Dev Diary: Stamina Wheels

This week we started implementing a prototype character and animations. These will help us as we progress with our climbing mechanics and combat systems. Many parts of which will be driven by an animation's root motion. So, we need root motion to test out our systems. We could continue animating the capsule character with root motion but we have a prototype character we wanted to test out. The main character Essence.

Having access to placeholder animations like these is incredibly useful. We can ensure that our code will work once we begin creating on our core animation set. When our animator is working on a piece, they can quickly swap out the placeholder for the real thing and test it out in game!

Essence, or Ess for short, will be going through some iterations, but the tall doll-like look is one we like. We are also looking at testing out clothing and hair physics soon to see how that augments her figure and what pitfalls we will need to watch out for.

The circle grid shown in the video is another version of our circle combat system prototypes. This one gives the player a lot more freedom and solves a few issues we had with the previous method. Mainly the large number of buttons the player had to grapple with while playing. In this version, the player can make decisions about moving, dodging, or dashing just by the distance or direction the action is placed.

For example, if the player adds an action to the first or second ring from the origin, its a simple move command. But an action added to the outer ring will be a dash. Moving around the circumference of the circle will create a side step or a rolling dodge.

Although some actions will still require a button press, this system already frees up many of the extra steps needed in the previous prototype. We will be testing out this version soon and determine if we want to continue with this setup or if another method would be better.