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Nats devlog

A topic by Natalie created Dec 04, 2015 Views: 963 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 4
(6 edits) (+1)

I'm not really sure exactly what's going to end up here, so it's a bit ill-defined and nebulous as a dev-log. One thing that I'm really interested in trying out is procedurally generated 2-D art and animations... So I guess that's my starting point!

EDIT: I've removed the first entry and put it in a comment, so that if when I make it to a second page, I can edit this front page with the latest bits and pieces easily.

Entry 1: 5/12/2015

I've never kept a devlog before, so any hints on keeping a tidy/useful devlog would also be nice if you have any? Also, I wasn't sure how to embed videos... so for now I just link to where I uploaded them on tumblr. And I'm really new to games stuff, too, so obviously feedback would be excellent if it's even at a stage where that's useful yet?

So here's some stuff I've been messing around with so far... I'm working in pygame by the way.

1. "Isometric" map with "houses"

Isometric is in quotes since I'm not sure if the term applies when you have very uneven views, which is what I have. Houses is in quotes for obvious reasons haha :P

So far I have:

  • a very general "isometric" map where you can change the size and orientation of the tiles really easily
  • the camera follows the player (the green square in the middle)
  • there are different types of tile and it's easy to make different maps

So, I don't have much :P. Next I want to:

  • make the tiles walkable/not walkable
  • make the "house" rescale to the "correct" dimensions with according to the change in viewpoint.
  • finish the house nicely, with a roof/doors/windows, etc.

2. Hair animation/simulation with pendulums

It's possible this is a completely insane way of doing things(?), but I am approximating each "piece" of hair as number of connected pendulums (I think in this case maybe 3), and then connected them with some kind of curve.

There's a slightly jerky video here... it runs smoothly normally so perhaps this is the effect of running the screen-capture at the same time? And there's an older video here that I made the day before as a proof-of-concept, so you can see where it came from.

Well you can see what I have going on here so far.... next I want to:

graduate to more chunky hair shapes. with a little added bounce.

3. Cloud generation and general sky animation.

Well, so far I have two things... something that changes the gradient of the sky depending on the angle of the sun/moon (I got moons working too)... and something that makes "clouds" (currently just circles that are stuck together) and generates a normal map for them.

(Here is a (bad) video of the sunrise/sunset... I fixed that stray pixel since. And here is a video of the clouds moving across the sky.)

Next I want to:

  • Combine these two things!
  • Make the sun (or moon) the light source, with the appropriate light colour to light up the clouds using the normal maps.


So, that's it for now... Hopefully I will update soon! Thanks for looking :)

(+1)

Entry 2: 10/12/15

The only thing I managed to look at in the last 5 days was the isometric house idea...

Here's the latest screenshots:

So, as you can see, I made the colours a bit less eye-burning and added first try at a roof and a door. Still not much to look at, but it's a little progress... From the last entry, I managed to:

  • make the "house" rescale to the "correct" dimensions with according to the change in viewpoint
and made some progress with:
  • make the tiles walkable/not walkable
  • finish the house nicely, with a roof/doors/windows, etc.
But the character still doesn't walk around quite how I want him to and obviously there's a lot of room for improvement with the finish of the house, so those things remain on the list!