The last few days working on Shadowdawn Genesis have been a tremendous morale boost for me, having spent so long just working on animation I never thought this game would ever be done. But I know that’s not the case now; even though I still have to do animation, when I’m working on the rest of the game things go by much more quickly and productively. In the last 4 days I’ve fixed countless bugs and hastily written code, added new engine features, created and polished a ton of new graphics, and finally got around to designing the entire character training system.
Here you’ll see the latest addition to the graphics engine: fire. I kept putting this one off even though it was on my very first checklist of things to do, and now that I know how to make the effect I feel incredibly silly. But here it is, proof of life in Arashi’s little home away from home. Of course the next step is adding a new usecode script that links objects together – the shadows and radiating light are seperate from the fire itself. Why am I concerned about this? Because one of the first interactions I want to encourage is using the infamous bucket (from earlier demonstrations), filling it with water, and putting the campfire (and thus the light/shadows) out. I’m still undecided if I want to do a simple interaction to accomplish this, or if I want to go one step further and have a “water” projectile from the bucket that, if aimed properly, puts the fire out. It might be a bit overkill; but then it might be useful for other things as well.
Another colorful screenshot that I had posted to my personal facebook page to finish off the blog update, this is the 50th since I started this development blog (the campfire one is 51). Hope these screens are starting to show the final look I’m trying to accomplish, honestly I thought the map graphics would take longer than the animations… shows what I know.
