I Have An Awful Sense Of Time

Remember that post I made a while ago (post before last) where I said I was done with Phase 1 of my AnimatedSpriteMaker project? Yeah, well I lied... but I suppose that's kind of the way it goes in any development lifecycle. You plan and plan and try to plan ahead, but then as you progress you find flaws, you go back to fix those flaws, and you improve upon what's already there. The goal warps a little bit, there's a lot of work involved, but the end result is that much better.

As it turns out I've returned to touch up a few things in that "Phase 1", the Skeleton creation mode that I had mentioned. I had to return to take care of a couple things, such as serialization of the skeleton, to save it, and apply restraints... I need to set it up so that bones can't extend beyond their intended length, and so that joints don't bend out of whack. Of course this all relates to the penultimate goal of Phase 1 - the Inverse Kinematics that I typed about last time.

After I completely complete Phase 1, in the next few nights, I will be focusing on a new Phase 2 - the definition of SpriteSheet layouts (a necessary evil for sprite creation), a Phase 3 where those sprite sheets are overlayed on the skeleton, and a Phase 4 where animations are created. It's going to be a lot of fun... for the most part... and I'm looking forward to it... but at this point I'm probably more looking forward to getting it done so that I can move on to bigger and better and more entertaining (for you and for me) things! More in a few days!