Lollie (Gamedev) @Lollie@mastodon.gamedev.place

There's some small tweaks to be made and I gotta do something about a few key animations, BUT I'm super happy to see him working without any issues

HE'S IN

Nobody read this post, big secret, I've never cheated my way through art before in my life

Actually I'm a universe-brain genius and I settled figured on a easy workaround: Split Lollie and the HEV suit into two different textures

It's easy because I can rely on smoothing groups to select all the relevant bits and apply a new material ID to 'em, without having to redo UVs

Now instead of one tightly packed texture map, I have two texture maps that have very obviously been split into two halves. But I'm the only person who will ever see them, so it doesn't matter, I can cheat, whatever

I'm... going to just live with dithering. Too late to redo UVs now.

Oh no. I've finally realized the hidden benefit of using 30+ textures for a single model in Half-Life, instead of one 256x256 texture map: Textures need to be index-paletted bitmaps, 256 colors per bitmap texture. More textures = more colors on a model.

Adding eight bones that literally do nothing fixed the "flat head" issue I was having. Like, they aren't even skinned, they aren't even referenced as part of the skin. They're just parented to the head bone and exist solely to complete the bone hierarchy. Thanks, bones.

He's working! Here he is in action, using one of the scientist animations. ⌨ #halflife #wip

It is within the realm of possibility that I may have forgotten a few bones

Bones are... mostly working

Modelling is done, head is unwrapped, and emblems have been added to the HEV suit as modeled detail.

Textures are temporary! Gonna paint them up properly next. ✌

I expected this to give me some hell, but it ended up coming together with minimal pain!!

The sweep, though. I fear the sweep. I have to do the sweep tomorrow.

The HEV suit was taken from the original game, though it has been touched up a little - the original UVs had some really ugly seams, and the proportions have been altered a little to better suit the character.

Doing a little modding for Sven Co-op / Half-Life! Building myself a wirecage to model around - his hair is kind of tricky to figure out, and he's gonna be *very* low poly.

I eat up behind-the-scenes info like this - I love info about how older consoles worked, having experienced the PlayStation 1 and 2 throughout my childhood & teenage years. Wild to see the stuff devs worked around!

Stumbled across a post about the state of PS2 #emulation, where various emulation developers chimed in with insights about what made PS2 so difficult to develop for. (plus a little info about GameCube, Xbox, and N64)

Look for comments from phire (Dolphin, GC/Wii), arbee37 (MAME, Arcade), and PSISP (DobieStation, PS2)
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/9oh396/why_does_ps2_emulation_have_so_few_devs/e7uxtrw/

A friend shared a ridiculously cool-looking project running in the *beta* of Media Molecule's "Dreams", described as "a visually stunning, cinematic FPS w/ solid momentum filled gunplay".

Screenshots speak for themselves imo, I didn't think we'd see stuff this good out of Dreams this soon - before MM's toolset has even been released.

Source: https://twitter.com/DISARMEDTWEETS/status/1089959646822055937