Time to get warmer this winter...isn't it?

It was a very busy week, with many small ideas that finally paid off,  it was a long journey since I started working on the fabric simulator but finally I was able to make it work perfectly, next is  wind and gravity modifiers but hope this will take very little time to implement. Check the latest video showing the fabric simulator in real time at my channel. Don't forget to like it! if you want to get more updates on the next things I have in mind. Almost one video a week this December, a lot of things are getting done every week.

So few lines of code were needed this week to solve the worse physics issues I couldn't fix until something come up to my mind while traveling in the train. The only sad thing is that I won't be able to release Elem3ntz! game before year-end as I was hoping for, but instead I added so many new things into the animation framework but I think it will pay offs in the long term.

Finally enabled texture atlas animation

After so many months, finally I made time to add texture atlas animation clips in the framework, took a few days to complete the user interface and cloning options but now I can easily add texture atlas sprite animation. Check the latest update in my channel

Animation clips references

I am quite happy today, and very busy, the last few days I've been trying to figure out how to include clips from other animations that I have made to re-use them as building blocks with minor overhead. Finally I can show some of the latest changes in the framework. This weekend I was able to solve this problem, I couldn't figure out an easy way for many months until this weekend and finally an Eureka! moment came, and found a way to run multiple animation clips inside other clips as references, making a lot easier to animate, each included clip can run in infinite loops at different rates or triggered by in-game events. This seems to be a trivial issue if you program the solution for each specific animation but when running multiple ones and trying to batch everything in one mesh it becomes quite complicated to build.

Check the video in my channel

There is still one issue related to cloths and springs, whenever the frameworks runs slowly or is delayed the vertex location can go nuts and jump all the way around, it doesn't happens as long as the game runs smoothly, so I need to implement some special logic to avoid over moving those vertices, not an easy task, but have many more things that I want to finish implementing before releasing the Elem3ntz! game.

What a month for an indie developer...

Had to send my monitor for repair and will take 2 to 3 weeks to get it back, so using a backup monitor for now but it is so small that all my tools do not fit into this screen, anyway not much to complain, but have to be away from the development cycle for a week due to some personal issues so I will have the time to upload the preview movie of the framework after I come back. Crossing fingers to be fine in the next couple of weeks and get back to release the game I've been working on for the past year

Time goes so fast since my last update!

Wow, I just noticed that it was almost a month since my last update, and a lot progress has been made. Inverse Kinematic is a lot harder to implement in a systematic way, testing and hardcoding bone indexes was quite easy to do and worked fine, but this same method didn't work if I wanted to expand it to the full skeleton, and worse, I had to rewrite the code quite many times to make it usable, just today rewrote the patch rendering logic due to a wrong assumption on how IK will modify the rotation angles, anyway I am quite happy with the results I am having now.

Now most of the basic animation tools are almost ready, and thinking how to implement an easier way to manage so many parameters and made the less number of mistakes, I have been searching for many ways to organize data and how it will be linked but so far I haven't found yet a convincing way to do it. I have many new ideas for my next game, and all the work I've been doing for this game will serve well for the next, even if the next one will be very different than Elem3ntz!. , I promise that I will publish a quick video of the editor by next week.

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.

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.