Devblog -Anim Dynamics (Patreon)

Hi!

Let me tell you what i did this week!

Coding stuff:

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First i fought bugs like crazy, better said, i Hunted them down all throughout the code.

Yesterday for example i had this problem:

I need for one sequence to have the player (you) at game begin inside one of my "events"

What are events:

Events are the places where you interact with characters or things, i call them that because i  copy the skeleton animation from that event to your character so i don't have to have all animations inside one blueprint. Also it allows me to do little special things when you play just inside one event without having this code to load everytime with every animation.

So now i took the begin play, took the event where you need to go, and called the function i named "Add character"

YAY everything worked, then i added animations and linked the sound effects, but then the nasty bug showed itself when i wanted to exit the event....

Somehow was the skeletal mesh still valid and therefore copying it... WHY?!

After like a hour of searching where the "Copy mesh" was set every frame i deleted it, i found out it came out of my awesome event code, and that you as player where there set as Female.... 

then after a bit of more search i found out that, its all my mistake (as always)

Let me explain,

At begin play, i check if a character is assigned to a event, usually i only do that there just for the females, like when Mirage sits in her throne or a kitty smokes a hookah inside the palace.

I had forgotten to exclude the player from that check, so with a simple (is controlled by player) node and a Branch it was fine YaaaY²

Like that i am fighting those bugs, i add the features or animations and when they appear i find and destroy them! >3

Animation Stuff:

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And because i coded most of the week i really needed to have something fun for a change, 

i already finished the new level design to like 90% and there are no more animations to do,

so i decided to add the Emotion manager to the framework now then originally planned for harem 0.9.

Look at the video above you see it in Action, please node the audio is still using placeholder sounds, my voiceactress seems too bussy at the moment,

If you know someone willing to record a few Female sounds for me please contact me, with a contact adress to her and how much she takes for a line or minute of voice.

Making animations is always the most relaxing part for me, and for a change everything worked perfectly :3

So how does it work?

Unreal has the Feature to split a Skeletal Animation in "Half", or more precise it copys the animation after a specified bone.

I use that as base for the emotions, i copy every bone after the neck, with premade Emotional state animations:

This system works for every character the same, i do the poses and a Morph target per emotion, and then its simple implementing it into the characters animation blueprint.

This code checks which emotional state is active and blends the corresponding value in the anim blueprint, it can be extended and is very fast.

I took rebecca for this, because i want to have it perfect when i do these poses for Mirage♥

And i learned a few things:

-do minimal animations on the face, 

No animation = creepy look. Too much Animation = chaotic animation.

-Split the emotion manager into another actor for performance reasons,

I created a new actor for that called (brain) it gets spawned with the character and saves informations, picks emotions on values stored inside the character and has the "eyes" (does a line trace on what the character sees)

-Do every emotion 110%

Because i blend them inside the animation blueprint, most of the time the Emotion gets only like 50% blend ratio, its better to tell what the character feels, and it supports the cartoony look i am after.

-Use morph targets like crazy!

Morph targets are yours and mine friend, they really help with animations and making a chracter feel alive, i am very glad i implemented them into my Fur shader.

I will now continue work on the next game, featuring the ponys, (all you seen here is already in that game as easter egg have fun finding her:)

I decided to show Rebecca because of the patreon rules i can not show you Pony Human action directly on here.

Questions from last time:

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Some people have asked me where do i get the start locations of the salvia solver,

as reminder, the end i get from the collision and can be everywhere on your body.

For the Start i take a median location between a few sockets i created for that.

Here you see the pony tounge as example for that.

Release date:

I get asked every day when you can play it, the answer is ASAP!

i Release it as soon as i am happy with the result, fighting game breaking bugs takes time and i only can work on code a few hours until i get crazy and need to do some animations or sculpt something.

I am eager to show you all the things i learned and made during the last months, especially the features of my Framework. 

I work every day on it to deliver you a awesome game, and after that i do Harem 0.9.

For a rough estimate it should be days not weeks until a release, in any case i keep you up to date, and you have not seen like 10% of the stuff that is in the game from the previews i posted, There is much to explore with more than just ponys, i added four anthro chracters some are hidden so there is fun for everyone :3 

♥u

Your Furrier,

Download link to the video above:

https://vimeo.com/user143774380/download/587426245/a4d95ec785