Cover Art by Ethan Anderson

 

Cover-Art concept contributed by Ethan Anderson. :)

Pixel Fever...

Hello, world! :)

It's been a while. If someone's wondering, I'm not doing much on the project at the moment,

I'm working at the pattern designer, I've implemented Undo/Redo functions,

and the ability to scale/resize the final texture.

Well that's pretty much it for the moment, I'll be working on flood fill, line and circle drawing algorithms.

Thanks, for reading. :)

Kinda, sorta desperate...

Some of you might be wondering why the project is not progressing at all,
or rather at a kinda sluggish pace,

well in fact, I'm just a single dude working on everything,
so if you are courageous enough to follow the development of this project,
you gotta be very patient.


 If there are any talented people out there who can model, animate (characters), texture or coders familiar with Unity (C# / UnityScript),

who want to help out, don't hesitate to contact me,
and I'd be glad if you could show me some of your work.

I would be really pleased to hear from you soon.
Any help appreciated. :)

Random Thoughts...

Some people love the idea of the character look being based on their own personality,

I admit this is indeed a great idea, and a special feature of the Animal Crossing series,

but I stil want to be able to customize the charater the way I want to,

so my idea is to keep the dialogue-based system, and add a character customization menu at the end of the dialogue for last-minute "adjustments",

I think this could satisfy both of us. :)

Character Body

While watching the Animal Crossing 3DS trailer, specifically the diving suit part,

 I noticed that the character was barefooted while diving off of the docks,

 which means I'll have to model the feet, and I guess I will have to model the torso as well,

and make the whole body connected, and also treat the cloths as seperate objects.

 So, well, I'm off to Blender, modeling. See you soon. :)

Project is still alive!

Hello dear readers! :)

It's certainly been a long while since I took the time to document the progress,

fact is I haven't been working on the project since then,

as I am quite busy working on several side-projects, including an ambitious pirate-themed game, which I'd like to devote a seperate blog to soon.

So I apologize to those of you who have been eagerly waiting for new information regarding the game.

But I'd like to let you know that I'm really eager to continue the work on AC: Frontiers as never before.

Stay tuned, and thanks for the support! :)

Haircut... Spiky! (WIP)

It's alot harder than it seems, the front side is halfway done,

the backside's gonna be even harder, there are no reference pics out there,

so alot of improvisation is required here. :-)

Some planned features...

I am thinking all the time about new features to implement,

well here's my personal (wish) list:

Online Mode

This is the biggest planned feature, where up to 16 players can live together in a single town,

so a player can invite up to 15 players to live in his/her town,

but of course the online mode will be optionial you can continue playing as a single-player.

Character Creation Menu

Not really sure, but I think most players, and myself included, would prefer a menu,

rather than the dialogue-based system.

Furniture Creator

Not only pattern and color, but building new furniture from scratch, with modular presets,
this should be done by the upholsterer/carpenter shop.

Interactive Furniture/Room Decoration 

(e.g. Pool Billard, Consoles & Arcade Cabinets with playable mini-games)

Clothing Designer

Including a shirt, pants, shoes & hat designer.

This is just a brief list, more features to come,

why not write your personal wishes and requests on the comment section below?! :)

Paint App Test

Hello world! :-)

I apologize for the long absence, have been quite busy coding the paint application,

still has some flaws and unimplemented features,

well you can check it out by yourself:  Paint App Test

Thanks to Marc Schaerer for his iFrame Unity Plugin. :-) http://www.unityversum.com/2010/04/iframe-gadget-test.html

Paint App (WIP)

Hello Animal Crossing fans! :-)

Unfortunately I haven't been working on the chracter model for a while,
instead I've been working on a Paint App / Pattern Editor,
it'll be used in-game to paint user-custom designs .

Well here's a screenshot showing the current state:

Working good so far, Flood Fill, Line and Circle drawing are on my To-Do list... :-)

Character Progress

Getting there, lookin' good already, it would look even more prettier with a haircut, textures, and some decent shader... :-)

New Character (Work In Progress)

So here's the new characer I've been working on,

still needs some polishing, but it's already looking great. :)

Character Look

I'm still thinking about the character style, as you guys might have noticed,

the characters shown in AC : 3DS are quite elongated, and the head looks proportionally smaller,

it also has a few advantages over the old school character,

for instance the pants, longer sleeves and bigger shoes,

since I don't want the game to be visually inferior to the upcoming 3DS version,

I think I'll go for the elongated character style. :)

Rolling Log/World Effect

Hello dear animal whisperers. :-)

Been working on the typical "rolling world" effect known from the Animal Crossing series,

this is a wonderful effect creating the illusion of a spherical/rolling world.

I took Chris Schlager's tutorial as a reference point, it's been really helpful,

you might wanna check it out: http://googoobachoo.blogspot.com.es/2010/08/rolling-world-tutorial.html

Vielen Dank Chris. :)

Just A Quick Screeny :-)

Character Update

So folks, I haven't been quite satisfied with the character, so I spent several hours refining his "curves", I've also given him a new haircut... And a new face. :o)

Oh yah, our little fella is finally walking... Err sliding actually, still lacking animation. :p

But like they say "a picture is worth a thousand words a video is worth a million",

why not just take a look at it? :)

Mouse Controller

Been working on he mouse control mechanics, the character smoothly faces the direction of the mouse cursor,

movement and animation coming soon.

Also keep in mind that this is kind of a placeholder a prototype for testing purposes,

so this doesn't necessarily reflect the final character.

Enjoy. :)

Rim Light Shader FTW!

Never underestimate the visual impact of shaders,
here is a little example of the visual improvement
a shader can add to your model.

The sphere to the left uses a simple dull Diffuse shader,
the one to the right uses a Rim Light shader.

It adds a bit of contrast and color variation to the skin.

looks pretty good. :)


Thanks to Simon Wittber for this awesome little shader. :)

Shader source: http://entitycrisis.blogspot.com.es/2011/01/unity3d-30-planet-shader.html

Face Texture

A quick update for our little hero, added a face texture,

not too shabby, but our little fellow definetly needs some hair strands... :-)

I admit the head is more difficult to get right than I've assumed...

3D Character Model

Hello folks :)

this is what I've come up with after a short modeling session in Blender:

I went for a AC: Wild World like style , tiny little fellow, with a proportionally outsized head. :)

Apologize for the missing face, will paint the texture soon,

what do you guys think?

Do you like this style, or maybe the chracters shown in AC: Jump Out :)

Quick Character Concept

This is a quick n' dirty concept painting of a typical Animal Crossing character,

I don't do digital painting quite often, I'm really unexperienced,

started using a Wacom Bamboo tablet along with Photoshop just 1-2 months ago,

 well I guess it's sufficient as a modeling reference. :)

Animal Crossing PC Project

Hello everyone! :)

I have decided a couple of days ago to start a new
(Well actually my first... :p) solo video game project,
which I would like to share its development process
with you guys here on this Blog.

Without much thinking
I decided to make an Animal Crossing game for the PC,
this has been one of my biggest wishes since years now,
it's a non-profit fan-game project,
it's not intended to be a commercial game by any means.

All rights belong to their respective owners,

in this case Nintendo,
no copyright infringement intended,
I hope Nintendo will rather see this as a tribute to Animal Crossing.

Also this game will not make use of any of the assets from the original games,
everything will be created by myself.

It won't necessarily be a "clone", building on the original concept,
but implementing additional new game-play, features, and story, which I will reveal later on.

If you have any question and/or suggestion don't hesitate to leave a comment. :)