I keep bouncing back and forth between art and game devving whoops x) Life has been pretty hectic lately, but my husband and I are in the final stages of getting our first home, and I’m so excited. We’ll finally have our own 5 acre lot, and I’m already dreaming about homesteading and owning mini zebu and chickens :,)
A few days ago, I started working on a new horse model. Yes, again, I know. I ended up taking about a month off from game devving, but during that time I was still casually learning and thinking about the things I want to improve. This round, I’m aiming for a model with much stronger musculature and, eventually, fur texture as well.
Now that I understand the rigging process a lot better, I’ve realized just how massive the animation workload really is for a game like Wild Herds. It’s going to need dozens, if not over a hundred, complex animations. Because of that, I really want to create a model I feel fully confident in before I commit that kind of time to it. I need something I’m comfortable pouring a year or two of work into.
Each horse (stallion, mare, yearling, and foal) will need a huge range of behaviors to make the game feel alive, especially stallions. Fighting behaviors, idle behaviors, grazing, digging, sleeping, snaking, spooking, and more all need to be accounted for if I want Wild Herds to actually feel like you’re living as a horse.
And if anyone wonders why it needs so many animations, it’s because even simple interactions are not actually simple. For example, if a stallion approaches another horse to groom them from the front, that needs one animation, if he approaches from the side, that needs a different one. Eating grass requires a low head animation, while browsing bushes needs a higher head animation. All of those little details add up fast, but they’re also what make the world feel believable.
Wish me luck! Life is looking up for me and I'm going to be taking a more casual approach to game devving instead of feeling the need to push a product out. This model is still in the very ROUGH stages, just wanted to share what I've been up to this week <3