Okay, I think I’m happier with where this is going, now, so there’s a new build available on the dashboard page, and I promise I won’t panic and pull it, this time. Sorry about the hiatus!
I decided that a disembodied notebook caused all sorts of subliminal issues that I hadn’t expected – basically it felt like a big fly buzzing around my head, getting in the way – and so I figured that the best way to deal with this while still providing the necessary head direction reference was to anchor it in space by giving us a body.
I tried giving us a body years ago, but the technology wasn’t up to compensating for my own lack of skills, so I dropped it. But technology marches on, and all I can do is desperately try to keep up. Unfortunately, in the 3D world there’s an awful lot of skills to learn, and it’s hard to compete on the same playing field as development teams that have hundreds of specialists, even if I do know something they don’t. I feel like an elderly one-man band, busking in the street, and now I’ve had to start learning yet another new instrument to keep strapped to my back!
In this build you’ll have to be a girl, for now, whether that’s your thing or not (I quite often play games as a girl, myself), but other genders and skin colors, and hopefully more appropriate costumes, will come eventually, and then people can be whoever they want to be.
Please treat this build as just a proof of concept, not any guide to how things will end up being. It’s still very rough around the edges. There’s a lot of work left to do on this whole UI/UX thing, and it’s been a massive amount of work already. It’s not until I try things that I find out what works and what doesn’t, but trying things takes a lot of time and effort, when it’s in 3D.
But for now I need a break from this user-interface stuff and a chance to move on with something else. I’m feeling dangerously close to burnout and I’m running quickly out of money, so I can’t afford for my health to let me down right now. I might write some more about that topic shortly, when I get my breath back. I do have a big idea about what I want to do next, though, and I think you’ll find it interesting. It’s going to take a little bit of effort (who would have guessed?) to find out whether it works, but hopefully it won’t take nearly so long, this time.
So I’ll put down my badly played character-animation guitar and my equally badly played UI harmonica, and instead practice my Azure CRUD API skills for a little while…
I think I’ve assembled this build successfully, but if there are any mission-critical problems getting it to work, let me know and I’ll fix it. You’ll only have two or three creatures, this time, but that’s enough to experiment with. I did some rendering optimization and I was getting 110 fps at the peak yesterday!!! But only something like 40 fps if there are creatures within the camera frustum, so there’s something going on. I think it might be their hair, but as part of my new idea I need to revisit that subject anyway, so it can wait.
Fingers crossed!
P.S. apropos of nothing, my friend Tony just sent me this link.
wpDiscuz
