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Blog
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 6:30pm
Developer
June Developments
I haven't quite completed the final milestone for the Mesh Editor - there is still work to be done on the animation system - so I'm not ready to declare another milestone completed just yet. Honestly, I needed a bit of a change from programming after getting so much done in May; so I spent the first couple weeks in June brainstorming and documenting the gameplay and game systems. I've been putting those ideas before the volunteers, and getting some good feedback on them.
As I am primarily a programmer, so it's easiest for me to measure progress on the programming front. At times this can leave me with a bit of a false impression of progress. When I told one of my colleagues that last month I spent 2 weeks "thinking on the project instead of working on it", he replied simply "thinking on the project is working on it." Indeed, I can't very well expect to implement an original, balanced, and entertaining game if I don't spend the proper amount of time planning.
Early test of Rigging and Animation features in the Mesh Editor.
One thing I've been considering the past few weeks (emphisis on considering) is the addition of an official canon role-play session. I surely need to document more of the gameworld, and an official canon roleplay may be a neat means to do that. Such a roleplay would explore the real world of Antilia, and could even make use of some of the same gameplay mechanisms, providing me with a small 'preview' of their potential. The pace would be slower than the current non-cannon RP, and would be focused on adventure through clearly defined objectives (dungeon crawling, etc). I'm still deciding if I can make the time commitment to work as the game master - but if you're interested be sure to let me know in the forums.
Friday, June 4, 2010 8:01pm
Developer
May's Milestones Reached
A little belated - but it's time for another development update!
In May, progress continued on the mesh editor. The modeling portion had a few more loose ends to tie up, but the majority of the time was spend working on paint & texture features. These new tools allow volunteers and myself to paint directly onto the 3D mesh, with support for a variety of brush techniques, tablet pressure sensitivity, and of course - layers.
One feature of particular interest among the new painting tools is the addition of texture and color "schemes". With just a few clicks, any mesh can be given dozens of color and texture variations, right in the editor. Being able to quickly create variations in this way will make it easier to direct the use of light & color across the world of Forra.
Testing mesh editor features with a quick mock-up of a Jidou head.
Having spent nearly all of my free time working on this for the past two months, I'm taking a week away from the code to catch up on other areas of the project that haven't had my full attention in a while. I'll been doing some fresh world and game design, as well as planning to ensure the project stays on course.
The break will be short lived, however. Next week I'll be back to work on the final set of features for the mesh editor, and the milestone for June - animation.
Thursday, May 13, 2010 4:47am
Developer
New Concept Art: Pack Koura - Jidou
I'm currently between milestones for Antilia, and I want to provide an update as to what's going on before we reach that next point.
For the past two weeks, the focus has been on improving the modeling features in the previously mentioned mesh editor for Antilia. The volunteer community suggested a few features that helped smooth-out some rough edges, and really I am very pleased with how it's turned out. I can't wait to spend some time in it creating the new character meshes. The next bit of programming work will involve an editor for putting textures on those meshes, and no-doubt you'll hear more about that in the next post.
Thank You's
I'd like to thank some members of our volunteer community, and some of these are a bit overdue:
- Lanceo90 - For starting up the very successful Games & Roleplaying section in the forum. In just over a month the section has really put the forum software to the test with an amazing 14,000 posts! Great suggestion!
- Trandoshan - For testing and providing feedback on the new mesh editor - and then going on to create a couple dozen weapons with it already! (You'll likely see some examples of these soon, once we have the next batch of features in place.)
- DatapawWolf - Who has also been working with the Mesh Editor, but before that submitted descriptions for dozens of game skills. We're going to need a lot of these eventually - so it's great to have a head-start on it already.
I'd also like to thank the volunteers that have been asking questions or submitting ideas, as well as forum members who make suggestions right in the forums. It's been busy lately - a good kind of busy - but unfortunately I don't always have the opportunity to respond to forum posts when I first read them. Still, the posts often inspire me to consider new game ideas, or reconsider bits I haven't thought on in a while.
Concept Art
This week we have a great illustration by Ravenflight, something I've been interested in seeing for a while, a Pack Koura. Those of you that have read this lore post may recognize the creature illustrated as being a Jidou - just like Pafasa in the story.
Pack Koura - Jidou by Ravenflight
Thanks, Ravenflight!
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 6:08pm
Developer
April's Milestone Reached
It's been another good month for Antilia's development, with another milestone reached. It's been a while since I went into any detail regarding development, so this week I'd like to explain where things are going right now.
There are a lot of challenges in developing a game like Antilia, and it usually isn't the programming challenges that I find the most difficult. I am, first and foremost, a programmer, so the programming challenges are generally just a matter of time. It's all the other stuff - especially the content - that presents a real challenge.
It has been my long-standing philosophy that producing good content requires good tools, and the right tools. If the tools make content creation quick, easy, even fun - then the game will see not only more content, but a superior kind of content. If building something is fun, than as soon as the job is done the content author is happy to jump into working on the next bit. If building content is tedious, time-consuming, and frustrating - not only does that slow the author down, but after each piece is completed the author needs a break.
One particular content challenge that has come up repeatedly in the development of Antilia is the creation of 3D meshes and models and getting them into the game. Getting meshes into the previous Antilia alpha (which you see in the Media Gallery) was a very involved process - two different 3D modeling packages, 3 file converters, and a third tool I wrote in Toi to paint textures onto the meshes. It got the job done, but getting each object into the game required a lot of converting files back and forth, moving them around, fixing conversion glitches, etc. It wasn't easy, and it certainly wasn't fun.
That is the challenge that I set out to solve this past month. There aren't a whole lot of choices for 3D modeling packages within the budget of myself and potential volunteers... basically Blender, which even with the vastly improved 2.5 interface still falls well short of what I would call an 'easy to use, fun solution'. In my opinion, using Blender to make simple game meshes is a lot like using AutoCAD to draw a quick sketch. All the tools are there - hidden among 200 other tools and overly-flexible interface options that you're never going to touch.
So, to solve the problem, I turned to doing what I do best: writing code. I set out to create a minimal mesh editor with just the features I need, and a simple user-interface centered around the general workflow of creating meshes: modeling, uv mapping, painting, rigging, and then animating. There's still a bit of work to do before it's fully functional - but it's showing a lot of promise, and may present me with some interesting opportunities inside and outside the game.
Unlike a lot of modeling packages, the idea here is "Keep It Simple". There is really only one tool for modeling - the draw lines tool. You draw a set of lines outlining the mesh, and using a set of rules the editor automatically determines how to 'skin' the shape. It is fast, flexible, and personally I find it to be a very enjoyable way of 3D modeling.
Best of all, this is all done inside from within the same editor that the volunteers and I use to create other content, such as landscapes and towns. World builders will be able to instantly flip to the mesh editor, make a change to a mesh, flip back to the world editor and see the change immediately.
Now that is what I call a productive workflow.
Monday, April 12, 2010 11:34pm
Developer
New Concept Art: Plant Concepts
Antilia's development has continued to march forward over the past few weeks, as I rounded out the Antilia Editor by fixing bugs discovered by our volunteers. There was a little downtime due to illness, but also because it's good to take a break at times and think about the next set of goals.
Right now I'm experimenting a bit on how to go about solving the next set of challenges, so I'm going to bite my tongue on the details until I can say for certain. Overall, of course, the goal is to continue marching toward a new game client, and I'm happy with the progress thus far.
This week's concept art is particularly interesting - as it involves the combined work of two volunteers. Carl Hatburg has submitted several descriptions for various plants found scattered in the world, and using those descriptions Ravenflight brought them to life. Thanks, guys!
Plant Concepts by Ravenflight
There is also a larger version of this image here.
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