Monday, October 8, 2012

Mystic Framework

It has been a very busy week but things are getting better with the Mystic Framwork animation system that will power my games. This is the logo for the framework for the XBOX360 and Windows.


the test play will start soon to verify that all modules are working correctly so I can focus later on puzzles and animations for Elem3ntz! game.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Inverse Kinematics...

It has been a very exciting month, decided to take a little break and see what the world has to offer, and end up playing a few games in rush mode so I can continue development quicker, I got attached to FTL (Faster Than Light) and think it is a nice game beat it with most ships but got tired after 6 days of playing it, then moved to TorchLight2 and I wanted to see what's the difference between Diablo3 and Torchlight2, I just rushed through it, and finishing it during the weekend, and it is worth every penny, but I feel I lost a lot of its content by just playing alone and just rushing to the next dungeon or area without reading much, just kill and go to the next star, didn't spent a lot of time trying to find what skill to use or what gear to use , I just kept upgrading as long as the stats were higher. I only played Diablo3 during the Beta and I didn't feel things were right, compare to Torchlight I think things are a little bit better but I do not recall much of it, not many memorable battles, maybe I should have played slowly trying to digest the content... maybe I spent too much time with Diablo2 in the past and T2 just went through a flashback, anyway, finally spent a few days doing XBLIG playtesting of many great Indie games, looking at other's master pieces inspire me to do better.

So, now back to Elem3ntz! and the animation editor, about a month I got stuck trying to find a nice way to implement Inverse Kinematics since I got a lot of trouble trying to animate characters while standing in one place, it is easier if everything is in motion but not so much when you want to pin both legs and balance the body while juggling with hands, finally I figure out how to integrate the IK system developed before the gaming sessions into the animation framework, a video will be uploaded for you to see once I finish updating the UI to enable interactive IK on screen.  I am still wondering what should be the best approach for games under XBOX, I haven't tested yet if the IK solution will run on XBOX360 without using lots of resource, probably I will find out that soon, but at least there is a backup plan for that, the IK solution can be baked easily into keyframes so in both cases the IK solution will still work with good performance.