No playable patch this week, sorry! Just a written progress report. But look what I've got! This guy's been modeled, rigged, UV-mapped and animated (just a walk for now). His name is tentatively Jebediah, thanks to the suggestions of @SaidG23 and @theuntoldsitcom! He's got colliders that move with the animations and interact normally and everything.
George (the dragon) can climb all over him and transfer from body part to body part smoothly (for the most part). It seems like it wouldn't induce motion sickness any more than the normal movement would.
Jeb does have issues though, which is why he's not already out for you to play with. For some reason, if George's on the back side of any of Jeb's body parts as Jeb moves, George tends to slide off and down in this really nauseating way. If he tries to run forward, he can kind of keep up, though. I need to fix that. If he's on a side-face, bottom, or top, it seems fine though. Strange.
So, here's what I'll be working on in the coming weeks:
- Fix that weird slide-y behaviour.
- Have momentum for take-off from a moving object. As it is, if you're running 7 m/s (George's current max speed) on a piece of ground moving 10m/s and you jump to start flying, your speed will suddenly drop to 7 m/s. This suddenly slowdown is disorienting. Should be easy enough to fix.
- Handle the case where you're flying away from Jeb but part of his body catches up to you. Flying towards is handled by George and his collision avoidance code, but if something sneaks up on him from behind, then it'll pass through him weirdly.
- More animations for Jeb attacking, maybe swatting at his own body parts to get that pesky George off of him.
- Sounds for Jeb
- An actual level for Jeb to navigate. Some vague ideas (Not promises!) for what that might be:
- Kill weak points on the golem before he reaches his destination.
- Toppling over stone pillars to block his path.
- Walls where he has to stop and destroy something before he can move on.
- Maybe he spawns other small enemies that help destroy those obstacles?
The first two items on that list are the main things that are keeping me from releasing this level for you folks to play with. If I can't think of a good way to fix the third item, I might just be able to work around it by making sure nothing on Jeb moves faster than 7 m/s relative to the ground. That's probably for the best, in the end. Having fast moving 'terrain' like Jeb that moves in anything besides a straight line in a constant speed seems like it would be really nauseating.
So yeah, once I have those first two items squared away, you guys can see for yourself how it feels to ride a dragon on the body of a giant, walking golem.
If you want more spur-of-the-moment updates on game development, or maybe to give input on silly little things like names, maybe give me a follow on Twitter. I'm @reilaos! Love ya.