Rogue-like Devlog

Art direction change... #3..? I promise this is the last time. I'm committing to following through no matter what this time. Which obviously started with making 3d model number 5 of Kyo. [I know, I have a problem]

I waited till I felt like I had made good progress before updating. Used a metarig as a base and added some custom controls (It went much faster this time, and I was able to resolve the small problems I ran into much faster than last time. (TwT) I can actually FEEL that I've improved.

Might tweak it a little more, but after that I'm accepting it as done and moving forward, possible jank included. :]

2/3 attack animations are ready for stage 2

*Bonus* Because of how I set up the directional animations for rendering all at once, one after the other, the spin winds up with this vvv

Perspective is my nemesis and thus 3d model number 4 came in clutch (the most rudimentary one yet), but completely ditched the single connected mesh for a bunch of rounded cubes assembled into a model that requires no weights only bone parenting. (^v^) Also didnt bother with IKs and a control rig, and directly animated the deforming armature. Trying to do best practices seriously bogged me down, and the small inconveniences are lowkey worth not needing an extra 2-3 hours messing with the rig. It made this so much easier to work on.

The idle, walk, and dash animations are fully planned and keyframed. After the attack animations are finalized, I'll move on to tracing, filling, and shading them.

Workshopped different styles; I think he could still be chibi-fied a bit more to make it simpler, but everytime I tried it didn't look quite right. His snatched waist just feels too central to his design.

Now to animate I guess

Long time no update, I made a lowpoly 3d model of Kyo (based of the proportions of the voxel model) Then, I went through the headache of rigging and rendering scaled-down animations, and honestly? I don't like how it looks.

I'm seriously fighting the urge to scrap the previous art direction and overhaul everything with hand-drawn sprites instead of pixel art. And that would give me the room to also improve the color palette as I was feeling like it looked a little washed-out.

I want it to look better, so I have to...

Time to see if I can stick out proper animation this time. (T^T)

VOXEL KYO!

Set up a geometry node and made my boy 3d, though it just made me want to redo the 2d sprites because I realized the side profile doesn't match up with the front in some places [of course after I finished a bunch of anims already (TT^TT) ] Seriously considering converting 3d renders to pixel art because hand animating twice [once in a higher resolution to figure out the poses needed and another in pixel art] and then also needing to do turn around and side profile makes it so tedious that it is far too easy to put off indefinitely.

The dash animations are finished. Now, I'm working on the basic attack animations and logic.

I 3d modeled kyo for the 3rd(?) time. This time in an incredibly rough block style as a reference for the different angles of animations. Having a 3d consistent reference should speed up the process a bit, so I don't have to trial and error it into looking right in every different perspective.

It's been a while, and I've added a lot!

The intro areas are finished! They only need small added touches, but I needed to take a while to make the grass because after trying a bunch of different things, I always hated the way it looked. I took a few days to make it entirely dynamic. No need to stress over an animation when it's not really relevant to the majority of the game.

Slowly churning out the arm animations

about 4/12 done

It's been a bit (•~•), took a week to reset

This week, though I've

1) Redone the basic movement so running is possible and plays the correct animations

The basic animations are done. (@^@)

I animated the core actions and exported everything, then got so unbelievably overwhelmed by actually trying to construct a test build that I have decided to shift to 2D. And as much as it kinda feels like a waste, it really wasn't because drawing the sprites felt so much easier now that I have constructed and made the anatomy move in 3D. It took a couple minutes to work out the face, but after that it was so easy. The first 3 sprites for K are done.