What's up, RMers?

[MetalRenard]

Blender was made by programmers, not animators/artists. It's effing confusing.

[Taylor]

I have trouble just getting Blender's interface to do what I want. Maya is more complicated and obviously not free but it's honestly less confusing just to do very basic things.

[millarso]

Trying to understand Blender 3D, but I am clueless with what the heck I'm supposed to be doing with it! I know what I want to do, I've even spent the past two months watching tutorials on how to do that exact thing, but alas I'm... lost :/

What are you hung up on? I have a wee bit of experience with it.
And yes, its interface is tragic indeed.

[MetalRenard]

Yeah, Maya was made by graphics designers so the interface is much more "intelligent".

[Kain Nobel]

3D Animation Problems

Well, I originally planned to use a body rig to aid me in creating animated battlers as fast and efficiently as possible, but I can't seem to manipulate the limbs for movement and it's been frustrating me. I've watched hours of tutorial videos specifically about rigging and movement, but apparently I'm not retaining any information from them.

Working on Light Script

Years ago, SephirothSpawn did a 'circle of light / flash light' script, which inspired me to make my own but I decided to do a few things differently. The circle of light is generated entirely via code and is not image-based plus the area of effect can be set via variable. I'm probably going to add further patches to the system, such as 8 direction lighting, some sort of compatibility with Raitime's dynamic lights and shadows, plus whatever else. I've still got to bug test and do some last minute optimization before I go any further, but we'll see where this goes.

Screen Shot

It's hard to tell in this example but the Circle of Light is blended with the Flashlight overlay effect, giving you a hint of an aura beyond just the linear beams of the flashlight. This .gif is a rough-neck example of what this looks like in game, but just by adjusting some variable values you can make a smooth or in-your-face flicker, adjust screen tone, adjust lighting, etc.

New Music

I think I might've uploaded Harvester of Sorrow earlier, I don't remember, but these tracks both go together. One is basically the 2nd part of a mission, the other is a boss fight with a big ugly mecha.

War Room
http://bb.ohsk.net/uploads/War%20Room.mp3

Harvester of Sorrow
http://bb.ohsk.net/uploads/Harvester%20of%20Sorrow.mp3

I've been grouping my tracks into families, trying to get the OST tracks numbered and sorted so all the tracks compliment one another. When I finally got eleven like-minded tracks sorted together, the story seemed to write itself. It's like I can hear the journey through the snowy mountains, deep sea diving in the combat sub, infiltrating an enemy naval base on foot, etc. Music is a tool to set the mood and atmosphere, so the best way I see to progress the mood of the story is to figure out which tracks transition nicely together.

[MetalRenard]

In these light scripts I've never understood why the light starts behind the character and not at their hand.

[Taylor]

I used to like this concept of a torch-shaped circle of light, but I eventually decided against it in my projects. The initial reason was because it feels like you're seeing less of the horizontal axis if the torchlight is short to make up for the vertical axis.
The other thing was because of the top-down nature of these projects, and practically all RM games. In Silent Hill the camera is usually behind the back, you feel your view is as limited as the character's, and so it makes sense. Being that which watches from the above in RPGs, the torchlight becomes strange and disjointed.

Addendum: I also tried adjusting the torchlight to seem to come from the character's hand, but the character sprite being slightly obscured bothered me. |T

[millarso]

I like the directed flashlight idea. Maybe you could have that and a slight glow around the character sprite as well? Just a sort of outline, so you can still see details.

[DerVVulfman]

Before my PC crashed, I was working on a wall climbing script. I was just a couple days from releasing it... just a few instructions left to write as I had the demo maps all finished... Then KE-RASH!

So I started over and already got the initial 'Climb along the footholds' system running fine. Lose a foothold and you drop down the cliff, and you can take some significant damage. The initial 'foothold climbin' system is shorter than it once was and running better than expected. Now I have to work on the 'rope and grapnel' system so a player can toss a rope up (or drop one down) for climbing. Fun Stuff.

[kyonides]

I've been revamping my KyoTeleTrans script, now called KTelePort, and it is almost finished, but I could not get any other graphics or better ones if ever possible. Now it shows you the cities depending on which map you want to define where you are going to travel next. It may display the allegiances as well (not in the near future BTW).

I forgot to mention that I created a team (split) menu that lets you choose your party members from several options and it may also allow you to hire mercenaries that may leave after several battles. The thing is that it is the hardest thing to do since people may use many different battle systems nowadays and I am not used to this kind of scripts anyway.