Customization!

The next real step in setting up the engine for this game is to get characters walking around in the level. To that extent, I need to solidify my character asset workflow.

Since I'm using Oblivion's character setup, I at least eliminate the need to come up with that. It also opens up a slew of tools that already exist to make this easier on me. Notably a program called FaceGen. FaceGen can generate pretty believable face meshes and textures (and some not-so-believable), as well as process a photo or three to try and reproduce an existing person's noggin. You can even set up your own base models to use for the heads, and someone set one up for Oblivion's races -- it even exports very very close to seamlessly to my body mesh. There's a slight seam along the neck where it doesn't line up quite right, but it is very close. I can fine tune it some later. Or, at least, the seam will very often be disguised by clothing.

Still a-going

Not a whole heck of a lot to show off this time around. Some stability issues have been squared away, and I've just about removed the game's dependence on GUI elements being packaged with the application's resources and, instead, it draws them from the same resource archives it draws meshes and level data and whatnot.

This way, there is a single repository for almost everything that's displayed in the game. Currently, the splash image that shows is still embedded in the application repository, as that needs to be called before MOGRE and its resource management system has been instantiated. That is, in fact, the point of the splash logo. To display while these systems are initializing and loading, so the user knows that yes the program is launching. It just takes a few moments to load everything up.

Woo!

I feel accomplished. A few material tweaks, to improve alpha blending on the billboard-esque bits, fixing the UV coordinates on a couple of meshes.

Got a HUD system in place. Essentially, the in-game menu and HUD uses Awesomium to display an HTML page for GUI elements. Yes, it's me being a bit lazy in regards to making GUI elements interactive. Awesomium can handle javascript and CSS3, etc. Means I don't have to worry too much about hit testing and scripting elements and juggling overlays and all that jazz.

I don't have to touch the GUI handling code anymore, just tweak the HTML that handles it, woot!

Also in the process of setting up some basic character controlling. This necessitates some game resources sooner-or-later, and I'm trying to get an easier work flow for setting up the resources. I'd love to find a NIF plugin for 3d studio max 2010 64-bit. I've, thus far, been too lazy to compile one myself. Or I could work up my own character bit setup tool, I suppose. Read up on the NIF and KF formats (They're both file formats used by the GameBryo engine that Bethesda uses. NIF is for mesh data, and KF is for animations.) and make my own tool to import parts and export them as OGRE Meshes.

The most tedious part of this is the NIF importer for 3d Studio Max doesn't seem to be capable of handling multiple animations. So to set up different animations on a skeleton, I'm having to import an animation, export the whole skeleton, convert it to XML, and copy+paste the transformations for that animation into a combined skeleton XML, then convert that skeleton to binary. Tedious! TEDIOOOOOOUS.

Either way, have a screenshot: This time, the mall so far in-game:

In the interest of showing off the game's progress, here's a quick render of a potential protagonist/NPC.

Things are, in fact, progressing!

Unfortunately, at this stage in the game (ha ha, see what I did there?) it is really difficult to show any real meaningful progress. Suffice it to say that the core framework of the game is in place -- that is the basic rendering systems are in place, and I've got my state management and input management implemented. Going forward, I'll actually be implementing things in the game that are much easier to show off.

I am, however, still waffling about actual gameplay mechanics. I picture the game playing much like a survival horror type game -- the player is stuck in a mall, and must venture out of their nice, safe, not-very-well-stocked back room in order to find food, water, and potentially other survivors. All-the-while, they must brave the sex-crazed vixens that occupy the mall and want nothing more than to throw open their legs and fuck until the player is one of them.

La la la

Taking a break from fighting with the Dead Rising level data -- the whole point of ripping that was to plug in a temporary mesh and continue on, not to bog me down for a few days.  I can get the mesh and whatnot to load,  but there are some major z fighting issues that I can't seem to wrangle.

I might roll back to a simpler test level model, unfortunately.

Started working on code to set up characters.  A single character in the game will be comprised of a set of meshes -- currently one for the torso and arms, one for the hands, one for the legs and waist, one for the feet and some number for the head (I am as of yet undecided on that.  Likely one for the structure of the head, one for the eyes, one for the ears, then one for hair), as well as a skeleton that handles animating the body parts.

At least it's importing well!  Still working on the specifics to linking each segment of the body to the skeleton and animating it, but it's nice to see some boobies.