I’ve been itching to write a post for this blog ever since my last, if not for a subject. If I had staid course I think by now I’d have a release of the 3D modeling software I’ve been developing ever since earlier last year. But I have something better since not long ago I heard from the Moratheia project it’s back on (this was posted sometime earlier, complete with a new image) which shortly put me to work on Sword of Moonlight!
I’ve not put out a new release since mid last year, and hadn’t intended to release this one now after just 2 or 3 weeks except I want to write a blog and publish an unplanned fix for the PlayStation and Xbox trigger buttons I’d rather not sit on.
The genesis of this release is an idea to add a grab-hold-of-walls feature that is analogous to the crouching feature, or grab-hold-of-floors feature. Does that make sense? Communicating video game concepts is not always so easy: by holding movement changes from walking around to leaning out in order to look around. It can make certain types of movement easier and more reliable.
I believe this finalizes a basic movement feature set. I don’t know why I didn’t see it coming! It struck me out of the blue, as these things do. My motivation is always to find out how Sword of Moonlight will end. I’m very pleased with this development.
I wanted to hold off a release until I could complete a ladder feature that will use the holding feature to mount the ladder. I worked on numerous other things, anything that caught my eye. In fact toward the end an idea came up to be able to take the game from a run to a crouch, or crawl (bent over) without stopping to walk. That became the ultimate piece of the movement features since there isn’t any way left to add anything more to the one-and-only button: the King’s Field way is 3 buttons, 2 for hands, and 1 for everything else!
Movement is all around improved. I will try to detail every little thing in the accompanying forum post. Also of interest: there’s now a definitive roadmap for expanded hand controls and I’ve already added a means to hide screen elements (with hand buttons) and I now recommend using one of the triggers for the non-hand button. This wasn’t practical previously, even without the issues I was unaware of. Now that the 2 hand buttons will be expanded on I believe it’s helpful to situate them across from each other on the buttons that touch the triggers.
Forum Discussion
