This is a crosspost from my Substack newsletter.
The Hydromecha Monthly continues its foray into the world of moving visual media, this time with even more movement! Check out this month’s video edition below:
I gotta get those animations set up properly in the Non-Linear Animation editor later. I copypasted things across the timeline as I needed them like an ape xd. I’m also thinking of rendering the lip sync separately so I can just composite it over prerendered body animations. That could make the overall render time a lot faster. Currently the backgrounds are prerendered stills while the Hydro model is rendered separately (along with the table) with animations/lip sync. I’m also thinking of changing the dimensions on the monitor so 16:9 footage fits in it better.
The lip sync is done automatically by feeding audio into Blender, which changes the Value of a Shapekey depending on the volume of the input. If you want to learn how to do this yourself, check out this video (it’s the same one I followed to make my stuff):
Comic Reader Updates
The comic reader on Hydromecha.Website got a major overhaul recently. Instead of needing to go to a separate page to read each comic, everything now lives on a single .html file, using JavaScript to swap what comic is loaded. Individual comics can be linked to thanks to the hash system in the URL. I still need to get individual page URLs set up (so you can link to specific pages), among other things. I still have to go back through a bunch of stuff to swap out links to the old comic webpages.
Stay tuned for a Github release of the comic reader’s code once I get things cleaned up and a bit more user-friendly. If you really want to you can always trawl through the JS by Inspect Element-ing on the page. Check out the comic reader by clicking on the above image. Be warned, the site isn’t optimized for mobile browsers. That’s something I’ll have to mess with later.
ANTARCTICA MUST FALL Grayboxing
ANTARCTICA MUST FALL has been on ice for a little while now. I was messing around with the first map and started getting some ideas for things, which resulted in an expanded graybox. I have a playlist of progress videos, which are just uncommentated gameplay footage for now. Click here to see it. If there’s demand, I can do a video that goes into detail on stuff. I want to make another monster for this mod, so I could also do a video going over the process of going from a Blender model to sprites and such.
The video below is the latest progress showcase for MAP01:
I’m planning on grayboxing all the maps before even thinking about decorating stuff to make sure I can solidify all the gameplay. An even longer while ago I had started mapping with way too much focus on small details and making things look nice instead of trying to make a good Doom level. There are definitely things I’m thinking of changing in the current version of MAP01 which’ll be easier to do with a bunch of simple shapes.
Completion of The Plague Machine
The Plague Machine is done! I’m planning on doing a making-of video for this build sometime next month.
Bugalo et al.
I’m gonna talk about Bugalo along with a few projects that didn’t get a ton of progress this past month.
As is custom in these lands, Bugalo (Wonderful and Fancy High School Bait Club) got a new page this month. Check it out here. In a shocking twist of events, Bugalo may be starting a coherent plotline. The horror.
I made a little bit of progress on the Hazardous Materials Script and the Table Knight module but not enough to warrant talking about them in detail.
I also messed with a couple of Jank Fighter animations I had made last time, but I’ll show those off when I get more of them done.
Closing Thoughts
That’s all for August. The Plague Machine and my own nebulous time management took up a lot of my free time. I gotta try getting a better system in place to get more things done, especially on some of my more writing-intense projects. I usually struggle to get started on stuff like that but once I get into the swing of things it flows pretty quickly.
As always, I’ll see you next month with another wrapup.
Have a good one (that’s an order),
Hydromecha