September 2023

General

Hello, August’s and September’s devlogs were both written at the same time during September. I unfortunately was overloaded with work through these two months. They are therefore being published at the same time. I suggest you look at August’s devlog first, then September’s.

Hybrid collision method

I continued working on my collision system through September and made it usable in version 0.4.4.3.

I exported code and test assets to an external plugin, still with the objective of keeping the game modular.

It works as explained in August, adapted to Talas.

Physical collisions push the player back and detect crashes or impacts.

Surface collisions are used for animations or certain physical reactions such as FX or camera-linked collisions.

As explained in the previous month’s devlog, Talas’ body is separated into different zones for optimization, with several levels of detail per zone.

UI

I've redesigned in-game transitions for respawns and teleportations in order to use my interface system.

This allows me to manage VR, non-VR and VR viewer transitions very simply.

Later on, I'll be able to add animated transitions or more interesting effects.

I'd like to keep the simple black transition effect for v0.4.4.3, although it is possible to have lateral animations.

VR users will have the same result thanks to a sphere around their head.

Still tied to the interface, I’ve reworked the focus and priority management of the various game menus on my system.

Menus have been studied and crafted to work both in VR and non-VR.

These edits allow me to clean up some code and to fix a few bugs.

BleuRaven Rig

A rig is more or less what allows you to animate virtual characters or objects, and is a toolbox for 3D animators.

I've been using my own Rigs for several of my projects for quite some time now.

This allows me to implement the features I want without having to modify free Rigs, and to adapt them to different projects easily to suit different constraints.

Firstly, I created my own rig generator with its layer system and configuration files, allowing me to easily generate the rig I need for each project. Each layer includes a feature, such as Foot IK, Arm Twist, Eye follow...

Skinning is included and also works with layers. Skinning is the process of binding a 3D mesh to the model.

In the case of MMVS, I use a very specific configuration that allows me to transfer several pieces of information to animation scripts.

It also allows me to keep the same hierarchy for Cobble, Talas and other anthropomorphic characters.

During this month, I did a lot of optimization work to fix the current code, making it more accessible and thus able to accept more content and features more easily, which will prove useful when working on future game updates.

Here is something fun with the different optimizations made: when a rig gets generated, it firstly gets rebuilt into cache before being applied on a rig in Blender.

With this, generating a rig went from taking a whole five minutes to a mere three seconds.

Other

I have updated the green block on which one can land with a free model.