Hello! My name is Brad Haze, the lead programmer for Fate of Factions. One of the many tasks I have been working on is taking the animations, models, and textures created by our artists and implementing them into our game.
We have decided to use separate animations for the top and bottom. This allows us to have the character to continue with a walking animation for the legs, but have the upper body preform an attacking animation. This decision helps the minimize the amount of different animations needed for each character.
Once the animations and textures are applied to the model, we must adjust any of the abilities accordingly to have them match the movements of the characters. This requires us to go back through our coding for each ability to ensure the character feels natural and responsive to the players inputs.
(Above: Mage Character going through the Animation and Texture Process, in a Test Scene)
So far, the mage and the warrior have gone smoothly through this process, but the ranger was the cause of some issues. The idle animation has him bouncing his hips back and forth which became very noticeable if the upper and lower animations became off sync slightly. After adding in extra checks, the character now forces the two animations to sync up. It was a good learning experience to say the least.
Thanks for listening. I hope everyone will be able to enjoy the game when it finally releases.
Choose your class, fight until you're last man standing, and raise your banner high. Your efforts will decide the Fate of Factions!
-Brad