#lugaru

i thought of some goofy like half lore where the diegetic explanation is that there's some extra dimensional parasite in the creature that's taking your player input and interpreting it into control of the creature's body. the end goal of the game is figuring out how to rid your animal buddy of this extra-dimensional-nuisance for good thereby destroying the bridge between you, while trying to keep the beast alive by hunting for food and whatnot.

during gameplay you could hear the creature you're controlling breathe and vocalize in response to physical exertion and threats, it would still have limited control of it's body and whatnot and buddy would shake it's head if you were approaching something it didn't like. when you quit out of the game and come back an unknown amount of time would pass and you'd come back to the thing like conked out on some surface just resting, or hugging it's family (that you wake up beside and have to just walk away from at the start of the game), before you invariably retake control of it's body again. maybe there could be a mechanic where you can manage the stress levels of your fuzzy buddy by treating it with respect and doing things it likes, visiting it's family while you're in control and hugging them before you leave, taking breaks and letting your pal catch it's breath once in a while, just showing that while you're in control you don't want to make it's life miserable.

fun fact: lugaru generates all of its terrain at runtime with a single easily edited heightmap texture

Thought I’d try importing my character to Overgrowth, because it would be fun to see it in motion, but hot damn it’s nigh impossible to make sense of the animation rigs included with the game, and they don’t adhere to any standard.

The Wolf rig's arm bones are set to collide with the mesh, so I can't put them inside the arm. Some bones get scaled when I move them. Some move on a different axis than what I select. Some spin when I try to rotate (in a different direction). Some are mirrored, some aren't. Some bones can't be moved. No weight paint can be applied manually. Some rigs can't be posed. Some rigs just crash Blender upon opening. Some rigs have tons of controllers and IK direction bones, some have none. The cat rig has SIX bones of varying lengths stacked on top of each other in the upper arm segment!? What in the actual fuck.

/this kills the furry