rei-makes-big-robo

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Soup time!!!

I moved things over to Godot 4.4 and nothing broke! Switched the project over to Jolt physics and promptly began making Grembot gibs. After I got all the gibs done and tested everything out I was like hmmmmm how many gibs can this handle all colliding at once... So it was Soup Time and the answer is it gets rough around 700 but really gets bad at 800. Despite everything at 864 it just results in a physics tick taking 1000ms to complete which uhhh put into perspective how low impact everything else I'd been doing was. Now if only I could figure out how to instantiate the gib scenes with alternate colours I'd be mostly ready to start building enemies to tear apart. In the end I'm likely going to just have to make a gib for every colour variant I make... I feel myself losing steam on this project but fun little memes like this that push development forward have kinda become what keeps it going. I'm aiming to push out a demo level set to gauge interest with and depending on the results of that will decide how far this goes. I want to give it a fair chance but I feel like I have other things I want to try making at the moment. I've learned a few things in making this that have given me visions of how I can apply stuff from this to the Godot Hammerden port and that really excites me. With Hammerden being a VR project though it's tough to allocate time to a passion project like that especially considering its higher fidelity aesthetic. Anyways hopefully my rambling has been somewhat interesting or at least entertaining, I think that's everything for this "devlog" :3

[rei-makes-big-robo]

UI DESIGN IS MY PASSION!!!

Do not look at a calendar, do not look at when my last post was.... SOOOOO uhhh between my last post I got my shit wrecked by Covid (again) and have fallen into the fun time of having it feel like I skipped about a month and a half of life...

BUT UHHHH I did work on stuff off and on during that fortunately, I've done a lot work tuning and rewriting the basic mechanics while implementing new stuff like this wacky (incomplete) prerendered 3D HUD? UI? I'm not sure what to call it I think HUD is more applicable but whatever I've already written the punch line in the title.... Iirc this footage is using a version of the physics gun that applies forces from the point on the surface of the object you are shooting, which the prior would have been using a type that added a central force.. I am likely going to revert it back to the prior force application method as it just feels better to play with...

As for the UI stuff the Physics gun now has three power levels that can be toggled between with the mouse wheel and eventually other input methods. Each shot expends a stored amount of energy though so shooting in rapid succession will result in weaker shots regardless of the level. As for the meter on the bottom left who'd have thunk that 150 frames of meter would only end up being 2.5mb in Vram when the entire 720p HUD image is 4.5mb, Probably a very good thing that I intentionally cropped the meter bits so they didn't need an alpha channel...

Additionally it would seem I didn't post 05 here which is odd but I'm not gonna question it, mostly more hard to see code refinements, scale testing, flashlight implementation and a tile based test map. I think it's better that I left that limited as I imagine it will be a lot more interesting when I show it in a later stage so bear with the barebones test map for now.

OH I ALMOST FORGOT, uhhh I'm hoping to implement some NPC stuff soon but I'm kinda waiting for Godot 4.4 to have a release first as it's going to make driving rigs and increasing physics load a lot less of a pain. However some prior things I've made and want to shove into this like chunks of grape in chili are already in the pipeline so uhh yeah funky wunky shit.

Enough yapping hopefully y'all took something from this? or at least enjoyed some part of my ramblings idk. Till next time I guess?

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Day #4: but I sit on a throne of lies..

Is it day 4? it's been days since my last post but I've only got back to working on this today so I'm counting it.. Anyways basics of the Physics gun are implemented but it's kinda a proof of concept. It just takes the mass and multiplies it by a normalized vector to the player multiplied by another thing to make it actually surpass friction and stuff... One cube is 1kg and the other is 10kg but they behave relatively the same with the gun, I don't really like this and think mass shouldn't factor into the force applied but for now it's training wheels until I figure out the physics scales of how I want this game to work. Eventually the plan is for the gun to damage enemies via breaking physics joint constraints effectively simulating dismemberment. I also want to eventually add a grab function but that will be separate of the gun.

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Little bonus clip from the external camera used for IK testing.

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Day #3: I have slept for 4 hours and it hurts

Why do we use AM and PM? It leads to really wacky stuff like ah yeah I went from waking up at 8pm to waking up at 12pm, which makes it sound like I slept an extra 4 hours but in reality I slept for 4 hours and woke up 8 hours earlier than I did the prior day... Time standards are wack af I guess... Anyways onto real stuff, I reused some bits of the IK scripts with some tweaks to drive the gun arm to align with what the player is looking at. This works way better than I was expecting especially with the FOV changing with velocity now. The gun arm is gonna look a little weird once the "shooting" mechanics are in for reasons I'll leave a mystery for now, but hey when has a video game gun ever worked in a way that made complete sense? Next steps are to start some basic UI work and then I'm gonna try to block out a level to test some more mechanics I need to implement.

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Day #2: Legs work??????????????????

There is something incredibly frustrating about knowing you have to use a flawed component... Bonehound having abnormal leg design resulted in IK results looking horrible and just not working with the current nodes.. But after a night of nearly no sleep trying to troubleshoot I woke up dark and late at the peak time of 8pm with some ideas for potential solutions.. The second of the two solution ideas was to add a faux lower leg bone and separating the IK node into two separate nodes per leg. One driving the fake lower leg and real thigh while the other was driving the entirety of the lower leg. This is what I settled on and is visible in the video, is it perfect? Not even close, is it good enough for IK on legs the player can't see? definitely..

Last thing of note, I know I've been doing Day # formats but don't expect that to stay consistent at all I nearly burned myself out considering most of what is here is technically from one day...

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Day #1: Neck works???

Technically not the first day but the first day writing actual code even though half of what's going on here is just the default movement code with some tweaks. Anyways I did a bunch of stuff just getting the neck animated as I want to ensure that Bonehound is more than just a playermodel following a default player rig. To this end I'm going to be animating as much as I can procedurally and it is at this point I've started to regret using a normal armature/Skeleton3D. Godot seems to be kinda limited in how much control you have over bones in script and constraints, which does make sense considering that I am on 4.3 which only really has a solution that is going to be replaced with something better.

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Been almost a year since I completed my first game jam entry, I don't really know if I've learned anything tbh? (Skip to the next set of brackets to skip my dumb vent rant thing that really shouldn't be on this blog) 2024 was kinda a miserable year for me and there isn't exactly a reason to expect 2025 to change that.. For some context I used to have a really bad job that was abusive and frequently pushed me into positions where I would injure myself, stuck working with injuries that wouldn't heal without treatment and no time to resolve them. In 2023 I left that job and have been trying to make it on my own, doing various little bits of things to try to make an income... Needless to say I'm at rock bottom and I've got a pickaxe. I should just apply for positions at some game studios and actually get a job I won't hate but I'm either actually really bad at most things I do or just have a lot of imposter syndrome. Thought about applying to Digital Extremes once cause they seem like a great place to work, but who am I kidding why would a real company hire someone like me? I barely know where to start with a portfolio with how many half finished disasters I've created, the only industry tool I know is Substance painter cause otherwise I use freeware and I'm kinda just bad at things considering how much of my life I've wasted on art. To kinda conclude I'm not exactly doing well and the downward spiral is far from over. (Self indulgent vent rant lore dumping over) Anyways if you haven't already maybe try my game, it's kinda really bad but has some fun moments I think. I'm kinda content with how it turned out all things considered so I guess it's nice to have something I can go yeah this is kinda neat?

Anyways I saved the best?? for last if y'all follow my account you know of Bonehound? Probably right?? you gotta??? Anyways Bonehound is gonna finally get a game probably unless I end up not finishing yet another project again... I updated the model a bit with some refined textures for a flat shading look with baked AO

I kinda wanna redo the gun model but I'll save that for after I get a demo done and published on Itch, expect a vaguely boomer shooter kinda game with weird movement and probably a fishing minigame. Boom there it is my biggest regret with Dreary Fallow, NO FISHING MINIGAME??? How can I say I'm a game dev without fishing minigame??? Anyways if there's interest I'll try to post test recordings of it as I go. Happy new year I guess lol

[rei-makes-big-robo]

still alive (I think).

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New stuffed kitty to hug...

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Some renders of animations I made for Scully the only NPCs in Dreary Fallow. The more time that passes after the jam submission period the more tempted I am to expand upon what I got out in the jam. A lot of the level design would need to be redone but I'd like to flesh out these guys a bit more, give them different shoe colours or hats to differentiate between them.

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Been dead for a hot minute again :3

But to be fair I was busy, with other things and also my first game jam and first time actually shipping a game. It's small but I learned a lot and had fun making something.

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Unnamed wip: Originally this was a smaller part of a Bonehound Spin off which I then spun off into it's own thing. Most of the leg mechanics were designed with the original design in mind but the original spine looked awful and was going to be an utter nightmare to animate in engine. Now I just have an overly detailed CAD model which will be utter hell to bake down into something that runs well in a game engine because I like clear parts. I'm really glad I spent time doing a "realistic" hexagon bit screw in a prior model because it really makes the spine work well.

[rei-makes-big-robo]

VDoom wip shot. VDoom is mecha design for one of my games that is essentially a parody of various mecha designs. (Specifically gundam) It's intended to make Gundam fans cringe but it seems to be causing super robot fans to get excited so uhh...

[rei-makes-big-robo]

this has to be an illegal move in boxing

[rei-makes-big-robo]

Starting the New year off strong with a fun little illustration of the head of Sazabi from Gundam. I should try to do more shaded work but I just get bored of working on a project if it drags on too long and regardless I often prefer the "pop" that this style gives.

[rei-makes-big-robo]

fight animation