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Post news Report RSS Greatest swimmer in the Universe - Nucleotide | Game development diary #16

This development diary is mostly dedicated to the Gorfs amazing swimming technique. While developing it, my goal was to achieve tight and responsive controls, and a good looking animation.

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Nucleotide game development diary series covers the development progress of the eponymous game in a form of video blog. This is our latest video:


Hello there, Ivan here, bringing you updates on the Nucleotide game.

Before we start, I would recommend you watch this video in the highest possible resolution, so that you can notice all the details.

This development diary is mostly dedicated to the Gorfs amazing swimming technique.While developing it, my goal was to achieve tight and responsive controls, and a good looking animation. Gorf is able to go through the narrowest of the gaps between the objects, without touching them.

These reddish prickly thorns are very deadly, so are all the death traps in this level, Gorf would die just by touching them, but he is gliding between them with ease. Tight controls allow the player the sense of full control over the character, ability to stop or change the direction at any time, and a generally fun experience of movement through the environment. You can notice how Gorfs spine is moving very naturally while he is changing direction, making him seem alive. That's because I'm controlling the direction of his spine from the code, and I'm able to position it precisely in all of the 360 degrees. It took me some time to implement this, but the result is very rewarding.

Also, if you look close enough, you can notice that he is blinking.I talked about the camera mechanic in the past, but this video demonstrates it much better, even though it requires more work in order to achieve the best possible angles and distances for the certain situations. From the cosmetic point of view, you've probably noticed that Gorf has changed his skin. This is more in the lines of what you can expect from the finished game, but not quite yet finished.I will post some HD screenshots to our facebook fan page and Nucleotides Indie DB page, so that you can see Gorf in more details.

Some of you have asked about the diving, and the effect of the death traps on the water surface, that is still in the development and it will be demonstrated in the future development diaries. This demonstration level might seem easy, but it's quite challenging, I myself didn't manage to go thru it in the first pass while recording the footage for this video. That's all for this development diary, make sure to subscribe, like, and share this video with your friends. It's really important to us to spread the word about the game as much as possible. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment sections. My name is Ivan Mandić, thank you for watching, bye.

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