MirceaKitsune

Escape from Nibbles - Beta preview

A little video preview of the beta version showcasing the first 10 levels of gameplay. Early access link is available for 1$ or more for the month of June, the project goes fully public on July: Consider supporting to make projects like this possible in the future, and for now helping me improve Escape from Nibbles during the time it will be in development till I feel it's completely polished.

Escape from Nibbles screenies

Some teaser screenshots from the game for those who haven't tried it yet and are curious. The beta is available as of yesterday for all patron who pledge 1$ or more. It will also be announced publicly on July 09 for everyone else to access... I mean technically you can ask someone for the link if you really want it now and can't pledge, but come on show some support if you can I'm trying to make good stuff guys! In any case hope you enjoy it and do let me know what you think and suggest impro...

Escape from Nibbles

Today I'm happy to announce a new game as released. Escape from Nibbles is a pill tetris game intended to simultaneously be a bit of an ASMR experience to lose one's self in, based on the 16 color style and feel of the early MS-DOS era: The goal is to match pills of similar colors in a straight line of 3 connections, remove all targets that appear at spawn to proceed to the next level. It comes with a few unique twists, such as colors having different status effects which influence game; You ...

The struggles of UV mapping

Actually took these for Stackoverflow to ask about some weirdness I encountered with the UV mapping. Even simple math can be pretty weird sometimes.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72489943/uv-alignment-code-for-2d-surfaces-inexplicably-reverses-pattern-below-a-fixed-th

Once I get texturing done and make sure ever...

My face reduction algorithm for cubic voxel terrain

I plan on getting back to Nibbles shortly! Wanted to post a little something else in the meantime. I spend the past few days working on a voxel engine in Godot 4, cubic like Minecraft this time unlike the marching cubes one which is more complex than I know what to do with. The basics were super simple but it took some time to figure out how to code a proper face reduction algorithm for maximum optimization. Some thoughts on that adventure for other game devs and software engineers:

The...

Escape from Nibbles: Code peak & title screen

Last thing I'm gonna show for this month, wanna keep the rest as a surprise. Expect the rest at the beginning of next month: If the remaining essentials are ready you should have a playable link and a full project description then.

Escape from Nibbles: Background WIP

Apologies for my slowness: Apart from battling my monitor which insists on being a nuisance, I've been spending every day for the past month getting this project in a ready state for next month, when I plan to make the first patron exclusive announcement and provide a playable link to the beta. This is a lightweight HTML5 game, you will be able to play it directly in your web browser with ease.

Here's a peek at the various backgrounds I've been working on. I'll let you speculate for a f...

Something good is coming

My efforts this month will most likely be dedicated to a new project I've been working on behind the curtains. I'm still fleshing out the final details, an announcement is likely inbound in a week or two at most. Keeping the details withdrawn for the time being: Can only say to expect something cute, peckish, which you'll especially enjoy if you're a player from the NES / MS-DOS era... unlike many of my works it's also going to be in a finished (or almost final) state. Stay tuned.

Grove of Bunny

Enjoy this year's version of our happy cycle of bunny noms: She may enjoy her new grove, but I still like mine even more... even if I'm technically in both! First render with the new Cycles X engine, good times with good results.

• Judy model: Splatypi, CC0, http://blendswap.com/blends/view/83856
• HDRI: Andreas Mischok, CC0, 2022-04-23 21:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Easter 2022 render preview

Romanian Easter falls on the 24th of April this year. Here's a snapshot of how this year's render is probably gonna look like. Got a few minor Blender issues to tackle but nothing serious that should hinder things.

A cazut Basescu (music animation)

First a little history from my teenage years: Precisely a decade ago in 2012, Romania held a referendum to suspend then president Traian Basescu, the embodiment of hideousness in my book and a man who ruined many lives both before and after the fall of the Soviet Union. When this was announced I decided to do a crazy celebration video, dancing in underwear on the roof of a hydrothermal power plant in my back yard while singing "a cazut Basescu" (Basescu has fallen). No idea how I pulled off s...

Point of no return 9.99

• Title: Real point of no return
• Type: Image, predictive
• Path: /tmp/unknown_process/ponr_9_70773.jpg
• Date: 01-04-2022 to 09-05-202? line 41454352494d
• User: RORRE
• Description: They need know, but never know, only to record. Perceived timeline may vary between 9% and 66% from consciousness data. Remember.

Vertex colors for fur colors

I decided to go for a little experiment I've been intrigued to try out with the model. I removed the fur color image and went with vertex colors for body colorization. Color textures are still used for the eyes and flesh, the new system is just for body colors. The RGB channels are split into three independent maps which are still set via parameter: Red is the main body color, Green the paws / socks, Blue is eye makeup color.

This makes it easier to edit the pattern and create your own ...

New hair

I started doing new particle hair with the length controllable by a custom property. This part isn't quite done yet, I don't like how it shows up in renders when the model is posed, hair combing is more complicated than it may seem. I'm pondering whether I should make the front part a separate particle system so length can be adjusted independently... for now I think this is okay with the right adjustments.

The anthros are becoming one!

I still wasn't happy with the color customization capabilities of the models, so I went ahead and converted the paws / socks to their own color map which can now be set independently, a slightly better pattern for the muzzle and eyes getting included in the process. With all characters (wolf + fox + cat) using the same textures, it occurred to me the only thing still keeping them different were the variations in mesh shape. So why not make them one?

Using the Join as Shapes feature, I c...

⚠️ URGENT: US government wants to outlaw encryption and scan all internet traffic

It's that time again when a proposal is so bad absurd and downright horrifying you need to write about it and sound the alarm. Whether you agree with me or not on other political issues, being against this insanity is something we likely all still have in common, thus I urge you to share this and help spread the word. Read more about it here:

https://www...

Colorful vixen test

Some previews from a test scene I made to experiment with the coloring, showing how easily you can change the body colors and keyframe them for animation. This works in both Eevee and Cycles, the former temporarily using a separate shader for hair till the Blender team finally gets PrincipledHairBSDF working in its engine. I'm actually thinking of making a series of renders from this since I really like what I'm getting.

Anthros can now be fully colorized

Most effort recently has been spent on further improving the anthros for Blender, adding new functionality and further beautifying the appearance. I changed so many little things I kind of lost track of the full change list compared to my last update. The important thing is it's looking good.

The most notable change is the ability to set colors and certain shape keys using custom object properties: Whenever you instance one of the characters in your scene, you may use the new library ov...

Foxy Convoy

Last month I discovered I have a strong love for trucks... namely Canadian trucks with manly drivers and loud horns. No reason in particular, couldn't quite put my finger on where I might have seen that recently... just one of those things you wake up one day and realize you were into you know? Thus I decided to make a piece of fanart for a fringe minority.

Some actual voxel landscapes

Here's a final set of screenshots for now. Now that I optimized the generator to the bone for the best performance I can imagine achieving, I added a simple two-point control that lets surfaces form at the top while gradually reducing caves below height zero; In the future it would be nice to have this as a curve of points for full control over the density at particular heights, so far though it produces pretty good landscapes as is.

The next step would be texturing. I plan to approach ...

Godot voxels up on Github

A functional version of the Godot voxel terrain generator is now available on Github: Just clone it and open the project file inside Godot!

https://github.com/MirceaKitsune/godot_voxels

Remember this is for the new Godot 4.0 which is still in development, it won't work under the Godot 3.x versions. You can download and run GD4 nightly builds from this link:

2022-01-28 15:09:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Smooth voxel terrain in Godot 4.0!

Still in very early stages but I definitely have something going on. At this moment the chunk manager generates surfaces and collisions, with support for distance based LOD models that get produced / updated as the player moves between chunks. After working my way through some memory leaks and the main crashes caused by threading, this infinite world can now be exploded with chunks added or removed in realtime based on distance.

Needless to say editing the terrain isn't yet supported. T...

Smooth voxel terrain in Godot 4.0?

I was going to focus on some Blender updates next but have been pretty excited about picking up Godot again. I'm trying the new 4.0 dev version which will hopefully be released sometime this year: It's a solid release and I can definitely see the improvements! There are some bugs causing random crashes and error message spam which will hopefully pass.

It's been a long time dream to create my own voxel based world. Not quite like Minecraft... similar in functionality but with far more de...

Happy new year 2022

Happy new year! A few days late now but still. Between a more hopeful upcoming year and the same bad things from the past, I'm taking it easy with simpler projects I feel I can work on just a little every day.

Presently I'm playing with simple scenes in Blender. Also improving the models and assets I use in the process, part of the plan is to get them ready and more functional for complex scenes and larger projects I can easily reuse to create more content. I've begun working on some HT...

Night Predator - 4th render of Christmas

Angle 4/4 of the little render series for this Christmas.

Night Predator - 3rd render of Christmas

Angle 3/4 of the little render series for this Christmas.

Night Predator - 2nd render of Christmas

Angle 2/4 of the little render series for this Christmas.

Night Predator - 1st render of Christmas

Angle 1/4 of the little render series for this Christmas.

Point of no return 9

The fun continues for yet another year. Even the goddess vixen of noms can't help but notice how off the world has gotten these days. Thankfully my phone still works in spite of extreme and wet conditions... mainly for her since she also gets to troll me if endless digestion wasn't enough. On the downside it means I still get to hear about what goes on outside, but hey I get to poke fun about it with someone who truly doesn't care or judge, what more could one ask for! Just gotta be careful a...

Working on this year's issue of PONR

Think it should be a few days. I don't do 2D as much and kinda take this as an opportunity to keep my skills at it alive. Going to be a fun one.