Hello dear reader,

First of all, as I recently though on how to make the blog more interesting and valuable for you to read, I thought it would be a cool idea if I provide a gamedev specifc tip (can be everything from productivity, to technical stuff, to marketing) at the end of every blog entry. I would be really happy, if you tell me what you think of this idea. 

Back to topic. I want to present what I am working at the moment. Last time it were some animations and rigs. I had some more trouble with them then expected and needed to do all that stuff again (rigging and animations). As they are just meant for a visual impact for me to be able to build and optimise the systems (e.g combat, movement) they don't look very professional, but my intention was not to create high quality game ready animations .

Enough about the past, I will showcase the animations any time soon, as we take a look on the combat system maybe.

So what I am doing now? Well I made some good progress and have some quite cool stuff to show. I was heavily working on my npc/character system (called "Character Set"). The NPC is now able to wear diffrent cloths. Already provided are: Helmet, Body, Gloves, Legs, Boots. At the moment I am working on the weapon system. So you can easily equip, range and melee weapons to the character.

As I slowly would like to get a little bit more into detail here the settings for the character set:

As you see I try to keep everything as clean and userfriendly as possible. A very cool thing are the "NPC Settings" which gives the systems a lot of power as it keeps the script settings clean, and gives you a lot of options to costumize the way your NPC behaves. It even gives you access to some technical stuff you can change, so there are no boundaries for you when using diffrent rigs/animation systems etc.

Maybe I will talk more detailed about the whole AI/Character Set stuff another time.

Another cool progress I made is the "PHFW Animation Manager". As my system works not with the Animation name (e.g "Walking", "Running"), but with the animation index, this tool is very helpful.

Why I use the animation index you may ask. Well I use my own animation playing system (not the Leadwerks "PlayAnimation" function) and unfortunately the "SetAnimationFrame" function of Leadwerks does not provide to use animation names. To work around this I created this tool.

This is the first external tool for the phodex framework and there are some more to come, I will then, most likley, put them into a huge toolset. There you can also set various keyframes needed for the combat system, so the tool can still be helpful, if the "SetAnimationFrame" function gets enhanced.

This is how it currently looks (its like a pre alpha :D, just set up the rough system)

So as promised here is the tip:

Game Dev Tip #1:

If you have a problem, you struggle with for a long time and you just can't find a solution. Stop working and do something completely diffrent (for example go outside and take a walk), then come back with a fresh mind and you will be suprised what great effect this can have, how you find new ideas, or simply get new motivation.

I hope that helps some of you. I try to provide some more visual content to show in the future as I know its much more fun to watch pictures & videos instead of reading long and boring texts .  Just the best and stay cool .

Markus from Phodex