{"id":3471,"date":"2016-11-09T12:32:03","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T12:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/?p=3471"},"modified":"2020-03-14T16:25:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-14T16:25:50","slug":"development-diary-21-blocked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/blog\/2016\/11\/09\/development-diary-21-blocked\/","title":{"rendered":"Development Diary #21: Blocked&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Another quick little milestone update, environment is all blocked in, puzzles now have stand-in grey boxes and I&#8217;ve got a ball-on-a-stick moving through the game to plot out the different sections&#8230;&nbsp;<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #dadada;\"><del><strong>3rd Oct. \u2013 Project Start<\/strong><\/del><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #dadada;\"><del><strong>7th Oct. \u2013 Design Locked:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Story\/Puzzle Dependency Chart finished<\/em><\/del><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #dadada;\"><del><strong>7th Nov. \u2013 Environment Blocked:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Environment blocked in with temp. geometry, walkable areas defined and navigable with character stand\u00ad-in, cameras placed.<\/em><\/del><\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>21st Nov. \u2013 Character Locked:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Character design, modelling and walk animation finished, nav-\u00adagent set up in environment.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>19th Dec. \u2013 Environment Locked:<\/strong>\u00ad &nbsp;<em>Environment geometry detailed and lit.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>9th Jan. \u2013 Audio Locked: &nbsp;<\/strong><em>Spot FX and ambiance\/music finished and implemented.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>20th Jan. \u2013 Game Locked:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>UI and menus implemented, environmental interactions finalized, \u00adtesting.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>31st Jan. \u2013 Final Delivery:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Final testing, bug fixing and delivery.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Initially, I was planning on using a nav-mesh\/agent setup for the main character; animating walk-cycles in place and then moving the character around using the agent velocity to blend between clips. I&#8217;ve now decided to have separate animation clips for everything; it means more animation in the first place, but I&#8217;m hoping it&#8217;ll end up actually simplifying the whole process in the end. The way most interactions are dealt with in <em>Reel<\/em> doesn&#8217;t really rely on the position of the character, they tend to involve the player manipulating objects directly with the cursor; removing the ability of the player&nbsp;to move the character anywhere around the environment also removes a lot of the potential for errors like errant ray-casts, rigid-bodies getting stuck, clipping through scenery etc. It might feel a little restrictive, but I&#8217;m hoping a better variety and specificity of animation will make up for that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3476\" src=\"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-content\/media\/ENV_Plot.gif\" alt=\"env_plot\" width=\"640\" height=\"640\"><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The above gif is an attempt to plot out the course of the main character throughout the game, its very basic, but helped a great deal when figuring out where cameras and lights should go, &nbsp;how many separate animation clips I&#8217;m likely to need etc. At this stage I&#8217;ve also blocked in each of the various obstacles\/puzzles in the game, most just have a grey box with a button action at the moment but it all helps to get a better grasp on how the finished game fits together.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Next up is character design and animation! As usual, I\u2019ll be floating around on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/holyfingers\">Twitter<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/artoftoryanse.tumblr.com\/\">Tumblr<\/a>&nbsp;and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Toryans%C3%A9\/139100656265397\">Facebook<\/a>&nbsp;throughout development, if you fancy following along. If you just want to hear about the big stuff, release dates etc. you can sign up to the Arcto Games <a href=\"https:\/\/tinyletter.com\/arctogames\">Tinyletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Reel is being developed with the support of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk\/\">Northern Ireland Screen<\/a> as part of their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk\/news\/8258\/exp-project-decision.aspx\">eXP Project<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another quick little milestone update, environment is all blocked in, puzzles now have stand-in grey boxes and I&#8217;ve got a ball-on-a-stick moving through the game to plot out the different sections&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[43,44,64,100,18,76,57],"class_list":["post-3471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-development","tag-3d","tag-animation","tag-dev-diary","tag-reel","tag-softimage","tag-toryanse","tag-unity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3471"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4043,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions\/4043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}