I can’t seem to get into my head. When it comes to art, I’m I hippie in a suit. I just can’t seem to get myself under control. Alas, more Felix heads!

Although I’ve been adding new functionality and learning how I will animate the face along the way, I feel to be stuck in time here. I hope to finally start on the body tomorrow if I can ever stop tweaking the head! I expect the head to change ever so slightly that only I notice the changes over time.

I’ve also been playing around with Zelda character models for fun, seeing as I haven’t used the obj importer for much. I might go as far as to rig one and put it in game one day. It’s a weird obsession of mine.

Still no clay, and when I’m waiting to finish something I’m usually careful not to delve into anything too big causing me to shift my focus. So I’ve been working with music again. The first song is the hardest for me because it sort of defines the rest of the songs and I’m finding it a bit difficult knowing there will be sections of the game where the player may move a slow pace. It’s been a weird process. In any case, when this is all over I’ll probably get into more of the advanced aspects of collision detection.