Playable Characters
Two Playable Characters are planned for my demo: Charlotte and her brother Max. Each character features distinct gameplay mechanics and abilities.
I've also implemented an Outfit System that allows full outfit changes (not individual clothing items). For now, Charlotte will have two (possibly more) outfits available, helping me to test and refine the system ☺️.
While cosmetic features are cool, my current priority is expanding the roster of playable characters, which means more gameplay variety 😎.
Charlotte
Charlotte is a Magical Researcher with magic powers.
Dev Info: Modeling
I tried multiple modeling workflows in Blender, ending up remodeling and refining the character multiple times to search for the most scalable system for having lot of characters, including changing some stuff (from T-pose to A-pose, hair and eyes method, etc.).
Animation
I also remade core animations (idle, walk, run, talk) and contextual animations (drive, etc.) with my custom rig/ armature in Blender. My goal was more than just polishing Charlotte's model: it was about creating a scalable animation workflow for easily making lot of animations in Blender ☺️.
Blender’s animation system is both complex and well crafted. I know they're planning to revamp the animation system too, for the Animation 2025 project, and I’m really looking forward to it. It might help me to improve my workflow. Only time will tell 😃.
Gameplay Scripting
To bring her to life in Unreal Engine, I rebuilt her movement and combat systems multiple times using Blueprints. I leave C++ optimization for systems that will be battle-tested, possibly after releasing the demo.
I also tried to run multiple tests for the user interface and character clothes customization. My goal was to decide whether to use individual piece of clothes or full outfits. I ended up deciding full outfits, as making individual piece of clothes would be too complicated and not scalable enough from a technical standpoint. It will slow me down without benefits on the most important side of the game: its gameplay.
Creatures
Creatures are enemies in Golden. In fact, I differenciate between animals, which are either neutral or kind for players, and creatures (or monsters), which are enemies to fight.
Oddly enough, the main creature where I make the most tests is... A Halloween pumpkin 🎃. Probably because it was the first monster I've made in october 2018 for Golden.
Halloween Pumpkin
This Halloween pumpkin was modeled in Blender and textured in Substance Painter. It comes in multiple variations (I'll add more renders soon).
For the animation, I initially experimented with Shape Keys for the eyes. However, since they aren't reusable across multiple models in Unreal Engine, I decided to remove them in favor of creating an armature for bone-based animations.
Gum Jellyfish
I've made this Gum Jellyfish creature from scratch using Blender for modeling and Substance Painter for texturing. I designed it for the underwater areas in my game.
I kept the custom rig (armature) as simple as possible, and used lightweight animations for performance reasons. That’s why I’m not scaling the head bone like real jellyfish, though I might experiment with that later 👀.
