Fiptubat: Character Models

Finally, some character models!

The new character models in the Editor. Right of the screen is a human one; to the left is a patrol bot, and a turret in the background.

Humanoid

The human models are based off WW1-era infrantry, such as these Vickers gunners. They were supposed to have helmets, but that seems to clip with the camera, so I’ve hidden them for now. I may add them back for NPCs to distinguish them from the player-controlled units, and I would like to add some slightly different skins.

The animations are adapted from Kubold’s Pistol AnimSet Pro asset. Integrating this took about two weeks, and along the way I ran into a hilarious rigging bug (shown below). However, it was well worth the price.

I'm pretty sure arms shouldn't look like this...

Player-controlled units still have a few issues:

  • When moving, they’re supposed to point their gun at the ground, but the camera controls override that. I’m not an expert with guns, but that doesn’t strike me as good firearm safety. NPCs obey this fine.
  • The camera movements are influenced by the animations, which makes aiming a little harder. I’ve also had to remove the crosshairs graphic.
  • When climbing, the camera occasionally clips through the scenery. I suppose I could just remove climbing entirely…

Turrets

These are based off the Swiss MG-11, a derivative of the Maxim gun, converted into a heavy emplaced raygun. If you look closely, you can see handles on the back. I’m not going to implement this, but the idea is that in-universe this would allow them to be manually operated when remote control (inevitably) fails. I’ve also ditched their scan animation entirely. Now they only move/rotate when a target is confirmed.

Patrol Bots

After redesigning the turrets, I decided that a similar aesthetic for the patrol bots made sense. In this case, a Maxim-esque gun with fixed traverse: the gun aims by rotating the body towards the target, with vertical aiming controlled via animation. They’re supposed to visibly hover while moving, but that doesn’t seem to work when they’re aiming. I suspect that’s really a configuration issue with the animator.

Next steps

  1. Add an extraction vehicle. I bought another asset that I’d like to use here.
  2. Expand the level. I was originally going to add a new one,

As usual, you can find it here.


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