Getting a character to move in 3D is step one. This week, I built a basic locomotion system: walk, run, jump. It is rudimentary. It also works.
I modeled a generic, faceless character, male and female. Exaggerated proportions on feet and hands define the style. The look works. No concrete game idea has landed for this yet. It is a template, ready for when a solid concept hits.
Then came the foot IK test. That meant sloped platforms in the test levels. Foot IK allows the character’s feet to adapt to uneven terrain. In Godot, it works. Kinda. Overmass already uses a more polished version. The path exists. This needs more tuning.
A tech artist doing this in Unreal Engine once spent hours on it. Hours of pain. My job here is to direct the code, not type it. AI handles the heavy lifting on the script. That reduces the pain to tuning. Old methods die hard.
Game ideas for this tech point to an arena, wave-based, third-person hack and slash. Think Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae. No nonsense DMC. Simple. Or a more realistic graphical focus.
The pieces are moving.