The image below may not look like much, but you would not believe how hard it was to get it to happen. Working with Blenders’ Meta-Rigs (which are really cool), then simplifying them down (because they’re not optimized for games), which broke some dependencies, and bone constraints, etc. Once all that was dealt with and sorted out, Jairia was rigged! I did a few rough animations for idle, and talking. Most of the time when you see her it’ll simply be basic interactions. She’s not going to be running and jumping, as cool as it would be to have her be a playable character.
Aside from those rigging issues, and doing basic animations, I’ve also got a basic quest system working. My workflow for creating a new system is usually to follow a few tutorials on the same subject, then pick the pieces I like best from each of them, and create my own. I’ve done the tutorials, I’ve done the picking, and I’m partway through creating my own.
The biggest complexity with the quest system for this game is it’s a branching AND converging quest system.
So there is one common destination, but three different ways to get there. The quest system needs to be able to be overwritten if the player stumbles upon the goal by blind luck. It needs to keep in mind the different paths, and how far along the player is on the paths.
One thing I still need some clearer ideas on is how to display the objectives on-screen. I don’t want to fill the screen with text for “branch 1 objective, branch 2 objective”. I want a player to be able to play through the game, and possibly never realize there was another way. But, if they do accidentally discover Y after they’ve talked to X, what displays on screen? My idea at the moment is to show the main goal “Find final destination”, and under that to display the current objective “Help X do some things”. Then, if you discover Y, that would show “Solve puzzle #1”, with a little tab to switch between showing objectives for branch 1 or 2. That way the player can only display one branch’s objectives at a time.
Anyways, now I’m working on getting that quest system up and running.
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