Muton Devastator Progress Report

On today's episode, i wanted to just make a quick update to let you know how things are going, the grenade, and gun are in-game, which means it's finally time to get to the animation work, starting with the firing animations for these guys many weapons. With the rifle i wanted to give them a more "standard" firing animation, the normal Mutons have a very awkward hip fire animation for their rifles which frankly doesn't make much sense to me given that they're supposed to be space super soldiers but whatever. With the Hunters, and Prowlers, i made them aim through the scope of their rifles but they're still a bit hunched forward awkwardly, in this case i figured they fit since they're meant to be a bit more stealthy(stealthy for a Muton at least), so it makes sense to me that they'd try to stay low and close to the ground. 

These guys however are more elite than the standard Muton, so i figured they would look better with a more "proper" firing stance(at least for the rifle), and it also gives me another opportunity to make them stand upright and make them look bigger than their muton peers. So animation work is where i'm at right now, at this point the rifle firing animation is about halfway done i would say, getting the pose right is half the battle, but there's still the pistol firing animation, and the lightning claw animations. For the Pistol it's standard procedure, but the claw needs at least 2 animations, one of their "revenge attack", and one for their mid range zap attack, the grenade probably doesn't need a new animation although to be perfectly honest i don't remember how Mutons throw their grenade, i remember they ready the grenade by banging it on their chest, but i don't remember what the actual throwing looks like. And now that i think about it, this fancy monolith grenade doesn't look like it would activate by banging it, so maybe i do need to adjust their grenade throwing animation.

In any case once those animations are done next step would either by particle effects and sound effects, or reveal animations. I think the Muton Harriers and Beleaguers will have the standard Muton reveal animation, but i definitively want to make at least 1 new one for these guys. So with all that left to do it's pretty unlikely that the mod will come out before the year ends, but perhaps that's for the better, i wouldn't want 2020 to curse my mod.

Anyway just wanted to give you a quick update, more coming soonish. Stay safe out there my dudes, 2020 is almost ogre.