Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Blender exporter re-write

I finally started working on a skin animation exporter with the hope of merging it with the existing exporter but ended up re-writing the entire exporter.

I wrote a few stand alone scripts over the weekend just to test the python API and see how I can integrate it with nebula. Initially I didn't know much about nebula's animation files and I had to figure it out the hard way, by looking at existing code, specifically the 3DS Max exporter which was a lot of help. Nebula's documentation also offered some help.

By yesterday, I could export animations but my script still has a problem exporting the initial skeleton's pose. I posted my problem on blender's forum and went on with re-writing the rest of the exporter.

The mesh exporter is pretty much done and I just started working on adding animations yesterday. I've already run into a problem with transform animations though, I cant figure out how to get key frames from a blender object IPO yet but I'm looking into it. In the mean time, I will work on skin animation support, getting key frames for this is pretty straight forward, I wish it was as straight forward for object animations.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Back to Nebula 2

After a long while, I've gone back to developing with Nebula2 again. I've wanted to work a game for a while and I've been waiting for the perfect time, with the perfect team in the perfect weather but I just realized this will never happen. I need to work with what I have now and build from there.

We organised our first team meeting to get things started and I'm pretty happy with the progress, it was nice to have so much enthusiasm in one room. We managed to come up with at least a basic plot and assign roles in the team. We have as our project manager, Debra, one of the harshest (is that a word?) women I know, she should keep us in check. Bharat is in charge of the storyline and gameplay. We have 2 artists on the team, Dan and Mike. We are still considering a 3rd guy as a concept artist. I will be as the technical director/lead programmer.

We would eventually like to game to run on Nebula3 but as we wait for it to be stable, we decided to go with Nebula2 for now. Nebula3 might be the next best thing but I think Nebula2 is still way ahead of many engines today.

We are yet to settle for a title so for now its just project samurai, no points for guessing what its about.