kyudo
3rd person adventure game
What is Kyudo?
Kyudo is a PVP hero shooter experiment exploring RTS and monster tamer mechanics.
Players use spirit arrows to spawn temporary bait for the small creatures in the world, leading them to their opponent’s beacon where they will feed until the beacon is ultimately destroyed.
The primary question I am exploring is can we make a first-person real time strategy game feel fun?
the vision
To see the most current state of the game and get to know my workflow, check out my dev logs on youtube!
Dev log
Animation Cycles
Disclaimer - I did not create this character - no one did. I wanted to learn how to build a control rig and animate a 6 legged character so I generated the character and had Trellis give me the 3d model.
Next Steps:
Animate a jump attack!
Ice Guy
Main Character
I was going for a very stylized sprint for the main character. After doing a rough animation I created keys to hammer out timing. When I added back some movement I think I went overboard and pushed the fluidity too far. Watching this animation from the third person POV could get really annoying.
Next Steps:
make some minimal adjustments to the simplified animation cycle for a run that’s easier to watch from the player POV
control rig
The Biggest challenge was the 3 Bone IK chain for the legs.
With the help of Ask A Dev on youtube, I built a semi procedural rig for my 6 legged character, complete with an FK/IK switch. His was a classic bipedal character. So there was plenty of figuring that had to be done to create a rig for a six legged character with 3 bone IK chains for legs.
The way I solved the 3 bone IK chain was to parent the foot to the control at the top of the chain. The Control at the top drove the null that drove the bone position. That was necessary to override the IK control so I could keep the chain bending along the plane allowing it to have a predictable smooth movement.
As a fun experiment I tried to do all the skeletal mesh setup in unreal. Everything was pretty smooth but I ran into some issues lining up the leg bones on a plane to get smooth IK movement so I had to go back into blender for that. But unreal was great for weight painting. I love that you can do it live and get real-time feedback.
IceGuy
Here are a couple snippets.
Rig components
Here is my setup for the 3 Bone IK in the legs
Lots of concats on an array so the code can be reused in multiple places.
Simple FK to IK Solver
Gameplay Dev
These guys feed on spirit energy(currently represented by ice clusters). They have a behavior tree that allows them to switch targets based between the player, decoys, and beacons.
Next Steps:
Add a jump and attach state to the enemies
Create Alternate States for enemies
Enemies
Player is equipped with spirit arrows, that have three effects depending on the actor they hit. They can spawn a decoy, freeze their opponent, or heal the beacon or decoy they contact.
Next Steps:
“nuke” arrow that clears a large group of enemies and resets them on the map
aggression arrow that changes the state of the enemies so that they target the player characters for a period of time