Sometimes I think I should read more but there is no time...isn't it?

I spent many days this week trying to get the XML load/save functionality of scenes and got that working in a very complex way, took me 24 hours this week to make the code to work and still it lacks some functionality around the animation settings and physics, suddenly, something came to my mind and it ticked in my mind thinking why there isn't any solution already build in the XNA framework to handle all this for me instead of me writting thousands of lines of code to format and properly create THE XML file I am looking for.... and in a matter of 2 minutes after thinking I found this:

XmlWriterSettings xmlSettings = new XmlWriterSettings();
xmlSettings.Indent = true;

using (XmlWriter xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create("testAniPack.xml", xmlSettings))
                IntermediateSerializer.Serialize(xmlWriter , animationPack , null);


may not seem very big, but this replaces the thousands of lines I wrote this week with just 4 lines. Wasted too much time to replicate something that already exists, at least I am glad I found this because the missing part is too complicated to do it manually and the animations are already running very smoothly, hope to be able to show up something very soon once I finish removing all this week's work and replace it by a few more lines of code. At least this made me very happy this weekend so I can work more on the physics portion.

Summer is blazing hot this year and to make the heat even higher some updated pics

Just a few snaps of the editor, the Mystic Framework will power Elem3ntz! game animations, and so far it is working extremelly well, with bones, vertex animation, cloth simulator and other small tricks under the hood.

Mystic Editor

A snap of the work in progress 2D editor, not just simple bones can be added but way more things that I will show up later in a video once I finish the saving/loading code, which will take a few more days to finish. And after that, add the fluid livelike 2d animations into Elem3ntz! game.

This is the wireframe view, basically it works like a 3D tool but designed with specific tools for 2D and each parameter can be independently animated, something I couldn't find in any free solution which is a must for very complex animations. Also includes a 2d scene animator editor for very much complex animation clips.

Animation Composer development

I am quite exited now, made a lot of progress in the past few weeks and seems that the skeleton of the framework is somehow working now, still many things to add but I can show small peek.

Somehow it is becoming easier and easier now to understand where is it going, at least I can do some minor facial animation now with complete control of the textures and deformations, still working in a better time line display since I couldn't find anything that could fit the editor. Will post a video later when I have a complete animation rigged and animated, still is quite difficult at this moment since the preview is not running in real time due to the WPF udates that makes it run slower than 60 FPS, but without it it runs smoothly.

Animation editor

I've been busy trying to improve the character's animations in Elem3ntz! game and became a not so easy task, maybe many of you have seen the UBI Art Framework in action with Rayman's Origins and UBI mentioned that will be open source, so far I waited around 2 years and still no news and no updates from their side, so I gave up waiting for them and I don't have the luxury of time to keep waiting forever, so I decided to make one myself.

So where am I am now? check this picture below

Still far from being a complete solution, and I couldn't see much in UBI framework video, so I make some assumptions and try to find the best way to do animations for games. So basically it will manage patches with UV texturing, probably same as UBI's, and bones. Something I haven't seen before is vertex animation so this framwork supports that, multiple textures per patch, and thinking to add soft body dynamic per vertex, this sounds strange since most of the softbody dynamic solutions do work on the whole solid, but again, this is mainly used to animate 2d patches to add small details, this is not a physics engine , but this can help animate deformations withouth actually having to move tons of bones or vertices to get the desired result, don't look yet at the section in soft body dynamics since is a WIP still.

Now thinking what is best to resolve a trival question, do a patch have bones or do the bones should have patches?,  this is a very hard question to answer by myself yet, 3d packages define meshes and you attach bones to those meshes, in 2d animation it makes sense to have those meshes defined as patches and attach bones to deform the patch, on the other side, you can also have a bone that can deform multiple patches since in 2d as you can imagine it is very likely to have multiple patches not just a single mesh, and get all of them deformed by just a single bone. So probably I will enable a bi-directional relationship between bones and patch's vertices so it can work both ways. Still need to test this solution, wondering how UBI solved this, or maybe I am over-complicating things :) , any way, things are moving slowly lately but making great progress. Elemen3ntz! game is almost completed but I want to deliver better animations for the final product, I don't want it to look like cheap flash animations.

I will post a video of the editor once I complete the bones part, which will take around 2 weeks.

DBP2012 entry

Just a quick update, this is the link to the DPB2012 game entry of Elemn3ntz!

DBP2012 Elem3ntz! game submitted to the contest

After so many months, finally Elem3ntz! was completed for the Dream Build Play2012 competition, here are some pictures

A link to the teaser trailer of Elem3ntz! game. ( http://youtu.be/WHoPHf4Z-Kw )

and a brief note about the game:

Elem3ntz! is a puzzle game where you combine elements like fire, water, air and earth to make new ones or use them to attack your opponent or defend yourself, combining the elements will give you other abilities like freezing the opponent gameboard, or create lava attacks by using fire and earth for example, you have a wide variety of combinations and each element have 4 levels. Also you can play with your friends in local multiplayer game mode and a puzzle mode with challenges with 100 puzzles to solve.

8 characters to play with, 7 to unlock by finishing each story, 11 elemental affinities to unlock that boost your magic but also make you weaker to some other elements, and 3 extra clothing colors to unlock through puzzle mode. Can you unlock all its secrets?

Just a few more days till DBP2012 deadline

Progress has been steady for the last few months, with almost all the basic levels and characters finished, just adjusting gameplay and finishing the puzzle challenges, will post a video of the game by next week so stay tunned.