Mithos56

January 8th Weekly Update

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and welcome back!

Over the break I continued to work on level and character animation.

I worked it out and when I bring a new character into the game, there are about 30 animations that they need, plus whatever attacks and sex animations the character might have, AND any specialty stuff.  

I managed to knock a big chunk of those out, but still have a ways to go.   On the generic human male,...

Happy New Year!!!

I'll be back with a full weekly update next week, but I did want to take a moment to say Happy New Year.

2022 was tough, but so was 2021, and 2020....

I'm extremely grateful for what I have, but at the same time wouldn't mind a little more luck/success in 2023.  I do understand that you have to work for it, and I'm already trying to make some changes to help me be more successful in 2023, and we'll see how it goes

I hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday...

December 18 Weekly Update

This week is another not super exciting week.

I continued work on character animations, but also took a bit of time to continue some work on the dungeon map as well.

With the animations I've tried to use some motion capture with mixed results.  In the end, many of the generic enemy animations are much faster just to hand animate, as opposed to cleaning up motion capture data.

The tool I use creates data from video, and its pretty good at it, but it'll be a while before ...

Weekly Update

Not a terribly exciting week, I spent time working on animations for a few characters to populate the new level.

I've had a hard time coming up with a good costume for the cultists, but even without it I can make all the generic human animations that we'll need.

I've even found some interesting motion capture from video software that I've been experimenting with.  Working from mocap isn't something I do a lot of.  

I've made several attempts to work it into my pipe...

December 3rd Weekly Update

The big thing I wanted to mention this week was the completion of the initial cut scene.
The final (as much as it can be, there is always things to be changed as funding improves) version I'll save for later, but the above version is very close, minus some sound effects and music.

I had initially planned for this scene to be a lot longer and involve more dialogue, but feedback said it was probably a good idea to keep it brief, and let players actually play the game a little bit. &nbs...

November 27th Weekly Update

I hope my American friends had a Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope everyone is ready to CONSUME this Christmas Season!

Among other things I started to put together the opening cutscene that I had been working on.   The first pass is.... rough.   

Its not super clear even to me what's going on, and I wrote it!.  I definitely need a few more scenes to finish it up, so I tried to story those, and after I get some feedback from some friends, I'll see w...

November 20th Weekly Update

Big snow storm here this week end!  I'm in the Western NY area, and South of me got a a few feet of snow.  Luckily my area is right along the Niagara River, so it kinda keeps things calm for us and I only got about a foot of snow!

I wanted to show off/talk about going back and finishing up the implementation of the dirt and grime stuff.
I had previously added it in so you could get dirty, but now I went back and made sure this dirt persists though different leve...

November 13th Weekly Update

Besides taking a day off for politics...

This week I put work into set decorating part of the level I was previously showing off.

Meridiana is going to sneak into this castle through a waterway and the  dungeon, but the castle is not the most well kept place.  One wing of  the dungeon has been taken over by large spiders, and is shut off from  the rest.  If Meridiana finds herself there, she might find a reward for  fighting through the sp...

November 6th Weekly Update

I don't have a lot to go on about for this week, it was spent working on mundane stuff like in between animations and modification to assets, and some bug fixes.  

Sometimes I don't get anything super exciting done, so maybe this weekend I'll try to put together a quick saucy animation so I have something for you guys!

I did want to ask about Patreon's new ability to bill you on the day you joined, instead of the 1st of the month.  I haven't turned that on, but I'd like...

October 30th Weekly Update

This week, I continued work on the little imp dude, and set up most of his rig.  He still needs his facial animations, as well as some additional bones in the legs in order to make sure he deforms properly, but he's otherwise very close to done.

As seen in the video, I also set up more of the opening/ tutorial level I've been reworking.  

The level will culminate with a raid on someone's castle through the dungeon, and so that's where I've started.  &...

October 23rd Weekly Update

This week I took the time to finish up work I was doing on this imp dude.  I want to use these guys sooner than later, so I've been working on him slowly a little every week for a while.  

My goal was to surprise people with him in game, but then I spent so much time on him this week, I wouldn't have anything to talk about if I didn't bring him up!

I'd like to give him a few different horn shapes, and perhaps a few different color variations.  Otherwise he's ready ...

October 16th Weekly Update

Someone had mentioned controller support needing to be updated, and seeing as how this would be the more comfortable controls, I took some extra time this week to get that all set up.

I got all the UI elements in place and then set to making sure all the controller buttons where mapped.  I'm using the Shoulder buttons for the attacks, so that the player can still control the...

Ocotober 9th Weekly Update

Few things I worked on this week that I wanted to specifically go over.

First I decided to trim the opening cut scene animation I was working on, in order to get into the actual game play faster.  I realized what I had initially planned was a lot of info dump, and I'm gonna spread that out between gameplay segments.

I did still work on some animations from the new cut scene, as it starts the same, but just ends much sooner!

2022-10-09 14:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post

October 2nd Weekly Update

September was a bit rough, but luckily its over and we can move on!

I mentioned that I spent some time this week working with AI "art" generation, and while it takes a lot to wrangle it in, I did get what I consider a few wonderful depictions of our heroine, Meridiana.  I think right now, this AI stuff shines most as an inexpensive/free concept artist.  Its not as good as if you're able to afford the real thing, but if you can't its a workable replacement.

It ...

AI "Art"

I've been messing with an AI art tool (Stable Diffusion) and looking at it as a tool to help with my game dev.   

I don't think its a replacement for real artists yet, but I think it does work as a low budget option for small projects that might be a little funds limited.  Specifically I wanted to see how useful it would be for stuff like background art, textures, and concept art.

Some of the background stuff I've posted above!

September 25th Weekly Update

I was still feeling pretty sick for most of the week so I didn't really get a lot done, nor do I have anything significant to report.

While I still have a pretty terrible cough, I otherwise feel better (I can breath and think now!)  So I'll getting back at it right away.

Sorry for the short update!

Thank you for the support, and have a safe and happy week!

September 18th Weekly Update

I'm hopped up on cold medicine so I keep this post brief again.  

I continued work on the cut scene animations, and I've got all of them pre dialogue done except one.

I'm at a point where I'm going to need to either hire a voice actress, or use some AI stuff to do some dialogue.  Its all gonna depend on the cost.

My week got cut short by a pretty bad cold I got from my niece, so I'm going to spend this weekend resting until I can breath through my nose again!

September 11th Weekly Update

Gonna be a quick post!

Continued work on the cut scene animations.  I've been studying cinematography a bit so that things might look kinda cool in the cut scenes, but I'll try to keep that for bogging things down.   

I can build the scenes first, and always go back and move cameras around once things are there.

I also took a bit of time to transfer over some magic spells I had missed.  I'll always have additional spells I'd like to create, and I still ne...

September 4th Weekly Update

I had been trying to write out the opening story sequence for the tutorial for quite a while, and now I've gotten to the point where I want to start animating it.  

I'm still coming up with different ideas and wanting to change things, but I figured its about time to put something down, so I'm just gonna move forward and new ideas can be written down for some other area of the game perhaps.

I'm not gonna give any context yet, but I'll be showing off some animation...

August 28th Weekly Update

One of the things I wanted to do with the new swamp area I was making was rebuild the beginning of the tutorial level.  

People, myself included, didn't love the platforming part, but that is something I want the player to get some experience with.  I've rebuilt it so that instead of needing to climb a waterfall, the objective is to navigate a swamp without getting all wet and dirty.

...

Recommended youtube channel! Masahireo Sakurai on Creating Games

Just wanted to let people know about/recommend a new youtube channel by Kirby and Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai.

he just started it, and only has a few videos up, but already he discusses design decisions he made in his games and why, as well as talking about important game concepts people might not think about.  

And he's been in the industry for a long time, so this is all coming from experience.  

I think its a valuable resource, and its wonderful that ...

August 21st Weekly Update

I had some family engagements that took my out of office for part of the week(good family stuff), so I wasn't as productive as I'd usually like.

I did spend some time setting things up with the interaction system so that I can further reduce the number of buttons needed for the game.   As well as optimize and fix the system to allow me to have more then the current types of magic sources to absorb.

I also started doing some rigging for an NPC/guest character ...

August 14th Weekly Update

This week I'm just gonna show off some screen shots with no context!

I hope everyone has a safe week, and thank you so much for the support!

August 7th Weekly Update

This week I spent a bit of time on bug fixes and UI set up, and then did some work on costumes for the cultists.

But the majority of the time was spent starting to set up and block out areas for the town, and reworking part of the tutorial level.

I did decide on a bit of a western theme I think for the town, and so I started to lay a bit of that out.

The asset set I'm building isn't complete so I do need to rely on some premade stuff.  

I do however, ha...

July 31st Weekly Update

While I did spent a little time working on some attack stuff, I finally got back to working on characters more.

I had a lot of technical issues while doing it (LOTS OF CRASHES), but I managed to get the make figures rigged all finished up.  So while I build costumes for it to make the different characters, I can also work on animations at the same time.

(watch your eyes around th...