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.
Slowly getting more comfortable with the Blender 3d software. Just finished exploring their UV unwrapping tools and some bump mapping workflows. By the time Alex has asychronous play ready for Space Food Truck, I’m hoping to be pretty decent at this!
Alex is still plugging away at the asynchronous update for Space Food Truck, which gives me a few months to learn some new 3d software for future projects. My very limited 3d experience has been in Maya, but we feel like Blender might be a safer bet for us going forward, seeing as it’s free and pretty powerful. The learning curve switching over has been steep, but I’m starting to get the hang of it and its million shortcut keys.
I’ll try to get back in the habit of regular blog updates and post some screenshots of my experiments.
