New character models

Those models will replace the current models. The body models are made by KumaBeer. The models will use the new shading system by mixing multiple colors on GPU instead of multiplying single color to grayscale texture on CPU.

New node-based character animator

New node-based character animation system was integrated into the game. This system allows to represent character's bones as nodes in the graph tree. It simplifies usage of hitboxes and extra nodes like weapons, which now could be a part of character's bone tree. It also allows to implement the IK in the future.

Implemented features

• Character loading
• Character rendering in static pose
• Character customization
• Attaching weapons to character bones

Missing features

• Playing animations
• Frame interpolation
• Animations blending

New NPR deferred render pipeline

New custom NPR render pipeline was integrated into the game. It replaces the tobspr's RenderPipeline, which was PBR-based and heavily modified to make it stylized. New pipeline uses a less amount of render passes, which could improve the performance and lowers the required GLSL version from 4.3 to 3.3. It also very flexible and allows easily adding the new shaders and other rendering techologies in future like shadow casters.

tobspr's RenderPipeline was integrated into the game in 2017 and now it's time to say goodbye to it:

Implemented features

• Basig level rendering (without shaders)
• Character rendering
• UI background blur (have bugs)

Missing features

• Extra level's shaders with spritesheet-based animations
• AO
• Lighting and shadows

New glTF exporter

The new characters will require a new glTF exporter because they will use multiple UV layers and vertex colors which was not supported by old glTF exporter. The new exporter is now based on the Blender's glTF exporter and it will simplify the character loading and customization system.

Implemented features

• Character exporting
• Multiple UV layers
• Vertex colors
• New character shaders compatibility

Missing features

• Level exporting (it's untested and may require more work)

BVHQ export and import

A new format was invented to simplify the animation exporting and importing, and to speed up the implementation of the animation system. The glTF format is too complicated for use in animations and it will take too much time for the integration with a new character animator system. The new format was named BVHQ (BVH with quaternions). It's based on BVH (Biovision hierarchical data) and uses the quaternions instead of euler angles for bones rotation. The format was pretty simple and the Blender exporter was implemented in a short time. The importer was implemented as part of the new character animator system.

Implemented features

• Export animations from Blender to custom BVHQ format
• Import animations from custom BVHQ format into the new node-based character animator

Missing features

• Frame time configuration
• Dynamic frame time on frame sampling

All the new feature are planned for release in the upcoming version 0.8.x