Alrighty, here we are with the very first Dev Log for Stellar Wasteland. Hells yeah!
Finally, after many slow and inconsistent months of development, mostly whilst sorting out a few other aspects of life (and getting used to juggling three jobs), development on Stellar Wasteland is now back in full swing.
Updated Character Models
First off, let’s have a look at the human male character model, in all its birthday-suit glory. The below image shows the original asset and textures, which I had made late last year, as well as the new and improved textures that just look a lot cleaner, more high-res, and work far better with animation (in terms of hiding the seams at the joints). The faces are still pretty rough, but they work for now (pre-pre-pre-alpha lmao).
Funnily enough, I was around 95% complete with the re-texture when I noticed that, in fact, the texture size was too small and looked terrible close up. So guess what that meant – once again had to go back and painstakingly re-do every single texture (AGAIN) to get it up-scaled and doubled in size. AFTER having just done that exact thing. Mannnnn that sucked.
Aging Overlays
Anyway, moving on, we’ve also now got a dynamic aging system which will apply the following overlay based on how old a character is in-game. I’m pretty happy with how this first overlay looks, and I’ve set up the system in a way that will support alternative overlays too. This is so that every character has considerable variation in their appearance, as I think it makes a huge difference in immersion and world-building.
(NOTE: The above image is a GIF – keep watching and you’ll see the progression)
Facial Animations (Kinda)
The facial animations are our next stop, and I’ve aimed to try and make them as flexible as I can whilst working in a 2D environment. You’ll see in the GIF below that there are multiple sprites for the mouth and eyes, which will animate based on the characters actions (ie. blinking, talking, in pain, etc). The same swappable system will also apply to all the facial features (even the ones that don’t animate) so that the player can customise their characters with considerable depth.
What isn’t shown in the GIF , is that the main facial features have bones too, and so the jaw will move as the mouth changes states, the pupils will track various characters or objects, and each eyebrow will move independently.
I will definitely showcase this in a future dev log, but will likely do so via in-game footage rather than the editor (as it’ll look far better, especially with later more refined sprites).
Skeletal System/Inverse Kinematics
Lastly, here’s a small demo of the skeletal system I’m using to animate the characters, making full use of inverse kinematic controllers for each limb. I’m pretty satisfied with how it’s turning out so far, and much prefer this kind of system over classic sprite sheets.
Whilst taking this route is a lot more work to set up initially, the pay-off will be immense later on when it comes to adding gear, armour, and items to the game. This is a must-have in my opinion, as one of the best parts of RPGs is finding all the different kinds of loot and equipment, and so I want to add as much as I possibly can.
Layers on Layers on Layers on Layers…
Speaking of loot and customisation, this is basically the main reason why the character models have taken this long. Let’s have a lil’ sneak peak at the sheer number of layers and slots that each character has, and you’ll see why:
Yupp, there’s a LOT – and that’s just so far. I fully expect to add even more slots as development goes on, as I discover new items to equip and new ways to customize the characters. It definitely does make everything far slower than your standard RPG equipment (armor, helmet, weapon, etc), but it’ll absolutely be worth it.
With this current setup, I’ll be able to add massive variety in NPCs and enemies, as well as a super robust and in-depth character creation system. If that’s not cool enough already, I also plan to implement a limb-based damage system, full dismemberment, prosthetic enhancement and robotic limb replacement, as well as many more awesome things.
That’s about all I’ll show for now, but there’s a lot more coming, and soon. Development is now going at a real good pace, and it won’t be long before I can move on to the really cool stuff like world design, inventory system, dialogue system, and more.
As a final note, writing this dev log was actually quite fun, I can really get used to this…
