Update #21

Alright, so no progress to report this week, I had some unexpected things crop up and that has put me a bit behind on everything that I need to do. As a result there likely won't be any progress for awhile as I play catch up.

Progress Update #20

Alright, I have decided to take a step back on the animation system and not have it physics enabled. I think it's pretty clear that I was biting off more then I could chew, so the physics and animation systems are once again separate and the animations won't be physics enabled. At some point in the future I intend to change that, but right now it's holding back actual progress on the game so needs to be shifted to the back burner.

Update #19

Well, we have another post with no progress to report, shocking I know. the reason is partly the same as last weeks, things are too hot focus most of the time, but also because I've been trying to learn a new artistic concept and it's not really taking yet. I've been bashing my head against this wall and it's been quite frustrating. Some times I think that if I just work really hard at it for a few more months then I'll be able to start drawing interesting things, but then there are times like now here where I slam into a brick wall and fully realize that nope, this really is going to take years. And the worst part is, this still isn't fun, I imagine it's like what math homework is like for normal people. I probably could (and am sorely tempted to) write several pages about how frustrated I am, but it might be best if I end this post now, with any luck I'll be though this wall by the next one.

Update #18

So for this post I have no progress to report I'm afraid. The temperature is now in the triple digits where I live, so I've been largely spending my free time snuggled up with a block of ice in a heat induced stupor. About the only good news I have is that I've not stopped learning how to art by drawing during the relatively cool night hours.

Progress Update #17

Alright, so my current progress for the passed 2 weeks is I have been working on the animation system and I'm not very happy with how it's turning out. Apart from the animation system not yet able to do ragdoll, it has a very hackish feel to it. Now I'm fine with small bits of hackish code here and there to speed things up a bit, but I don't really like it for large chunks like the animation system, so most likely after I get ragdoll working, I'm probably going to go back and just rewrite the whole thing. As much as I could use the money, times like this make me glad I haven't set up patreon for this game yet, I'd feel real bad if I had been charging people for the amount of progress I have made.

In learning how to art news, I'm starting to learn figure drawing and have ordered a small drawing mannequin to help me with that. That's pretty much it for this post, hopefully I'll have more for the next one.

Progress Update #16

Alright, so what have I been up to these last 2 weeks? Well I have been working on character hitboxes, more specifically trying to figure out how to export hitbox physics information from Blender into my game. So far I've made absolutely no progress on that front. What I think I'm probably going to do is actually hardcode it into the game for now just so I can get the other parts of my engine working and then try again later when I have fewer points of failure to deal with.

In other news, I discovered this game called Space Station 13 and I'm probably going to shamelessly steal things from it because it solves my problem of how to make my game fun during the alpha. Basically how it works is the game has rounds that last 1-2 hours. At the start of each round everyone gets a random character and job to role play as. During the round random Space Balls like events can occur that you try to survive though. Because of the large verity of things that can occur, no one really knows how a round is going to play out and as a result you end up with rather interesting stories being crated. By adding this as a gamemode to my game I can have a game that's fun to play sooner, the features that would be needed for said gamemode would also be needed for my final game, and I wouldn't have to worry about players getting attached to their characters or worlds because everything will just get reset at the end of the round anyway.

Well, that's it for this post, hopefully for the next one I'll  actually have a ragdoll in the game, which probably wouldn't be all that interesting to watch, but it'll be something.

Progress Update #15

Whoops, completely spaced making a post (that no one will ever read) yesterday. anyway, I have decided the next thing I'll work on for my game will be the animation system. I don't really know how this should work, so I'm kind of making it up as I go along. The first thing I want it to be able to do is ragdoll, I think after I achieve that single actor animations should be fairly simple to implement. But the problem I've run into is ragdoll is a physics based animation and with my physics system and my animation system separate, this would be difficult to achieve. After some thought I realized that physics is a form of animation and should probably be merged into the animation system. This has numerous advantages and will solve a lot of the problems I've been trying to work out and allow all my animations to have physics enabled. Although I've not quite figured out how to translate my animations into something the physics engine understands yet and I strongly suspect I'm going to wind up writing my own physics engine before this game is done.

In other news I'm currently putting the finishing touches on my best drawing yet and have found my old digital camera, so when it's done I intend to post a picture of it to Minds.