Yes, Devblog 28. I have switched from doing a point system to just incrementally counting up. It just feels like with a point system there should be something big at each .0 release, which isn’t necessarily the case. So, to avoid having to write update #2.9999 I’m just writing update #28.
I’ve added all the basic functionality to the movement system. Strafing, flapping, boosting, slowing, landing, walking, running, jumping, etc. I mentioned the issue with importing animations last time, which I had hoped to have fixed that day. Yeah… that took a good chunk of my week to fix. The issue ended up being with the scale of the rig being off, which worked ok for FK animations, but as soon as I tried IK the feet were going through the floor and every which way. After a lot of experimentation I found a workflow that got it working for me. I now have two rigs, one which has the advanced controls, and the other which just has the in-game deform bones. I bake the animation from the advanced rig to the simpler rig, which I as able to correct the scale on. That way I didn’t have to completely re-do all my animations (though I did have to go and clean up a few keyframes here and there). Note for the future: MAKE SURE THE SCALE IS SET CORRECTLY ON YOUR RIG FROM THE BEGINNING!!! (Sorry for the all caps, I’m yelling at myself 😉 )
Another issue I came across was getting root motion to work. I’ve decided to not go with root motion for the ground motion, due to the added complexity at this point, but I do want root motion for some of the flying animations. This led to me having to adjust my rig (again) to re-name the Armature and stuff to make Unreal read it correctly. All told, a lot of my time this last week has been spent with animations, and exporting them again and again and again. (Animating is not my favorite part of game dev…) But anyways, it’s looking good in-game, if I do say so myself.
Aside from getting those animations all imported, I programmed in the slowing and boosting mechanics. Boosting gives you a flat speed increase for a short time, and holding the slow button will allow you to reach 0 speed an hover (If you don’t push that button, there is a minimum speed you will always go, to prevent the player from stalling and falling backwards. A change from the original design).
I haven’t done a whole lot other than all those animation things, but I did throw a simple UI/menu system together and sent a build to the other devs for them to test. Once a few more of the bugs are worked out, and some designs finalized, you’ll be able to fly around too. 😉
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