Here’s a gif of an early wip project.
project emphasis on:
All feedback greatly appreciated
Given there are no textures, and cubes have a bunch of sharp 90deg edges, I’ve implemented a simple antialiasing solution
Anti-alias off:
Anti-alias on:
Looks cool, it drops off from a standard minecraft-like look to a cartoon rendered at a distance.
I like it.
i’m not an artist 
but i’ve implemented support for different models (and animation though the only animation currently is the head moving up and down for the green quadruped.
bug model and animation. i’m proud and ashamed at the same time :), it’s my best model yet, yet it’s horrible 
(model inspiration credit http://forum.iridiumbased.com/threads/texture-progress.373/)
my next step is to make these models read from a .txt file. Currently, creating the bug model is done with code that looks like
http://pastebin.java-gaming.org/924794c515816
This is what kind of format i’m considering. If anyone has experience with this and has suggestions so i don’t look back at this 1 month later and regret using this format, please share The main downside i thinking this will have is that if i leave it as code, I can add helper methods such as head.translateFrontOf(body), eyeL.translateLeftOf(head).shiftForward(1) and such, whereas with .txt files I don’t imagine similar utility.
added a new mech model
as for converting to .txt format, i’ve decided not to; there’s too much utility that helper functions can provide and not really any benefit to using an external format if i’m not using some other modeling tool to create the models.
positioning model segments looks like the below. I try to do as much of the positioning relative to other segments as possible, so it’s really easy to modify.
head.topOf(body).backAlign(body.back());
tail.backOf(head).translate(0, 0, -1);
legL.bottomOf(body).rightAlign(body.left()).backAlign(body.back()).translate(0, 0, 1);
legR.bottomOf(body).leftAlign(body.right()).backAlign(body.back()).translate(0, 0, 1);
footL.bottomOf(legL).backAlign(tail.back());
footR.bottomOf(legR).backAlign(tail.back());
armL.topOf(body).rightAlign(body.left());
armR.topOf(body).leftAlign(body.right());
handL.bottomOf(armL).backAlign(armL.back());
handR.bottomOf(armR).backAlign(armR.back());
I’m having trouble conceptualizing where I want to take this. I feel like I’m trying to build a lego structure without having a model to go off of, and I’ve never been good at doing that. I have ideas I want to incorporate; e.g. challenging encounters rather than mindless grinds, fast paced combat and mobility, gear-centric and crafting-based progression. Ambiance-wise, I’m aiming for sci-fi, deserted/unknown planet, with a little of gloom and danger. I’ve tried looking and images and a bunch of mmorpg & rpg videos and such. At the same time, my graphical ability is severely limited.
If anyone has suggestions on how they’ve been able to form a concrete-ify vague visions & ideas, please do share.
Similarly, if anyone has ideas on how to do progression in a randomly generated world. Typical rpg’s just have zone’s/areas with their own difficulty, but given this is a randomly generated world, I’m not sure how to do this. I know some games have different worlds generated per difficulty level, which the player progresses through; but I was considering having 1 infinite world, like minecraft.
For now, I’ve created a new model, and plan to use it to create the first monster with mechanics (this one would be immune from ranged attacks, but also has an aoe melee attack, so the player would need to repeatedly approach and dodge). I’m hoping most hostile monsters will end up with some sort of mechanic.
It sounds pretty cool!
For me it really helps to have a mood board to have something to work towards and stay inspired by ambiance wise.
It might also help to do some world building. Why is the player there and what do you want them to accomplish?
As for the progression, I know Minecraft increases the difficulty of areas based on how long you stay there and Terraria just has many biomes with specific difficulties. It would also be simple to increase the difficulty the further the player moves from their spawn point, but then there would need to be a reason for them to keep moving.