Status Update, April 2024

Overview

• Shinmera: released cl-resvg

• Shinmera: released trial-blender-addons

• Shinmera: improved dynamic asset reloading behaviour in Trial

• Shinmera: optimised shader pipeline recreation

• Shinmera: added a standard command-line tool to Trial

• Domolutz: revised base movement animations

• Domolutz: started blocking out new animations

• Scymtym: implemented a grid-bag layout for Alloy

Some Details

Ah lord it's another month already? Well heck. Anyway, uh, as promised, worked on the Blender addon for Trial extensions. It's mostly done, though one core feature is still missing, which is the export of custom animated properties. And that's missing because I'm still waiting for a response from the Blender glTF plugin devs on how to even do that.

Other than that I worked on some miscellaneous Trial features, but we can now finally easily create different shader pipelines depending on user settings to disable or enable effects passes and so on. Will be nice for performance settings.

(the gif obscures turning anti-aliasing on and off)

We can also automatically reload levels and models when their file changes on disk while the game is running. That feature has existed in the past already, but it was buggy and flakey. I've improved it a lot, and this should help iteration speed quite a lot in the future.

Domolutz is back to work now as well and he's been fixing up the existing animations to look better and started work on new animations as well. They're only blocked out for now, but even then I'm already super excited about them!

Combat animations are so satisfying to look at!

Scymtym is also back and to start with I've had him look at some Alloy stuff I've wanted fixed for ages. The grid-bag layout he's implemented now is quite a lot more powerful than the previous, primitive grid layout and should make creating various UIs a lot easier.

Next on the menu is... SBCL'25/ELS'24. I'll be there in person for both. If you also attend, feel free to come chat with me about whatever!

After that I'll be working on some more special effects and hopefully figure out how to finish the Blender addon, so that we can move on to proper combat design as soon as possible.

Anyway, that's it for now. Hope you're all having a good spring!

— Love, Shinmera ❤️