Windstorm Update - Of Avatars and Interfaces

So it's certainly been awhile since my last post, but it's not because I haven't been busy. In fact - it's just the opposite. I've been insanely busy. Here's what's up with Windstorm.

Windstorm had gotten to the point where a significant number of the core systems were in and working. You could equip and unquip clothing. You could equip weapons and animations switched accordingly. Basic mob AI was in the game, and you could aggro, kite, kill and leash mobs. The ability system was in place, and you could receive innate abilities, and you could tie abilities to items. I had implemented a quest system that already supported two basic types of quests. I had also created a loot system, complete with loot tables for the mobs, and you could get money and ph4t purpz from mobs. Okay maybe not purpz but certainly goodies. And rudimentary vehicle support was in. You couldn't attack from vehicles yet, but you could get on one and ride it around and get back off. So basically everything was in place to create a simple scenario where you talked to some NPCS.. received some gear.. got some quests.. killed some mobs and retrieved a jetbike.. turn in those quests, and was rewarded. I was feeling pretty damn good about how things looked.

Of Avatars
I decided before I went and implemented too many more systems, I wanted to update Windstorm's look a bit. My current avatar, while adorable, didn't look very scifi-ish. And she was going to need a lot more animations. In fact I had pretty much reached the point where I couldn't go forward without the ability to create some truly unique animations. So I figured the time was now to create a new, custom avatar for Windstorm. I would learn to model and animate her, and put myself in a position to continue to create and export whatever my crazy design ideas came up with. So I spent the better part of two months attempting to do just that. I wrestled mightily with Truespace and Gamespace and plugins and in the end, didn't get anywhere near what I wanted. What I did get was a whole heap of frustration.

Along about that time I spotted Pam in the content store. Pam was pretty much exactly what Windstorm needed. She had Windstorm written all over her. But she was going to need a lot more animations, even just to get where I was currently with the Cubix Studio Female. And Pam didn't use the default Kork skeleton setup, so she wasn't remotely compatible with Motion Studio. So I contacted 3DGDA, and asked them about costs for custom animations for Pam. We struck a deal, and I gotta say, those guys were awesome! They were very reasonably priced, they did the work in exactly the amount of time they quoted, they were great about iterating over the animations until I was satisfied with the final product. Very professional, very competent. I have tons more modeling and animation work yet to do, and I have every intention of utilizing them some more when I get the project to the point where it's ready for it. We had a new avatar, and I was exceptionally happy with her.

So with the new avatar in place, it was time to tackle the next big system - vehicular combat. Or so I thought. See, vehicular combat is going to be a huge part of Windstorm, and I wanted to take some time with it - not just hack something in. I spent many morning drives in to work going over in my head the various designs for how vehicles would interact with classes, and abilities, and weapons. I eventually came up with a solution that I really liked. Now my entire design for those systems and how they relate to each other could take several blogs in and of its own right. But for now, suffice it to say I came to realize that in order to implement vehicles in the way that I really wanted to, because they were going to be closely linked with abilities and weapons, well I was first going to have to revamp my current weapon and ability design. Of course, right? So actually the next thing to do was not vehicular combat, but an overhaul of the weapon and ability systems.

Of Interfaces
Not to bore you with too much detail, but in the original system, abilities were the damage-doers, and weapons were modifiers to that damage. So you would have a "Sharp Shooter" ability that did X amount of damage with a certain chance to hit and had a certain range. If you equipped a shotgun, the damage would be increased, but the range lessoned. If you equipped an assault rifle, the range increased, the chance to critical hit increased, but the base damage reduced. That sort of thing. This was pretty clean, and certainly worked, but in the end, I came to realize that people don't want to think of weapons as modifiers - no matter how cleanly it works in your system. So in the new system, weapons are the damage doers, and abilities modify that damage. It's a bit like Star Wars Galaxies worked, but there are quite a number of other significant differences as well. So the main change to the system was reworking how abilities and weapons related to each other, and restructuring all the datablocks to support that new design.

Out of this design was born a number of changes to the UI, including an entirely new UI element - the Weapon Panel. The Weapon Panel is the interface that in one small window is supposed to give the user everything he needs to know about the weapon he has equipped, and the abilities he can use with that weapon. So.. uh huh.. you guessed it. In designing the new interface element, I decided now would be a good time to update the look and feel of the interface as well.
The existing interface is plenty functional. Not hideous by any means, but not exactly eye catching either. It definitely was not what I wanted for the final interface for the prototype. I hate doing things over when I don't have too, and as I was going to be creating new interface elements and revamping many of the old ones, well I might as well update the art too. So another week spent brushing up on my programmer-art photoshopping skills, and then I started tackling all the various pieces of the interface. And dayum, I gotta say I didn't realize how much interface I'd already built in the game.

A Thousand More Words
Okay, enough of teh wordz. Time for some piccies. Let's do some before and after.
Here's how Windstorm looked at the beginning of the summer. You'll recognize Cubix Studio Female, (affectionately called Cindy by yours truly), and probably some other stock art as well. And of course, the old interface.



Here's the new Windstorm. Of course, you'll recognize everyone's favorite scifi girl, Pam. And the new interface. And the Weapon Panel of which I spoke of. What do you think? I went with the glass-bubble look that's all the rage in interfaces these days (just look at CBS Sports if you don't believe me), though in the typical "less is more" paradigm, I could probably tone down the glass effect some - and probably will. I'm pretty happy with it, but comments and criticism are certainly desired and appreciated.



And what's this? Yap.. that's Pam racing along on the BraveTree Jetbike (my one sci-fi vehicle in the game), sporting one of her new custom animations, a custom version of scout-root. I don't know about you, but I think she looks pretty sweet on that bike.






Okay that's all for now. Still got tons more to do, and not nearly enough time to do it.

Devon out.