Pre-Alpha demo 6: Age of Goblins - World Generation and Animation

A new video!

The GUI used in the video is ByteGUI. I'll be releasing it as a stand alone library for other developers. It uses Slick2D and is written in Java. I'm sure it'll be prettier in the hands of someone more artistic. It has various effects, some of which are shown in the video with panels sliding in and out. More details on that when it's closer to release. Thanks for your interest!

The Blender connection (part 2)

I previously introduced loading models and rendering them in-game. Now I'll go over implementing animation for Blender models.

First we have to add bones to the model. If you know pretty much anything about skeletons, this is fairly simple. Your mesh is the flesh. You want to add bones in places where you want the flesh to move. If you want this bit of the flesh to be able to move independently of that bit of flesh, you need to add multiple bones. Take, for example, the simple AutoCannon T230:

The Blender connection (part 1)

I use Blender for all my modeling and animations. I chose it because it was free, ubiquitous and appeared to produce good results. This post will describe exporting that information from Blender and importing it into AoG. This information will not only help those wishing to duplicate this in their own games, but also help future modders of AoG make their own models.

I'll start with the most basic application, a static mesh.

Step one: Make a model! I won't go into the details of making models here, as that's a process I haven't even mastered myself. We'll use a tree:

 

Clear proof I have not mastered model creation.