Mythruna

So, because of travel and work and other things numerous and sundry, I have not had tons of time for Mythruna since Christmas.  During that time, I've been struggling with JME's relatively crappy asset pipeline.

"What is an asset pipeline?" you might ask.  Well, that's the set of steps one uses to get a 3D model (or image, sound, whatever, but I'm talking models) into jMonkeyEngine for use in your apps.  Most of the existing methods have various idiosyncrasies that make them painful in one way or another.

I kind of tried to start fixing this before Thanksgiving by attempting to support a new open standard called OpenGEX.  I got as far as writing a general non-JME specific loader before I ran out of time on my self-imposed deadline.  ie: I really wanted to work on Mythruna over Thanksgiving week and not be messing with file formats.  So that work now sits unfinished.

When I last loaded the female model, I was able to get it to work with the straight-up Blender loader.  I tried this with the male model and things didn't work at all... partially because this loader has been "enhanced" since I last used it and partially because my version of Blender is much newer.  Various things were tried, including falling back to an older version of Blender, but have not met with much success.

So instead I've been using the Ogre exporter.  Ogre is a completely different 3D engine and JME happens to support loading files in its format... but not without error or issue.  Using this approach, I was at least able to load the male model but his animation skeleton is a bit screwed up.  Most of this has to do with what each engine considers to be "up" but some of it has to do with how the parent-child relationships are handled on export and import.

Still, I've wasted enough time on this for what amounts to temporary models.  The current loaded male will have to be "good enough" until I can swing back and fix him.  There are still lots of problems but at least his resting pose looks almost right... if you ignore his hand attachments.

For context, here is the female model in rest post in my avatar tester app:
(http://i.imgur.com/zja3Xx8.png)

And here she is bent over:
(http://i.imgur.com/Kt5qucW.png)

That various lines and arrows are used by me to determine how different reference frames line up.  For example, the yellow arrow coming out of her head tells me where the camera should be.

She still works fine even reskinned.

The male resting pose looks almost right:
(http://i.imgur.com/a8w3Jlk.png)

The held items are completely wonky because for some reason (probably the "what is up" issue) yaw and roll are swapped or something.

It's even worse when he bends over because I've completely detached the head+hair from animation:
(http://i.imgur.com/bZFQYGS.png)

The hair is also not exactly in the right place in either pose... but close enough.

But as said, I need to move on from this.  He's now good enough to at least show in the character creation book.  Prior to this evening, his head floated a full two meters above his neck... except in one fixed case where he looked like he had no neck at all as his head sat right on top of his shoulders.

There are 100 other things to do and in the mean time JME and the rest of the world will evolve and perhaps the male model will "just work" in the future... like the female did.

(https://i.imgur.com/XFu47.gif)

If you ever get around to fixing it...

Please.

PLEASE.

Find a way to keep the floating head model in the game.


More on topic, I do hope there will come a day when assets just start using standardized formats. I don't make games for a living, but I know how painful it can be to port models around.

Nice to see progress. On the Brightside now you can move on to other important parts of development. If I get tired of looking like a weirdly animated male I can also switch back to the working female. Also the floating head thing is pretty funny. :P

Imagine the floating head male running around... I'd gif it.

LOL :)

Well now that your not working on the male model for now I suppose it's back to physics right? Hopefully we will see some new pre alpha releases this year. (I didn't say alpha I said pre alpha I'm being realistic here.)

Just push broken physics into alpha. It's always more fun when chairs start randomly catapulting themselves into the sky. x3

I would LOVE to see alpha this summer, :( but I know that a pre alpha release is much more likely.

Now I get back to getting networking working... after I finish basic character creation.

Then it's reimplementing blueprints, properties, etc... tons of stuff to do.  An interim release for donators will come before that but there are still quite a few things left to do for even that.

Will this donator release be ready for Mythruna's anniversary on February 4th? :)

You never let up, do you? xD

Now you know how much I WANT new Mythruna content. I need new content to fuel my hope thus fueling my patience to wait for the full game.

a) How has this "anniversary" date  been decided, exactly?

b) The odds of me having even a donator's only release ready by then are vanishingly small.

It's the date you posted the three year anniversary thread so that's I'm going off of. Are you really going to blame me for being hopeful for progress? :P

There's a diifference between being hopeful and pushy. :\

I'm fairly sure the anni is on february 15th. Paul said so earlier, I balieve.

I'm not blaming anyone... just trying to manage expectations.

And now I wonder where _I_ got that date. :)

The very first Mythruna-related commit message to my personal source repo:

So that's when the game officially started being developed.

And the first test build release was February 14... two weeks later:
http://www.mythruna.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Older_Test_Builds

...you can still download it and see how far I'd gotten in two weeks. :)

Sorry for being pushy. We can just have the party for the anniversary no update needed. Also sorry everyone for seeming insensitive to Paul. :(

Note: I didn't take it that way at all.  So don't worry about it.

So, first line or first test release?

Ok. Let's move on to something we can actually do able for the 4th anniversary: The Party!!! I how is the party building and recruitment going Rayblon?

I don't think anyone said anything.

Heh, I think that the guy looks funny, and I looked very slightly into jME3 a few weeks ago. I plan on using it in the next few months.