Whelp… I’m late on this August’s progress report (and after doing so well lately). The team has been working full-tilt as I finally set some internal deadlines for us to hit. So far we’re actually ahead of schedule. Let’s hope we can keep that up!

Here are some quick updates on what we’ve been up to:

Let’s start with a biggie – we have a new system for doing the player’s animations. We’ve changed from frame-by-frame animations to a custom bone system utilizing forward and inverse kinematics. While there are some animations that won’t translate 1:1, overall this new system will allow us to do a lot of cool things.  First, adding new animations is now a breeze. We’ll be able to do some custom animations for cut-scenes, for example. We can also do things like change the character’s expression on the fly. So when health is low we can have a concerned expression or when enemies are near, an angry face. The player’s head can also now turn to look at important objects or enemies, which will help give clues for puzzles and add more life to the character. There’s even more exciting things we can do with this system, but we’re going to wait to share that when we have more to show. We also still want to make some general improvements to the system before launch.

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We’re living in a post-demo world now which means we’re back to adding content and building levels. This is my favorite part of development and I’m excited to show you what we’ve been working on this past month.

Christine is working on NPCs, enemies and other assets for the Jungle and Crystal Cave and Mine-cart levels, including this frog-baddie:

Speaking of mine-carts, I’ve been coding and building the mine-cart levels and even though this still has some work left I want to show you a tiny bit of how this sequence is shaping up.

(Watch in fullscreen for 1080P 60FPS)

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