MSGP - character editor demonstration

Heyho,

this is a demonstration video of the charactereditor of my game called 'Markside GP'. It's written in Lite-C within approx. 8 weeks (excluding a 4-week break for some university exams I had to learn for).

Please post your pros and cons in the following (dont post cons about the grahics. They are placeholders and have nothing to do with my art design which will follow soon).

http://www.christian-behrenberg.de/MSGP_ceditor.wmv

Enjoy!

Cheers, Christian

Very Impressive. It looks like it comes with a good workflow. I can't wait to see it with "real" textures and models. Keep on working.

PS: Did you made yourself in that video ?

I dont really see any cons that I can think of now, it would be better to morph vertices on the face, but not necessary, there are only a few basic types of head shapes....so I think it is cool.

I think it would be also cool to add a "RANDOM" button to see what character would arrive by randome chance. You could also use such an editor to randomly generate characters for pedestrians, and each one could be unique. Very good job, I think also you should sell it to the community somehow.

Another feature to add would be to allow taller or shorter characters with different body shapes...

But let me not dimish from what you have made already...its a great tool for about any game!

You've spent too much time in the Wii's Mii Channel!

It should be possible to rotate the elements.

Also good to know that one can import custom textures!

As you don't want us to comment on graphics, I won't do that. Good work! Now show us the characters in the actual game

This looks very promising, the users interface for editing the character looks quite flexible but it doesn't need more complex elements like vertex manipulation and etc.
The style is like Error indicated Wii like but I like it sofar because it's simple and it seems FUN
Keep up the great work, can't wait to see the carts !!

Cheers

Frazzle

sorry but it's TOO much like the mii channel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-vXYe3vGH4&mode=related&search=

even the favorite color O_o
so I only can say: nice rip off.
thats not bad, I mean, I bet you wanted to rip off the mii channel

Nice to see such a thing made with 3dgs! - but *yawn* every little RPG offers such a thing (more attacking MII chanel than you heelx!).

Keep on good work!

you know what i want... and i know that you want this too

edit: oh and for yll of you who say rippoff:
i know something you dont, and be sure that this wont be possible with either the Mii channel or any ROG out there...

and THATS the real idea behin this i think^^

Very good work, Christian. Really excellent. I can't wait to see that with really good artworks... *thumbs-up* I really like the smooth way the camera moves.

Keep going!

wow, looks like loads of hard work. even in this placeholder state of work it is really impressive. i'm curious about the "import wizard"...

Hahaha great work! It even features a special 'emo haircut' for Michael I see. j/k

Seriously though, it's awesome. How do you change those eyebrows and mouths and stuff? Are those images you write into the skins or aren't they actually 'in' the model but placed upon them?

I'd love to hear some small details on how you've accomplished some of this (not interested in code, just techniques ),

Good luck with this,

Cheers

extremely cool

were the eyes and eyebrows (and other texture features of the face that get moved around) done with a shader?

julz

Hey, thanks to all of your comments!

"Did you made yourself in that video?"
No definitely NOT ^^

"it would be better to morph vertices on the face", " taller or shorter characters with different body shapes"
There are several reasons why I didn't researched this. First of all, A7 doesnt support at the moment morph targets (like in Sims 2, the source engine, Oblivion, etc.) and I wont use bones. Second: it doesn't fit to my desired design document. Thats it.

random button
I never used this in any game.. but it's a nice suggestion which will make it onto my list for later enhancements.

I think also you should sell it to the community somehow
I have different plans! The charactereditor will be released as a standalone app here for free so that you can play with that (secretely, I hope you will report bugs, too ). This will take some time, though, but this will be exciting, I guess!

"It should be possible to rotate the elements."
This is technically possible and I will consider this somehow.

"The style is like Error indicated Wii like but I like it sofar because it's simple and it seems FUN"
I had to take into account all possible and available preexisting solutions other developers made so far and it turned out that I do not have to reinvent the wheel to achieve what I want. The current solution is indeed a mixup of several elements which obviously appeared somewhere somehow - but in the end I'm lucky that it works, it's simple and it's fun.

"but *yawn* every little RPG offers such a thing"
I think this is not a fashion nowadays, but a substantial progress that games allow easy user customized content creation. Even if it is not 100% necessary for a game, it's first of it all fun for the user (and an upgrade for the game) and a selling point In my case I'm aiming with this inhouse tool into another direction, but I dont know how it turns out so I stop talking large about this ^^

"i'm curious about the "import wizard""
importing is really easy. You can do it as well manually, but there are so many dumb people out there.. well, you know the rest of the story ^^

"I'd love to hear some small details on how you've accomplished some of this"
First of all: I do not use shaders (except that ffp from the WIKI to avoid sorting errors)! Second: to achieve the realtime preview, I use render targets to combine all elements dynamically - though, you might expect a frame drop,.. no, it runs smoothly with about 100-150 fps on my crumply machine. The savefile per character contains all asset and texturesettings, so that I can rebuild the original file in the character editor, but for the use ingame the editor will export baked and compressed dds textures for faster loading, more performance and less memory consumption.

If you like to see it in realtime, come to the Dusmania I'll try to add some more little features until then, so, well.. have good day ... thanks again for all critics.

Cheers!

I was a bit sloppy during the last weeks with changelogging, so I updated my changelog which can be also viewed online. Just follow the link in my signature.

Though, it's in german. There are some more details about it, if you carefully read it. Newest entries at the top.

Great work, (hopefully it didn't distract you at all from university studies ). One thing which makes me curious is how well animations will work with it after your done. Also interesting to know is exactly how realistic the end result will be. Well anyways maybe all will be revealed in your next video?

thats real pro work

very cool. But I would prefer some more sexy style. You know, super mario is cartoony too, but he is still sexy (peach)

About the balancing. There are comming more and more multiplayer games with these balancing settings. But I think that idea is not good.
1. Because there is one perfect setting which everyone uses.
2. It´s not really fun to do such a (detailed) kind of setup before every map.

I think it is better if:
1. you realy want to set the points for balancing use less numbers. Like point 1 min point 10 max (no decimals!)
2. balancing not straight. For example, bowser in mario kart is much much more heavier as mario but got a little more speed and more bumping power. Improvements don´t have to be equal to each other. If I got good reflexes I am good with a worser control and a little more speed or acceleration.
3. Not too indiviual. I think it would be more fun if I create a fatty character for high speed with sloppy controls. I mean my character should react on the cart at least a little. Otherwise it´s strange. And I can build a certain character on purpose.
4. if you make indiviual speed and acceleration settings for each player, then why not make items to collect to build on the cart. So the player can only change his cart if he has the item he wants. Otherwise he has to trade or something, or wait till he collects the thing he wants. I am not talking about items with only advantages. I mean items which raise the top speed for example and lower the acceleration, or raise the weight, or redeem the grip.

Animation works since all models share synchronous animation frames, I see no reason why it shouldn't work. I will show this together with some other new things in a new video when it's done. About the look: well, these are only test models, but they are indicating, that I will target a comic style. I think it will fit, for sure.

EX Citer, you made some very good points about balancing. I will consider these points somehow. Though, the points are integers - I just interpolate them

Thats very impressive work so far, keep it up!