Devlog: Lady Dracma and head movement
Added 2026-01-04 07:00:17 +0000 UTCMerry Christmas, happy New Year and joyous Three Kings' Day everyone!
It took some work, but the camera has now been fully refactored for every cut-scene that I had programmed before, including the tunnel puzzle of level 1. There are still a few visual bugs to fix, but I'm not worried about those, I can handle them later.
The temple was a bit harder, since it required teleporting the player around. There was a little issue with the camera not shifting instantly and causing the library code to misplace it, but I got that fixed too. Next step: Lady Dracma's model.
Head model
Base model
Textured model
Flying loop animationI'm quite happy with the result. Now I just have to give Prince Cordero and Dame Ternera a few more animations and I'll have everything I need for the introduction cut-scene. However, I needed a way to adjust some bones procedurally, on which I had given up because most online tutorials involved obsolete methods, but then I learned about the LookAt modifier.
I tested it on Dame Ternera to improve her tracking states and it works perfectly. It does take a bit of work to set up, but then it can easily be configured for different targets, including specific heights for each one. Now she quickly turns her head towards her target and her body accommodates slightly later. Subtle, but very organic. Definitely worth it.
The modifier requires adding a child node to the character's skeleton, which worries me because updating the model might break everything, but if it gets messy I'll just generate it in-code. Hopefully that won't be necessary; if it is, the player will just have to wait a few milliseconds longer in exchange for everything being more stable.
