T3D - RPG Engine - Active Battle Party - NPC Gen 2

So I've gone from one level of challenges to another. But I'm finally getting things to the point of actually having fun creating the remaining features.

New Stuff:








So I've tried my second try at ZBrush. I still need some kind of flow to go from Low poly to High to Map generation and into the engine that is all less than 30 minutes. For some reason the model looks decent in ZBrush but looks crappy in game. I wish I know more techniques.



Proto-Type Island.




I've started the base Island. I need to make it more decorated than it is now but this should be a good stomping ground for prototyping everything.




Fighting Solo...



So after getting my gryphon in game I decide to test out its combo attack. To my surprise I can not kill my own creations on my own. "Also known as I don't feel like tweeking their stats until later". So I decided its time to call in the help of some party members. As well as adding some new features to go along with them.





Added the ability to Award and Remove items from event streams.
Added the ability to change time from event streams.
Added the ability to award money from event streams.
Added the ability to change party stats from event streams.
Added map Zoning
Added inner map teleworking
Added configurable respawn

Active Party members can now appear on in the field to adventure with the main player.
The Party members can wonder off.
If the player starts leaving the area the party members will follow.
If the player completely leaves the adventurer behind they will appear new the player after a few seconds.
If in battle a party member will not withdraw from battle unless the player leaves the battle vicinity. Allowing the flexibility to fight different creatures without the AI thinking they should follow you.

Combos are animation trigger driven and can change easily per model. The detection distance and attack radius are configurable from the datablock so a non-controlled party members can intelligently know weather they can attack or not.

Party members are switchable at any time. The previously controlled character will instantly become AI Rule based driven.


Character Generation 2




So I've been playing a little bit on Saints Row 2 Looking at how they handle their character generation.
So I've decided to give it a shot. It really just looks like apply morph weights on a vertices level.

The good thing about this is that potentially I can generate several unique characters with only 2 fully rigged characters for Male and Female. The morphs can be added/mixed together and since the verts stay closely the same then there is no need to reskin over and over again. Clothing can be spliced together the same way. My plan looks like this:

Male / Female Base

Thin/Heavy/Muscle for both.

Height can be adjusted via collada. I can also add a morph for this if needed.

Clothing will similar Morphs and can addapt the mixed morphs to adjust accordingly to the parents configuration.

After enough variation in clothing, not many at that, the clothing will just need skins to make the whole packet complete.

Facial Morphs will be added as well to get some pretty spicy faces generated.

I will be using a modified version of my Anime RPG pack for this. The characters will no longer be in parts. And I hope to have better texturing and normals.

The system will be able to work with anyone's design scheme and will not be limited to my character pack. The character and morphs will have to be made with careful naming schemes that the system can use to interpolate the different morphs as well as rename inner objects and texturing scheme to make sure that each character generated shares different texture links and avoid over lapping texture names and texture conflicts.


If i can get this working fully it would make me so happy as I could fill a city with so many unique characters in so little time and not spend endless time in the design stage doing manual manipulations.