Update #1
I'm excited to announce that I have implemented facial motion capture in the game, giving more life to all of the characters in MidKnight Story! Let's get started with the news:
Here's a quick test of me making funny faces with Paran:
As you can see, a vast array of emotions can be easily performed in a matter of seconds.
Here's an example of how this technology can be applied in game:
But how does this work? Easy!
All of these animations are recorded on my phone, which can capture my facial motion data through its dual camera. They are then translated into the blendshape values that drive the facial animations of all human characters in MidKnight Story (if properly connected and adjusted).
For me this is super exciting because like this I'm able to create faster, more natural facial animations in seconds!
As people say, the eyes are the windows to the soul, and that's why I decided to drastically improve their visuals in the game. By using the state of the art technology (thank you Unreal Engine for providing us the tools for that!), I recreated the eyes of each character from scratch, and they now feature realistic refraction within the eye. Take a look!
The rest of the cast also got the same improvements!
To celebrate the end of summer I also decided to craft Paran's summer outfit, which was the first stretch goal that we reached thanks to the amazing support received on Kickstarter!
From the 2D concept to the in-game outfit:
Paran will sport a variety of different outfits that can be unlocked following the completion of different main and side quests. I'm still deciding if the different outfits will have an impact on Paran's status and/or abilities. And as always, each outfit will degrade progressively as Paran receives more damage.
That's it for this month's update!
This coming October I plan on improving the gun gameplay, including a brand new gun model, as well as more animations, a preview of the inventory system, and more!
Stay tuned!
Your friendly indie developer Mattia