As a precursor for my knowledge, know that I'm not attaching images this week. Cause I'm lazy. Alright? Good.
Work went a bit slower this week, as you'll see in the log itself. That's probably a good thing, as it means I'm less likely to burn myself out.
I hope.
On Monday, I spent some time working on adding in the equivalent to races in Tactical Android Training Academy: Offensives. I got it mostly finished, I believe, ; however, I am unable to test it because I was too lazy to implement the code to generate the offensives just yet.
Woops.
Sometimes, part of gamedev is apparently working on things that you're afraid of. What a terrifying thought.
For me, this meant trying to figure out how to do a character torso. This did not end up so well, but I expected that to be the case. I enjoyed the process, too, so it's just a matter of, as the kids say, getting good.
Then I watched a bunch of videos on why you should make an incremental game as your first game. Surely this won't mean anything.
So I made an incremental game.
Mostly.
Unlike most of the projects where I worked bit by bit to make sure the systems worked as I needed them to (at least so far), I just went ham with the UI and got it to a feature-complete state (of sorts -- just meaning that the UI had everything I thought I would need to display the incremental game I was thinking of).
Of course, I didn't finish it. Because I'm a bit lazy, and because I needed an easy win. This was almost that, but not enough I felt.
Instead, as they often do, my easy wins came from making some basic models. Inspired by some posts I saw of some real sick lo-poly guns on Twitter, I tried my best to keep my polycounts low to see what I could unleash. I focused on making a Mateba Unica 6 and a Model 1897 Trench Gun, and I was actually pretty satisified with them.
So much so that it led to me focusing on my 3D game instead. This meant I started poking around at Trenchbroom and func_godot, and I'm unsure how I feel about it. There's some predefined community-made funcs for Qodot that I don't know if they work with func_godot. More on this later.
Oh, and I also made another attempt at a body -- this one came out a lot better than the first, so hey, I'm happy with that!
I then ended the day with a lo-poly model of the Rideout Arsenal Dragon. It's such a funky looking gun; it honestly kinda screams Halo Magnum, too. I love it. Very good protagonists-first-gun-that-upgrades-throughout-the-game-like-Half-Life-Alyx type gun.
Don't worry: this time, I'm not talking about something I actually did.
Friday was a day of making a bunch more lo-poly models. I made a 417, a M93R, a Kongsberg Colt, and a EF88, mostly just to see how quickly and efficiently I could get them out. I got through all of them in under 1500 tris, which I'm happy about -- the EF88 and 417 wound up being around 800 tris, if I remember correctly.
The people who recommended them to me as well wound up mostly happy too, so I'll take it.
Outside of that, a lot of Friday was just spent polishing up what I already had. Playtesters seem mostly happy with it, but there needs to be more visual feedback. This probably means animations and figuring out how to set up Inverse Kinematics I think.
Next week problem? Next week problem.
A lot of my Saturday was taken up by going to see Project Hail Mary. I loved it. My partner thinks the scenes they cut from the book made the story better. I'm not sure if I agree. I won't say more because I don't want to spoil it. The movie is beyond beautiful.
Please, go watch it. It's the perfect message for the current environment I feel like.
But that message is leading me to a small crisis of faith, I think. Mixed with a lack of belief in myself, it has me wondering if a gritty, dark shooter inspired by Signalis and Killing Floor (working title is either Signal Floor or Sa Olit Siella) is a good idea. It's far more grimdark than hopecore and a part of me really wishes to just... make something happy, I guess.
But then I remembered that that's the goal I have at the end of this all. Much like my characters, I guess I'll just have to persevere anyways -- the only other option is death.
I do not dream of death. Nor the skies.
But func_breakable_surf from the Source Engine haunts me. How the hell did Valve do it?
This brings us to today. I improved the bullet time trails because they were wrong and not at all like my inspiration from FEAR. They're still needing work, but they're a lot better now. Yay!
Now I go back to working on Tabletop Games. See you next week.