There hasn’t been much to show or announce recently, which is not to say we haven’t kept busy! I’m struggling to master the art of the normal map in my ongoing 3d education, while Alex continues working on Space Food Truck. What exactly has he been up to since we released the asynchronous update? We’ll be ready to talk about that later next month!
It’s been a long time coming, but Space Food Truck‘s asynchronous update has just been soft launched! I guess it’s only medium-soft; I don’t know if you’re supposed to tell people you’ve soft launched something. Anyway, the Online Games section now supports hopping into a live game lobby to play the whole thing now, or joining an asynchronous (your turn/my turn) game to play at your leisure.
So what’s the difference between our live play and asynchronous? If you happen to have a few players bite immediately on your async lobby, you can play exactly like a live game as long as the current turn’s player is online. The difference is how we deal with players that leave.
In a live game, a dropped player has 60 seconds to rejoin before their slot is forfeited to one of the other players. In asynchronous, when a player leaves the game pauses until they return. Once your turn comes back around, you’ll get a Steam notification. We really want to add a 48 hour time limit to boot inactive players, but we’ve hit some technical snags on that front that we’re trying to work through.
There are a few minor visual bugs in the game list that we’ll be dealing with before we call asynchronous “official”, but otherwise it’s been performing really well for us in testing. This update should make it WAY easier for you lonely hearts to find a crew online. If you encounter any weirdness, let us know at bugs@spacefoodtruck.com. Happy trucking!
The Space Food Truck asynchronous update should be ready to roll out any day now, and I’ve used the extra time to squeeze in some more 3d practice. My Chef is now fully textured, and I even had time to model the Engineer. His head was way more complicated than I had remembered.
Took some time this morning to wrap up my practice model of the #SpaceFoodTruck Engineer. pic.twitter.com/Ke7TmF36oB
— One Man Left Studios (@OneManLeft) August 8, 2016
We were hoping to have Space Food Truck‘s asynchronous update out by now, but we’ll be needing some more time to bug hunt and stabilize everything. On the bright side, that gives me more time to experiment and expand my 3d skillset. I gave that Captain model some bones to make her poseable, and I’ve got the Chef modeled and ready for texturing. Maybe I’ll even have time to model the Engie!
My practice Chef model isn't rigged yet, but he's already a pretty good dancer. #SpaceFoodTruck #gameart pic.twitter.com/kCnRXsyzTD
— One Man Left Studios (@OneManLeft) July 26, 2016
It’s been a little more than 2 months of my crash course back into 3d modeling, texturing, rigging, and animation after a long hiatus. I felt like it was time to put what I’ve been learning into a practical experiment: am I good enough at this to hypothetically remake Space Food Truck as a 3d game? I picked what I felt like was my most challenging character (I’ve never done hair before) and gave it a shot. It’d be fun to rig and animate her a little later on, if I have the time. I have a feeling I won’t.
Alex is almost done developing asynchronous play for good old 2D SFT, and we’ll have an announcement on that release very soon.
Testing how malleable Blender animation and rigs can be. Blank Man is now Lizard Man! pic.twitter.com/7nESZ6pLCY
— One Man Left Studios (@OneManLeft) July 14, 2016
Testing how malleable Blender animation and rigs can be. Blank Man has become Lizard Man!
After a little more than a month of 3d re-education, I’ve finally got a decent animation to show for it. With some more experience, maybe I’ll be good enough for us to make a decent-looking 3d game.
Making progress in my 3d education. Rigged and finally animated! pic.twitter.com/3PKJBMXQ0T
— One Man Left Studios (@OneManLeft) July 11, 2016
I’d hoped to have more cool stuff to show off from my 3d training tangent, but I’ve spent the past week refining that same old Blank Man model and rig. The past two days have been devoted to this one flippin’ shoulder, which is apparently a very tricky part of the anatomy to get right. This model went from “I’ll make a formless blob in the shape of a man and move on” to “I’ll make a person with good edgeflow I can base all my people-shaped models on”. I’ve deleted his hands and shoulders 3 or 4 times each, but I’ve learned a ton buckling down and trying to get it all right.
I believe asynchronous play is coming to Space Food Truck this month, after which I think we’ll do some game design again. I think I remember how to do that.
After a month or so of major overhaul to Space Food Truck‘s networking functionality, we’ve just released a convenient rejoin feature for online games! Now if a player is disconnected mid-turn, they’ll have a full 60 seconds to pick up exactly where they left off. There’s no longer a need for anyone to exit and rehost, or to retake the beginning of your turn to catch up. A popup will appear on the main menu after you’ve disconnected, or you can click “rejoin” in the “Find Online Game” screen.
Of course, this feature is just the first big hurdle we needed to clear on our way toward full asynchronous support. Soon it’ll be much easier to find a crew for a pick-up game of SFT online, and you’ll have the option of taking your turns whenever it’s convenient for you.
It’s been a bit of a slog in 3d learning land the past week or so. My plan was to make a super simple mesh, rig it up, and try a little animation. But there was some ambition creep, my simple mesh got fingers and articulations, I experimented and improved my tutorial rig a little, and I spent all yesterday trying to figure out what the best low poly topology for fingers would look like. I have absolutely nothing cool to show for all that, but I learned a lot!
Next I’ll finally have something to animate with, and I might try scrapping this mesh to see if I can refit this rig to a character with different proportions.
I wasn’t at all excited about learning Blender at the start of all this, but it really does do everything Maya did for me. Some things worse, but a lot of things better.