[9] New Character Models
12/17/2024, 07:44pm
Over this past year I was able to invest in something I have wanted to do for a long time: new character models.
Not only was this a major lift from an art perspective (Thanks Gustaw!), but it also required a lot of work on the technical side.
To make it easier to add new equipment and clothing, the game now supports the concept of "skinned" equipment. This means that equipment can be added without needing to create a new mesh for each piece of equipment. This is a huge time saver as all you need to do is paint a texture which will get applied to the character model. Not all equipment will be skinned, but it is a nice option to have for simple stuff.
items/shirt-tee.toml
id = 14
name = "Tee Shirt"
description = "A basic tee."
...
[model]
male_skinned_texture_id = 32
female_skinned_texture_id = 33
The implementation is pretty simple. All the layers of a character are combined together at runtime and cached. Then, that final texture is applied to the character.
These layers are described as style items and are data-driven just like actual items. I still need to create more at some point.
style-items/hair-male-mohawk.toml
id = 11
name = "Mohawk"
type = "hair"
body_type = "male"
skinned_texture_id = 14
model_id = 329
I've also been making some animation improvements, replacing the janky animations with new ones that are a bit more fluid and natural. Additionally, in-combat and out-of-combat stances are now separated, which is nice.
I'll miss the old character models, but this had to be done. I'm excited to see the fun characters that players can create now.
Thanks for reading. Onto 2025 - year 7 of development!
- Declan (@dooskington)