Mod Support - Development Part 64

Video shows the summary, text shows the technical!

This week:

• Mod Support UI

• Mod Support Features

Mod Support UI

So I've been working on the UI for Mod Support. It will be integrated into the Builder HUD so whenever you build robot parts, you'll have the option to print either the standard MyRobot model or a custom modded model of your choosing.

The mod list UI supports many files and loads them all in a performant manner so your computer doesn't lag as you scroll through the list. This means texture preview reading and generation is also handled in a performant way.

But anyways once you create a new mod, the model will appear on your screen. You can preview the jiggle physics with the Jiggle toggle button and pan, rotate, and zoom to make sure it was imported properly.

Next is integrating it into each Robot part as a visual override. This will require the fbx file to fulfill properties of what it is to replace; things like "eyeball socket location", "headjack location", "blink blendshape". This will require a tiny bit more UI work to display the required properties of your mod.

I got so much work done this week it's crazy.🤓

Mod Support Features

I'm keeping the feature stack very lean to make sure I meet deadlines in a timely manner. So I had to choose what were the most important features for FBX models: jiggle bones and collisions. Jiggle bones because it breathes life into character models and collisions because, well, that's important in a physics game.

So this week I added importer readers to read properties such as "elasticity" and "stiffness" to automatically create dynamic bones (jiggle bones) on whatever bones you specify. Collisions are handled in a similar manner except it reads the names of meshes. So for example if you make a capsule and call it "collider_capsule" and then parent it to a leg bone, the leg in the game will receive a capsule collider exactly as you built it in Blender/Maya.

Stay tuned!