The first major pass on the 3D player with equipment is essentially in place. It still needs polish and additional content, but the foundation is finally there.
I modeled a new basic 3D shield and received the full texture set for all 3D weapons. That unblocked a significant amount of work on the character side. With proper textures in place, it was finally possible to check how the equipment looks animated, inside the game with proper game lighting.
Animation Batch
A large batch of animations was added. Most of the core set is now implemented. Still missing:
- Attack variations
- Direction-based death animations
- Proper fall-to-ground death sequences
- Lever handling and a few other interaction details
For now, some animations are reused just to keep development moving. Everything will be refined and expanded later.
To make the animation workflow less painful, I wrote a small Blender plugin. It adds a simple panel listing all animations of the rig in one place. Blender’s default animation workflow feels awkward to me, so this already saves time. I plan to release it as open source once it is cleaned up properly. I may forget to do this if I get overwhelmed with work 🙂
All new models, animations, and weapons were imported into Unity. Most of it worked without issues. A few animations behaved oddly until I baked them, most likely due to root motion. After baking, they behaved as expected.
Switching between exploration and combat modes now works correctly, including swapping the appropriate animation sets.
Although the animations were created at a higher FPS in Blender, my custom animator plays them at 16 FPS in the game. This gives them a retro feel that fits the overall tone quite on the spot.
Engine and Stability Improvements
I added a safety check when registering navigation paths so duplicate entries can no longer slip in. Under certain conditions this previously caused exceptions, especially when certain enemies were pathing toward the player. It was a small fix, but important.
I also discovered that third-party licenses were scattered across seven separate files with roughly 40 attributions in total. These are now consolidated and properly organized. Most of them were audio-related, with a few covering code and fonts.
Lava Shader Update
The lava shader received a visual upgrade. It is now more saturated and visually stronger, making it stand out better in darker dungeon areas. It emits a subtle glow, and the ground around areas where lava touches surfaces is now slightly illuminated.
Here’s the current look:
A huge number of bugs were fixed across different systems, but there are still remnants to be addressed properly. A lot of hidden issues surfaced once the new systems started interacting with each other. A proper cleanup and refactor is in progress.
Overall, solid progress
Leave a Reply