Hi Guys!, We’ve recently decided to turn the simple update videos of Phlyndir into a vlog. Since we’re uploading videos anyway we might as well make it nicer so that more people will watch our videos. This involves making a frontage for our videos, kinda like a brand, getting a narrator to narrate and keep things interesting for the viewers, and what not. We’ve come up with an initial frontage design and have already used it in one of our videos but are still working on improving it so that it can better catch attention.
Hi Guys! Its been a fun adrenaline-filled week for me, simply because I was going to implement basic AI and Combat, both of which I consider very cool, features in Phlyndir. Needless to say I made some progress and I’m really excited to be sharing this with you. On the side I’ve also implemented a few other stuff, like attaching weapons, HP bars, and targeting. All of these you will see in the video below. Also, help up spread our work by liking and sharing. Enjoy!
Hey! Hey! Everyone! We’ve managed to implement basic movement and camera controls for Phlyndir. Left mouse button for movement and right mouse button for cameras. We’ve also implemented a lot of other stuff; basic shadows, limited zoom, HUD, and Mini-Map. Things are looking good and we hope to implement basic combat in our next update. Help us spread our work by liking and sharing. Enjoy!
Hello everyone! I’ve been working on a tool to help us sort out the animation of the 3D assets properly. Basically, since the animation of the 3D assets are in one continuous “take”, the tool just clips a section of the “take” and saves that as an entry in the animation file, which it generates afterwards. This animation file is then paired to the 3D asset and are loaded into the game together, allowing the action controller to just call an action, “walk”, which the 3D asset promptly performs.
We didn’t have a tool like this before so there really isn’t anything to compare it against in our inventory. Hopefully our asset managers will be happy with it. I’ve uploaded a video to youtube which I have embedded below. Enjoy!
Greetings! Its been a while since the last update (ok, so maybe not), but we’re really excited with the progress we’ve made so far. During my last post I mentioned that I would be tackling terrain rendering and this is exactly what Ive been doing. During our previous tech demo we we using multiple layer overlays to build the terrain. This approach not only limited the level design process so much by making it impossible for the designer to see the results of their work until the whole level was built, but, also takes a ton of time to load. We could literally (1)have the level load, (2)have lunch, and (3)have idle chatter before the level (or any level) would load. More painful is the fact that we needed several layer overlays to make the map look like a real map and each layer overlay extended the loading time by an exponential amount. In addition to this, despite our ultra patience during the loading process, and godlike imagination during the blind level designing phase, the terrain felt lacking.
After looking around the internet and reading articles about terrain rendering as well as getting suggestions from the team (it sounded more like scolding though) I’ve figured out a way to make our terrain rendering faster, easier, and more detailed. Terrain processing in the previous tech demo was done on the CPU which took a lot of time. This process though it allowed virtually unlimited overlays took too long to load. By limiting the overlays to just 4 and transferring the processing to the GPU I was able drastically reduce the loading time (though now it really depends on the GPU of the computer loading the map). In case you’re wondering what my reason was for limiting the overlays to just 4, its because I decided to use the 4 color channels (RGBA) to carry the information for the overlays. As for the ease of level design issue, I recreated the tool, hopefully, the level designer will be happy. I also decided to implement normal maps on the terrain so that the emptiness will go away. All in all I think its a pretty decent render.
Hey everyone! I’ve been tinkering around the particle system adjusting stuff here and there. Needless to say it became quite a chore after a while when I need to compile everything just to see how the particles would look like. I decided to create a tool which allows me to adjust the particles using a user interface, and render the new settings on the spot. Below is a video of the new tool I created. I finally managed to improve the recoding quality but it is still far from stellar.
Some adjustments are in the pipeline to make this tool more useful. These include adding camera controls so that I can actually pan around and look at the particles from different angles, and importing 3D assets so that I can properly determine the scale of the particles. It will probably take me a few hours to get this done before I can proceed to the other areas that need improvement. Next I will be tackling terrain.
