Day 7.5 - The final stretch

It's done! My list is done! Not to say I can't think of a hundred things to add, but I've managed to complete the tasks I intended to complete and that we've set out to do over the course of this jam. I am very very pleased with what we've managed to put together in this short amount of time and the struggles that we've endured and what we've learnt from them.

At the time of writing it is way past my bedtime, but I was well aware that I hadn't updated the devlog here today. Even if not for you readers, for me it's nice to consciously put to words what has taken place and the progress that we've made. A short summary if you will and surely nice to look back on at a later stage, hopefully then with entirely different struggles. 

We've completely reworked the base tiles with some variation to the surfaces, a small teaser is added as an image to this post, but the real deal will be on display in all it's glory on release day! This took quite a while honestly, much more than I initially thought it would. The main struggle that I had to overcome was to properly join 2 meshes without making a complete mess of the situation. Looking back on it even now, not much more than a day later it seems quite silly. In any case, in this process I've learned to separate by material/separate by object and how to use a combination of both to my advantage. I've learned to use the boolean modifier in various different ways. Figured out how to properly use object origins and how to apply transformations to multiple objects at the same time whichever way I want. And lastly I've extensively utilized the link objects by data option to create specific layouts of tiles for nice level maps. 

All very basic stuff. I'm well aware. But it's the basic stuff that I generally like to skip in order to get started with the exciting stuff. I'm very content that I've gotten a grasp of all these topics myself now and I feel much more comfortable in Blender altogether. Clearly not just because of this, but it definitely gave it a big boost. 

I can say that I am comfortably navigating through all the property menus and finally starting to know where to look for which options. Able to use more aspects of blender than just object/edit/sculpt. Evidently I'm pleased. Very pleased!

Well then. After tiles it was time for necroboy. Our second character that was planned for the game. I had been putting this out for quite a bit, mainly because I was not sure where I wanted to take it in terms of design, but also because I had such an amount of trouble with zombieboy. I struggled with textures, with animations, with the clothing, with everything basically.

Not this time. Although I'd liked to have a little bit more time and polish it up some more (which I will probably do after the jam because I've grown to love the character), I'm again very very pleased. I had no issues with materials/textures/texture baking/texture painting this time. I remembered to flip the normals right from the start and had gotten quite comfortable with the texturing process due to plenty of repetition throughout this last week.

 I also had absolutely no issues rigging the character (read: No issues properly parenting/weighting the props/clothes). I had properly set up the mesh during the sculpting phase and made sure to have enough space between the meshes in order for nothing to clip through. I remembered (I wrote it down) to transfer weight data from the main mesh to the clothes and for the gloves I added 1.0 of the vertex weights to the respective hand deform bones. (The eyes I added with automatic weights, which I'm aware isn't perfect as I believe I'm supposed to parent them directly to an eye bone, but that's for future me, when I start figuring out face rigs - big shoutout to CGDive, what a hero!)

Animations was smooth sailing as well. Easy like 1, 2, 3.  No issues with the constraints or any clipping as described in the previous paragraph. Very clean workflow. I definitely see myself investing more time into designing characters and following a proper course for it, although I also really really want to start exploring VFX work. It feels very challenging still to consider adding a second topic to my young journey in the world of video / videogame development. Decisions decisions..

So was everything easy peasy then? Well no. I think both me and Lewl have learned throughout this Jam that it's never as easy as it seems. Getting something from software A to software B exactly as you intend it is a real difficulty. The hardships will serve as lessons learned, for sure. But that has caused some frustration for sure. Accidentally pressing a hotkey in blender and not having a clue about it, which in this case led to nearly an hour of googling and trying to figure out why I was not able to sculpt on 1 specific object was another one.. Very.. Grr. (Apparently I had put a mask on it and all I had to do is press Alt+M, go figure)

I know Lewl has struggled a bit as well, I asked for a small change in terms of how to upgrade our units which seemed easy enough.. I believe it cost him multiple hours! Got it done though, the champ! Then there were the new tiles which I O so proudly presented after a near 14 hour marathon on Friday. Well.. Didn't think about the fact that we'd now have objects that would clip through the surface of the new tiles.. Keeping him on his toes let's say.. 

Tomorrow is the last day. We've reserved it completely for last minute requests/bug fixes/balance and playtesting. And most of all, enjoying the last day of our project in the gamedev.TV 2022 gamejam together! Although I'm sure we'll continue nurturing our baby afterwards and we'll undoubtedly have more projects/adventures in the future as we're both striving to progress as much as we can!

It's been a blast, this will be the last log of the jam. The next time you'll hear/see about Project Hexagon will be on Launch!

Leroy a.k.a. S4ZZ1, out