Telegraph Investigation: Log Oct 27

Game Log for first week, ending on Oct 27:

What I planned to do by the end of the previous week (from my design document):

“Submit this project design document. Add functionality to engine to visualize stick figure pose(s) in-editor while not in Play, as well as feedback in that visualization to hint at when any limb is stretched or compressed.”

What I accomplished:

On schedule. The previous week was largely design doc preparation, and the engine update planned is complete as well, on track for use this week.

What problem(s) I ran into and how this affects my plan going forward:

I’ve discovered that the way in which I’m overriding some of the editor visualization seems to have hidden a few standard controls, most significantly the enable/disable hierarchy button that generally shows up at the top of the inspector for a selected object. I’m sure there’s a simple workaround for this, I’ll just need to find it. That’s a piece of Unity functionality that I use quite frequently while working, especially on this project since it’s the most convenient way to show/hide certain pose frames while working on positions. I don’t foresee this having any effect on the schedule hereafter since the fix should fit within the current week along with the planned todo list.

Plan for this week (from the design doc):

“November 1: In preparation for alpha on Monday Nov 4, I’ll have Phase 1 (stickman animation engine improvements) completed, and utilize that for the implementation of first pass (Minimum Low-Bar) at each of the 4 core aspects of Phase 2, aiming for either #2 or #3 to Target of Expectation level”

Additional clarification: The Phase 1 work mentioned will include centralizing a single set of animation poses for all characters, rather than each having a duplication of that data within the prefab, to accelerate authoring and iteration. It will also involve support for multi-pose sequences (presently my method only interpolates from start to end) as well as support for metadata attached to each frame to set how long it should take to get there from the previous step. This functionality is a recreation of code I wrote in C++ and OpenGL for MindBreaker in 2004, so I don’t anticipate running into problems that I haven’t already found a workaround for (if anything this is proving significantly simpler to handle in Unity, since I’m not needing to simultaneously author my own stick figure posing program and format again). Details on the rest of what is meant by Minimum Low-Bar and #2/#3 regarding Target of Expectation are as described in the design doc post.

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