character design

An assignment for my drawing class:



And yeah, that's a shovel.


[edit: flats]

cutout animation

Yesterday I learned that the style of animation I'm going to use in my game is called cutout animation. Two examples of it can be seen here and here. The best example of the use of this technique in a game is probably Odin Sphere:



My implementation is going to be rather primitive looking compared to this though.

inverse kinematics

After discovering the Joint and IK Handle tools in Maya, I decided to implement IK in my animation editor:



It works much better for animation than the particles and constraints; it's like a cross between that system and the bone hierarchy in the old version. I used Cyclic Coordinate Descent for the IK solver.

old pixel art

Some old sprites for my RPG that never got made:



Some of the pixels were shamelessly ripped from Seiken Densetsu 3 and Chrono Trigger sprites.


Perfect Dark mod for Soldat, Part I:



Part II:



For this mod I also did all the little in-game graphics and ripped the sounds directly out of Perfect Dark using an N64 emulator. The second part was made 2 years after the first part, and was never fully completed.

sprite

Based on the last random face:





The rock tile was inspired by Cave Story.

more physics

Another simple physics test:



I made the wheels "turn" - when a particle is in contact with a line segment, and the left or right key is pressed, a force perpendicular to the line is applied to the particle. It's pretty fun to play with.

planets

I made these a long time ago, but I still like them.







I'm pretty sure I used this planet tutorial and this starfield tutorial.

reboot

Quite possibly the best show ever.

It looks like every episode has been uploaded onto youtube, so I'll have to go and watch them all. Here's the first part of the first episode.

editor rewrite

The fourth version of my character/model/animation editor, in progress:



I got rid of the bone hierarchy and cleaned up the interface; it's easier and more fun to use now. I've been working with Maya for a few weeks at school so I ended up stealing some interface ideas and I have plans to incorporate more Maya-like features when I re-implement the animation stuff.

game music

One of my more recent discoveries in game music archives is Mirsoft: World of Game Music. They've got DOS game music in several different formats, mainly S3M, MOD, and MIDI. I was surprised that they don't have the Tyrian soundtrack in LDS format, but that can be found here.

Zophar's Domain is a great source for game music. It doesn't seem to be updated anymore, but it is probably the best place to get NSF (NES) and SPC (SNES) files. There are also various sites dedicated to certain formats: USF Central (N64), GSF Central (GBA), PSF Central (PS/PS2).

Also available for download is Cave Story music, which is playable using OrganyaView (click on the icon located at 2004, Music), all of Nifflas' music, and Wings 2 music.