Updates for March 2022!

Can you believe it? Another month!

And a month it has been. First, art:

We started off pretty tame. 

A bunch of new creatures were rendered and prepared to go in game, with their lore and gameplay functions defined. 

These art files are all formatted, organized to files, and ready to go. They are still waiting in the ever growing backlog of tasks that are on Kent's plate right now with the UI project and serialization of our files taking priority. 

Top to bottom we have some key issues solved with our Groling mesh. Grolings are end game SPOILERS that I will spare you the details of. But as you can see they have many arms, lots of tentacles, and are all around extreamly vicious critters. the biggest hurdle here is our isometric 2D status makes layer sorting and bending individual arms very hard. They may bend around trees and, well, you --  so these were broken into segments. Those segments will layer sort one at a time to prevent odd behaviors, and the whole tendrils will apply to a long spline that we can procedurally animate. 

Next is the Whaal. It's a heavily armored insect-like critter that some find useful as a beast of burden and a source of high protein liquid which it feeds its offspring in large gelatinous eggs. Herbivorous and docile, these huge critters are made of armored segments difficult to pierce. Only getting up close with long spears will do enough damage to bring them down, and their meat isn't very good to eat. But if you tame them, they'll keep you alive through other means, and aren't too bad as a mobile shield when they aren't dragging heavy loads.

Lastly is the Velorax. A four winged monstrosity just smaller than a man, the Velorax is the wolf of the skies. Probably why the creatures with six eyes evolved the way they did on their shared homeworld, these beasts are tough to kill if only for their speed and domination of the sky. Swarming in nests typically near high cliffs, individuals will rarely hunt down prey in the lowlands to haul back into their nest with the tusk-like hollow protrusions around a mouth ringed with razor-like teeth. 

We also began to address a key concern around our Unarmed characters. (Not that they're ever armed.)

Adding fists to the list of animations as equip-able weapons will be among the first tasks of our new Gameplay Programmer, who is joining us shortly. 

We needed a way for characters to fight if they have no weapon, and fists are the obvious go to.

I rendered out two plates:

One that is UP, and one that is OUT. 

This way, we can raise fists to protect the face when defending/blocking, and one to shoot out and slash or jab at a target.

This system also allows us rotate the hands, giving them a more smooth motion when animated. Something we need to work on with our new hire soon.

Speaking of which:

https://radianhelix.com/gameplay-programmer-on-project-morningstar-mar2022

We began our hiring efforts this month, with money set aside for their search and interview, paying for art tests from qualified candidates, and scheduling interviews.

We have, a lot to do on Morningstar, and we need another code to join us in doing so.

I got the RadianHelix.com website back up and remade from scratch, and got our hiring documents in order. 

Financially and Legally Radian Helix is ready to bring on our first non-contractor employee with all the W2s and Contracts. 

With Kent bogged down on our Symbol system, which we use to code items, weapons, basically everything in the game, and our UI Project being coded -- we just need a second set of hands tackling these tasks. There's so much to do, and we need the help. 

If you know anybody looking for work, by all means, please, send them our way!

I've been contacting and interviewing people all week, and have found sound great candidates thus far. But there are more! And I'd love to meet your suggestions. 

See you in April!