Status Update, June 2024

Overview

• Shinmera: released cl-qoa

• Shinmera: released precise-time

• Shinmera: released beamer

• Shinmera: implemented mesh morphs / shape keys in Trial

• Shinmera: implement a controlled asset pruning mechanism in Trial

• Shinmera: cleaned up the ancient geometry construction system in Trial

• Shinmera: add the ability for render resolution scaling in Trial

• Shinmera: improve debugging and introspection in Trial via many describe methods

• Domolutz: made more kickass animations

• Scymtym: fix several issues with size inference and propagation in Alloy

Some Details

I spent most of the month bashing my head against implementing mesh morphs / shape keys in Trial. Morphs are another way of animating or changing models besides the rigging system we already had in place.

With morphs you basically designate a displacement for each vertex on the model, and then blend between the original model and the displacement using a weight. This gives you far greater control over the exact placement of vertices, and is usually used for things like facial expressions. The modeller defines a set of "extreme" faces, and the engine then blends between them to achieve the desired expression.

We wanted this feature now, because some of the heavy combat moves that Domolutz has been working on looked a lot better with a heavier sword, rather than the default. We decided to add a morph to the sword so it can transform into the big version, but in order to see that in-game, I had to add the capability to Trial.

I was going to do this anyway, since I also wanted to support expressions during close-ups and so on, but until now never had the time. The idea of morphs is pretty simple, but the actual implementation of it turned out to be a lot more difficult than I anticipated. It was a very frustrating month! If you want to watch my madness, you can take a look at the PR.

Anyway, now it's in and it's working! Yay! Big sword!

Then, I gave a very short presentation on Trial at the Swiss Game Hub. They organised a small workshop where various folks gave a ten minute talk about an engine they knew. You can watch the talk on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/C1KWiNYgn6Q?si=8vgItGCrl1RTjthr&t=301 (Patreon still has no embeds. What a joke)

And now, some big personal news: on Thursday I got a call from the hospital during lunch. They told me that they got a surgery spot free on the coming Monday, and wanted to ask if I'd be up for doing my SRS on such short notice. I said yes. So I'll be stuck in the hospital for the coming week, and stuck at home for bed rest for the entirety of July, and possibly beyond, depending on how well the recovery goes.

If things go well I'll back in working order by August, but I'll definitely be much reduced in my capacity, so please don't expect too much out of me for the next monthly devlog! Initially this was all going to happen in September, but I guess the schedule was changed.

I'm really happy that I got this opportunity, I've been waiting for this for ages. I'm quite sure I was only able to take it now because I'm self-employed, so my schedule is as flexible as it is. I have YOU 🫵 to thank for that!

In any case, I'll talk a bit about my experience in the next update, so see you then!

— Love, Shinmera ❤️