Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report.
Level:
We completed our first batch of meshes for the global category, which covers assets that aren’t tied to any specific location. We also revisited the exterior areas of the Alpha Camp to add some cables. In parallel, we continued work on architecture in regions like Adûn and Apoc to bring them up to the "A Blockout" standard. We also started creating the blockout props for Lake Village and Pearl Village and are gradually completing the final props for Warrior Village. Meanwhile, Tech Art worked on various feedback items and documentation related to tools for the level artists.
Code:
This week, we have cleaned up our data setup for our character movement. With the new setup, we can edit movement parameters much more efficiently.
We also made preparations to implement our new hair physics setup.
On the sandbox side of things, a few more quality of life features have been added:
- Input props have an "Any Key" event dispatcher now, which will contain the name of the pressed key as the parameter.
- The voice of characters can now be changed in sandbox mode.
- Added the ability to auto-create and assign custom materials when importing 3D objects. If the mesh is set up correctly, this will even try to load the correct textures and other settings automatically.
- Added horizontal and vertical "Wrap box" UI props to automatically rearrange child UI elements into the next "line" when going past the element's width/height.
- Improved performance when selecting a character.
- Added a few more lerp functions to Lua.
Character:
Our department focused mainly on developing hair physics setups for our characters. This week we designed custom rigs so that every hairstyle has the optimal skeletal layout for the deformation. Our goal is to get the most out of the least amount of bones and try to balance stability during all sorts of actions the character can perform such as fast movements, slow movements, head rotations and collisions with other body parts or other characters. Our current results are looking promising already. Whether we manage to add physics to all eligible hairstyles on all characters or a select subset for now is something that further progress next week will reveal.
Animations:
In the animation department, we implemented some Game Design feedback on the Feral Bull's animations this week, bringing this large enemy one step closer to being finished. We also continued our work on the heavy hammer move set. Most of our time was spent in important meetings, though: We went over every already existing minigame together with our game designer, assigning the last few unassigned ones to specific characters, discussing which location to best place each of them in and making sure each has a concrete plan for which quest it will be connected to.
Design:
We have helped with tidying up the character movement data, as well as made a list of music tracks for the game. We have been discussing both the mood and choice of instruments for the main locations / situations / cutscenes of the game in a kick off meeting. First step will be developing the most important themes of the game (e.g. Exploring Kerpal, Warrior Princess theme, etc.)
We have also continued our work on the Design for Attributes and Perks.
Furthermore, we put time into designing and planning the final implementation for all the sex minigames and their respective NPCs together with the animation department, as well as some planning for production related matters such as dialogue editing and voice-over recording.
Thank you for all your continued support,
-Wild Life Team