Dark Times...

This is more of a personal update to explain what has been going on in my life and why progress on Vilous: Soldier of the North seems to have stopped. Just to clarify, although it has slowed, it has not stopped.

Without going too into detail on personal matters, some of my loved ones in my life have been going though a tremendously difficult time, and I've dedicated as much time as I could to keeping them safe and of healthy mind. I will always put the ones I love ahead of my hobbies. It seems like it's only getting worse and worse, with no reprieve in sight. Thankfully though, we've gotten just that and the past few days are much more upbeat than the past few months. We still have a long, two year battle ahead of us, but with any luck, we'll get everything we're fighting for and we'll be happy together once again in the big stupid family we should be.

To anyone who is concerning themselves and involving themselves with this matter in a positive way, I'd like to graciously thank you. It has been really hard on all of us and any support, be it even kind words, go farther than you could imagine.

Regarding game development stuff, I'll get a few updates out before the month of July is over; updates to cover what has happened in June too.

Thank you for your support and understanding.

Touch fuzzy, get dizzy

NeoFur get!

This is the first NeoFur asset we created for V:SotN

I've briefly spoken about this tool with my discord server. NeoFur is an amazing tool that has been designed by Neoglyphic Studios for use with Unreal Engine 4. This outstanding technology will allow us to render dynamic, shaded fur, feathers, and fibers on our models in game, in real time.

NeoFur works by using a shading technique called "shells and fins". Basically, fur strands are generated from the geometry of the mesh that they're applied to. The direction and flow, as well as the growth length can be changed in different ways by the use of growth meshes, morph targets, and masks. It's easiest to visualize this technique by thinking of the fur strands as a stack of wafers that come off of the model and have a favored direction for the stack to lean. From really up close, this technique really doesn't look too good if you can see all the shells. If done correctly though, from a respectable distance, the outcome is astonishing!

A close up view of our first fur asset. Notice how you can't see the individual shells.

The fur length has been exaggerated and shell counts reduced for what would be recommended to better show how the "shell shading" technique works. Fur is 10 units long in this example and only has ~15 shells.

Mentioned earlier, what makes this tool even more impressive is that the fur strands that are rendered are also dynamic! This means that gravity affects each strand, and the character's movement can dynamically alter the positioning of each fur strand. If that wasn't enough for simulation, the fur is also affected by wind and radial force actors in Unreal Engine 4!

A .gif of simulated fur physics.

As far as detailed rendering goes, fur stands are also able to receive and cast shadows, which adds a whole new layer of depth to the fur. Not only can individual strands cast and receive shadows, but other advanced shading techniques like rim lighting, ambient occlusion, and advanced specular techniques can easily be implemented. Below, you can see the difference between casting and receiving self shadows (left), compared to not receiving self shadows (right).

Self and world shadow casting example using different colored light sources.

All of these previous images have been test images that were generated by using the tool in our PreAlpha map. If you'd like to get access to NeoFur, check out NeoFur on Neoglyphic's website. If you're on the edge of deciding if you want to buy it or not, you can visit that link and download a demo project that shows off all of NeoFur's features and even shows off some content examples.

A collection of NeoFur assets that are shown off in their demo project.

I'm really looking forward to getting character models in game and actually adding some realistic fur to them!

Progress Update for May, 2016

Check out our monthly progress update for the month of May, 2016.

This update covers some impressive advances in the field of artificial intelligence development for our game, Vilous: Soldier of the North. The video covers how the AI can see, how they hear things, how they make choices, how they guess and think, and how they can communicate with one another.

Highlighted in this video are also some things like a tool that I created to help keep track of the changes that are being made in the engine, as well as particle effect updates, and what is going on with character models and motion capture.

PFG on Blogger

Project Freelance Games on Blogger

We now have a blog on blogger! This service seems a little more flexible and user friendly when it comes to certain things like organizing different pages on the blog and post formatting. We are also able to keep track of page views and where people are viewing the pages from! Our Tumblr blog will still be maintained, but will be much more laid back with more personal updates, appose to this blog that aims to more objective in it's updates. Go check out the Tumblr blog here!

This blog will hopefully serve as a more professional, and sort of "hub" blog for all future game development done by Project Freelance Games. The current project can be found in the navbar near the blog header. Later, when we move on to other games, that title will likely be moved to something similar to an archive section, and the new game will take it's place on the navbar.

There is also a section on the navbar that will point users to where they can purchase games that have been made and where they can donate if they want to support our development.

I look forward to getting some updates on here.

And as always; Indie devs, lead the way.