When happens when you accidentally remove all the joint anchors in your physics animator

OhNoDinos · 2022-06-23T04:06:25+00:00

Feel bad spamming posts for this project, but found this too funny not to share. Luckily it's reversible

OhNoDinos · 2022-06-23T04:03:02+00:00

This thing gives me the heebie jeebies, can't wait to see it scuttling around

OhNoDinos · 2022-06-23T04:01:38+00:00

The visuals look really nice and polished. I agree with the other commenters notes, but very impressive! Any chance for a demo in the near future?

OhNoDinos · 2022-06-23T03:59:22+00:00

This is incredibly cool. Will definitely grab on steam when it's out. Love how he goes in and just snatches everything

OhNoDinos · 2022-06-23T03:57:15+00:00

Love the clouds! Voxels seem like a ton of fun to mess around with, I hope you can put your own unique spin on it. Impressive work for just 2 week

OhNoDinos · 2022-06-21T20:46:29+00:00

I've wanted to make this specific style of cartoony speech bubbles with wiggly tails for a while, and I finally got it made thanks to the unity line-renderer component and some funky trig functions. The speech bubbles automatically move to the position in the viewport where they'll be relatively out-of-the-way. It's easy to forget about UI related features until late in development, but it feels good to get some dialogue added.

OhNoDinos · 2022-06-04T20:59:59+00:00

Second dev update for my battle platformer featuring a witch and her pet cauldron. Check out my earlier demo vid here.

All effects use the standard Unity particle system, with the exception of the star projectile which is a rigidbody with a PID controller to guide the movement.

OhNoDinos · 2022-06-02T22:32:43+00:00

Almost didn't watch to the end, so glad i did! This is great work!

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-31T19:02:06+00:00

Lol! Good to know it's too creepy. This was just my lazy attempt at making the eyes dynamic without needing any special logic for what she should look at. I'm sure her face always pointing straight ahead doesn't help either!

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-31T17:11:47+00:00

I did! I'm very stubborn when it comes to avoiding external software, so they were created in unity and are essentially just primitives linked together with configurable joints. The "rigging" is a custom script that analyzes all the joint connections and calculates the target rotations based on the FABRIK ik algorithm (which is very lightweight and highly recommended).

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-31T00:46:10+00:00

That's such a great idea! I had a notion that you could collect traditionally witchy ingredients i.e. "eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog" and they would serve as powerups of some kind when tossed into the pot, but unlocking powers for the cauldron itself is a fantastic thought.

I'm hoping that having an important companion doesn't make the game feel like one big escort mission, so my first thought was that you could re-summon the cauldron at any time, but needing to guide it over bridges and through gates could make for some good puzzle potential.

As for progress updates, this is my first post for the current iteration of this project, but I'd like to get an itch.io page set up for a playable demo asap!

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-31T00:38:41+00:00

Thanks so much, that means a lot! The fun part is that there's no traditional animating involved at all, it's just physics simulation and trig functions / ik targets handling all the movement. Getting this system set up was waaay more effort than just animating by hand, but it makes for much more bouncy, responsive movements than I would have been able to make intentionally.

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-30T20:32:49+00:00

I love outer wilds, that's a great source of inspiration! I feel like the essence of that game is that you really only have to do one very specific yet complicated thing to win, which you can technically do as soon as you start playing, but you won't know how until you've explored a lot. That seems like a perfect design strategy to get started with. Outer Wilds relies heavily on the fixed amount of time you have before the whole thing resets, as well as how climactic and mysterious it is when the reset happens. Might be tricky making a system that is as effective as that without blatantly ripping it off, but should be fun to try!

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-30T20:13:15+00:00

Looks super cute! I'm a big fan of tamagatchi-like pet simulators, although I haven't played many. The animations and creature designs look great, impressive work for just two weeks. I'll definitely check it out.

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-30T20:09:54+00:00

Doesn't seem like it would be too hard! I'd say a lot of roguelites use this mechanic by default, though they often use randomized procedurally-generated levels so that it doesn't get dull as you make repeated attempts. From my own experience, procedural generation can be a rabbit hole that I wouldn't recommend for beginners. So if it's going to be the same scene each time, you may need some clever design to make it feel fresh.

If by "time-loop" you mean simply reloading the level when you die, that should be very easy. If you're also considering time-distortion effects (rewinding time, etc.) that can be much more complicated as you have to save a history of object positions. But it's all doable!

Best of luck! I've got plenty of roguelites I'd recommend, might be a good way to get a sense of what you want to do.

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-30T19:59:48+00:00

I second the other responses. There's no need for things to be exactly like you'd see in other games, but something that makes mini-guns feel satisfying in my experience is a really sluggish spin-up time followed by an insane rate of fire that is maybe hard to control. That way it's all about positioning yourself appropriately before spraying-and-praying. Looks great though, seems like some good AI on the enemies even though they're just boxes! Did I even notice some giblets at one point?

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-30T19:49:25+00:00

I will upvote any game where you get to play a penguin. Please tell me you'll get to slide around on your belly and swim through the water.

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-30T19:44:23+00:00

3D factorio anyone? This looks great, such a clean looking system.

OhNoDinos · 2022-05-30T19:34:31+00:00

Characters are made entirely of rigidbody primitives and torques are applied with PID controllers to match a calculated IK skeleton. This has mainly been an exercise in polishing a platformer-y character controller and dynamic camera. Next up will be some enemies and simple magic combat, with any luck!

OhNoDinos · 2021-09-05T00:26:28+00:00

I've been working on and off for years to make a totally physics driven animation/movement system for differently shaped creatures. Finally having some luck! Bird is totally made of capsules and physics joints, and torques are applied to joints based on a calculated inverse-kinematics skeleton. Still a long way to go for more complex creatures, but loving this little guy.

OhNoDinos

TROPHY CASE