New this week

This week I added the model and animations for 2 of the weapons in the game. Doing this also allowed to me update the weapon select UI to be closer to its final version.

Weapon Model and Animation

The pistol has been fully implemented and tested. The rifle is currently still being worked on and more changes need to be made to it.

The pistol is a rather complex animation as it has 7 different fire animations and tight timings on its animations. I had to sacrifice the fluidity of some animations in order to properly sync between the different state. Fortunately, the way the pistol functions (being that any break to the fire order is, in effect, a reload) really cuts down on the complexity of the state machine. Overall, I am very happy with how this turned out.

I added particle effects to the firing. These particle effects are simulated in world space, and it was important to ensure they couldn’t distract the user. The particle effects are important to help marry the viewmodel to the physical world and give a much-needed layer of flair to the gunplay.

The rifle has been modelled and animated however I am less happy with the outcome of the model. I am overall happy with the animations. As the rifle fires slower there was more time to animate a shot. And due to the rifles lack of reload or any quirk whatsoever it has a very simple state machine. However, I am displeased with the model. It is far too simple in both design and concept. I have thought a little on what to do to improve it and I don’t have much of an idea. I think I should just let this cook for longer.

UI Weapon Switch Updates

I have added sprites and resized the weapon switch UI. The sprites may change depending on how quickly they grow on me. I have also added sprites, both thumbnail and larger, to the UI. This will indicate which slot actually has a weapon in it. The held weapon has a larger different sprite indicating them. For development purposes if a weapon doesn’t have a sprite, its name will be used as a placeholder.

What’s next?

Next is to finish the model and animation for the remaining weapons and then its playtest time. I have some ideas on stuff that needs to be changed and I need alternative inputs before I choose to commit to it.