DEVELOPMENT

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Weekly Update - Gruelling Remaining Animation Tasks

3 years ago1,517 words

There are a whole lot of aspects of game dev that I get excited about and enjoy! But there are so many facets to it that I suppose it wouldn't be possible to be in love with every single thing I have to do. I tend to put off the undesirable tasks as much as possible, but I'm at the point now where they're pretty much all that's left at the bottom of the task barrel before I can run the next alpha... so I'm having to endure the gruelling process of working through them.

Some are elusive, frustrating bugs I'm not certain how to approach, so those feeling aversive makes sense to me. But for whatever reason I seem to find animation horrendously off-putting, as I've written about a few times over the years since it's been the case since the MARDEK days. It's strange to me, though, since I like the results, I know how to do it, it's fairly quick, and I don't even struggle with it... Why then would I be so reluctant to start on animation tasks??

This week, I had to revise or create a few animations for Savitr, Collie, and Pierce, and even though each one only took around ten minutes when I put my mind to it, and there were only maybe a couple of dozen to do so I could theoretically have finished in an afternoon, it still took me several days to get through them all because the whole process felt like pulling teeth. Ugh.

A brief explanation of some boring technicalities in case anyone's interested:

A 3D model's rig might have an arm made of three bones: a bicep, a forearm, and a hand. There are two ways of animating this: you could rotate the bicep, forearm and hand all individually (forward kinematics; FK):



Which, as you can hopefully see, gets awkward fast when you have to place the hands in a certain position (such as on the hips in this quick example). Imagine if whenever you wanted to pick anything up, you had to consciously think about the exact rotation of your bicep and forearm!

Or if you weren't insane, you could set up an Inverse Kinematics (IK) system that allows you to move the hand directly, with the rotations of the bicep and forearm being calculated automatically (typically using an additional 'pole target' for the elbow direction):




For whatever reason - lack of experience and confidence regarding the technical setup, I think - I'd set up the human models ages ago with IK feet and legs, but FK hands, leading to some awkward animations and increasing difficulty for myself in the long run. So what I did this week was alter the rigs of those human characters to use IK hands so then the additional animations I had to make would be easier to do, but it meant that I also had to re-animate the hands for the animations I already had. Not objectively time-consuming, but, as I said, it still took me longer than it should have done because each little task felt as alluring as a homework assignment due in a month.

(More complex rigs would have switches to allow both FK and IK, but it's not worth the time investment to set that up, so adding the IK system broke the FK.)

But it's done now! Good! That should save me from some future frustrations.

I also did some coding stuff related to skill execution which made a difference which I can't be bothered to explain (and can't show visuals of)!



Because of how uggghhh work this week has felt, my mind's been wandering a lot to other ideas. I still really like that AFC Remake thing I talked about a few months ago - 'Mentales', I tentatively called it at the time; ∞ this post seems to summarise what I had in mind ∞ - and I've wondered a few times over the past few months whether to either take a break from Atonal Dreams to focus on it, or whether to try and work on both simultaneously somehow.

I'm concerned about switching projects though in case it leads to me abandoning this one, which I absolutely don't want to do. I've poured too much into it now, and I'm only getting older. I can't afford to bugger around changing my mind all the time like I used to when I made - but usually didn't finish - Flash games.

And I suspect that trying to focus on both would just lead to burnout. I'm always wondering how best to schedule my time, and I've thought a lot recently about how maybe I should be assigning more hours a day to Atonal Dreams... but that seems sure to lead to burnout too. I remember how back when I made MARDEK, I had constant headaches, which I assumed after finding out I had brain cancer were a result of that, though since I had those same headaches after being treated for that, I suspect they were stress-based (though I suspect running toxic communities was as much of a factor as the game dev).

It seems better to get a smaller number of hours in consistently than to decide to force myself to spend ALL MY TIME on game dev only to grow to absolutely resent it before long. Except for these recent remaining tasks, I've managed to maintain some degree of excitement for working on Atonal Dreams for a long time now.

I'm still looking forward to the point where all the mechanics are secure and decided and I can focus purely on making the content like dungeons, dialogue scenes, music, and figmon! I'm very close to this point now! (Though 'very close' could still be weeks; such is game dev.)



Going back to 'Mentales', it's about user-created content in the form of short stories, meaning it'd be something you'd return to repeatedly rather than a one-shot linear story like Atonal Dreams, which I feel would also make it more likely to be picked up by youtubers and such. Plus it'd presumably be easier for me to make because I'd just need to set up the mechanics rather than making a bunch of content... though it's been over two years now and I'm still working on the mechanics aspects of Atonal Dreams, so maybe it's naive to think that'd go quicker!

What I feel I need to do next - or more like first - for it is to make a basic customisable human model, as I feel that making silly or interesting characters to inhabit your stories will be an important part of the experience. And I've enjoyed making customisable - or dynamically generated - humans in many forms over the years! My very first Flash RPGs had Western-RPG-style character creators in them. But I've been finding that off-putting this time in the same way the animation tasks have been... though I suspect it's because I've attempted it a couple of times, and neither felt exactly right to me, so I suppose I doubt that the next time would be if those previous attempts weren't.

I might try to get around to it in my 'free time' at some point though, like maybe over the weekend. We'll see! I'll be keeping it at the back of my mind.



I finally heard back about my new PC; apparently it's in the process of being assembled or something, though I'm not sure when it'll actually get here. I got one email saying one of the parts wasn't available so I should change my choice, but another hours later saying the computer had been assembled and was in a testing phase? So I don't know what that was about! I didn't change anything though.

I'm also STILL working my way through Pokemon Legends: Arceus - this is longer than I've spent on any game in ages - because I'm determined to get what I suppose could be considered a true ending. But I'm having to use online guides to work through some stuff I'd put off until the end - equivalent to the bottom-of-the-barrel dev tasks, I suppose - which I don't like because I try to avoid anything external - including the opinions of other people - to maximise immersion.

"White-Striped Basculin evolves into Basculegion after losing at least 294 HP from recoil damage, not counting damage that results in it fainting", eh? Why didn't I think of that?? It's so obvious!! How is anyone supposed to figure things like that out from within the game itself? Grumble.

(Though at least that's not as bad as "[Runerigus] evolves from Galarian Yamask when the player travels under the stone bridge in Dusty Bowl after Yamask takes at least 49 HP in damage (even if healed) without fainting". Why??)

Also, we haven't all been obliterated in some cataclysmic nuclear conflagration yet! Which is lovely.