Animations and Multiplayer Architecture - Sapiens Devlog 45

[@whyareallthesetaken]

You could add a trait for obliviousness: a sapien will try to be friendly even if the other hates them

[@elektra81516]

Basically making me in sapien form

[@brettgoldsmith8584]

The traits will be a fun and easy thing to mod. I'm looking forward to all the psychology you could do in this game

[@theemeraldfalcon9184]

@@brettgoldsmith8584 "So, let's start with your day, Mr. Liktu" "Urgulabunga Bunga-Bungaler!"

[@lewispearson]

The behavior traits sounds interesting. I think altruism and teamwork would be a nice emergent behavior; you see your friend carrying logs and decide to help them. Doing so increasing your bond with that friend. Also might take the strain off the player as having a tribe with good friendships will increase build times.

[@squeakybunny2776]

Getting this notification makes me so happy... So inspirational

[@willjones3657]

Dave, I'd just like to thank you for such incredible content - the game is great, your devlog commentaries, explanations and rationales are super interesting, and the overall production value of these videos are amazing. Thanks so much for continuing to release these logs and inspiring a whole community of current and future game developers. I wish you all the success as you continue your journey with Sapiens, and I'm really looking forward to its eventual release!

[@borislavnikolov1078]

I think the animation for getting apples or branches is to hit the tree with a stick and the tree to shake and the items to fell. Now it looks like magic if tree is too tall. P.S. You are the only youtuber I clicked this bell button. You are my inspiration to code

[@MoonJumpMania]

I've been watching your devlogs for a while and I just now realized that you're the guy that made The Blockheads!!!

[@dk-sky3820]

5:52 I think you can actually keep this variant of animation for elder people 🙂

[@KIVAWA]

They should rest near each other, looks odd them just sitting around on thier own, great work btw, i'd love to learn!

[@barbaricvm0]

Hey Dave, i just want to say that your work is really inspiring, and makes me really want to get into game development, or any kind of programming to be honnest, but still, game development is the one that sort of calls to me. In any case, keep doing what you are doing, and never change the format of your videos. I am sure a bunch of us appreciate that you get in depth on how some technical things work, like multiplayer and so on, these parts are always appreciated !

[@hidekitom0]

damn you made blockheads? i played that game for years. definitely an underrated game. thanks man

[@zBones762]

It's not always evident how a simple change in camera perspective can drastically change the way you interact with objects in the game world. You have to completely change the way you detect objects, and in certain cases it makes that logic a lot more difficult or completely incompatible with something you did in first person.

[@BjarneSvanberg]

Nice progress. Keep up the good work. A note on the running animation: When running people tend to bend their elbows and have their forearms and hands closer to their chest than their thighs.

[@Chadderbox]

Just refreshed my KZbin, and this is here. Made my day!

[@RobLang]

It was very interesting to see the technical details behind state change. Thank you!

[@jasonbenyousky4467]

I’m not an expert on this, but I have a few suggestions that are purely gameplay wise. When playing a game such as say, breath of the wild, you may begin to notice the sheer amount of features, like spreading fire, heat rising, heat and cold, and lightning. These are absolutely amazing in games. If you can add some minor things that make the game feel sort of alive and always changing, here are a few suggestions. First off: dry season, fires have a chance of spreading in dry plains, not near houses. Second: trees, if there’s one thing trees do, it’s grow. Make trees occasionally pop up, and maybe a few stages for trees, such as ancient trees that can fall over and die. Third: NPCs in weather, maybe they go inside in rain, or play outside if they’re children. Fourth and finally: temperature, clothing, being inside city limits, or fires can affect the Sapiens temperature. Thanks man, looks amazing.

[@sonkew826]

i really like the "running" animation, because it looks like the way you'd move quick-ish across larger distances, as opposed to sprinting across short distances. 11:00 good point multiplayer architecture: real nice job. how do you handle race conditions between clients though? relationships: that makes a lot of sense and reminds me of the sims 2 (in my opinion the best sims, especially with relationships). the short and long term moods allow you to e.g. be mad at your child/spouse/parent for a while, but still having a strong long-term relationship that doesn't just disappear because you had one argument. on that note, the needs system reminds me of the sims as well, i always felt that game could build satisfying gameplay from those simple mechanics. I think you're on the right track there.

[@Zamzeeflizzam]

I like this format of video where you include some more technical stuff. I really like that you were explaining your code on a simple level. Love the progress. Keep it up!

[@dailyfactswithbadger8156]

these are so satisfying to watch

[@rasmustagu]

My favorite notifications :) Great video - new animations give a lot more character to the game as a whole!

[@rasmustagu]

Walking looks near perfect, woah.

[@oelx0]

With multi select I’m not sure if an answer has already been provided but why not something like in blender, 1. Activate multi-select via button or hot key 2. Cursor appears and then select by dragging with a box 3. Move camera to better deselect or select additional items by holding down right mouse button (optional toggle?) and then using wasd while looking in the direction you want to move. Hardest part would be unwanted items but perhaps click while in this mode to make it selectable thorough multi-select. Just a rough idea but considering everyone else is sharing theirs I thought I might as well share mine.

[@m4dsci3nt1st]

Watching videos like these are very inspirational.

[@ArkhBaegor]

Very good call on the top down view, glad you're keeping the game's integrity in mind and not caving to incompatible requests

[@morgenmiddag]

Love it, you should add some up and down movement to the animations though. Or some sideways wiggle to make it look less stiff :)

[@satarhassni7380]

Really excited for release, the dev blogs are really good too.

[@puntangerslx2772]

amazing video i really hope i get to beta test

[@XeviousGG]

im really pleased with how this game is coming along. and the bond mechanic you created is really good in my opinion.

[@thefinn0tube_]

Oh wow I loved the Blockheads! I had no idea I'd ever hear them mentioned again hahaha. Really great game :)

[@coder2k]

I really liked the part about the technical background of the network model. I wouldn't mind seeing more of such things :)

[@krat5576]

You could use their personality traits, moods and bond levels to calculate the rate in which the social interaction contributes to their aquaintance. Maybe some traits like small eater and big eater conflict, making them less likely to appreciate each other. Using their current status like well-fed or starving could also makes them realistically hangry :) Love the animations, its very inspiring!

[@Codethe_Road]

I like the game you're making-- and I really like seeing the way you're making it.

[@phillipmcmahon5949]

Love the content 👍👍 beautiful office too

[@yserov8719]

8:03 "Reticulating Splines" hahah happy to see you sneaked that one in!

[@4rs0nn]

There are few videos that excite me more when I see them on my KZbin feed. This project is so inspiring. :D

[@unmannedocelot1960]

I definitely enjoy your technical explanations.

[@DankStankable]

I love getting notifications to watch your new uploads. So keen for this game.

[@DerFinder]

it's sooo good to see your progression with the game! Really relaxing and very informative ;)

[@slimesmcdingle4169]

Love the little bug in the top left when he was describing networking on the whiteboard

[@re7fhatguy]

I can't wait to see this game in a couple of years.

[@gamedevwithmatt9686]

This is dope! Reminds me of Black and White but a little more hands on. Good luck to you sir! I also just started my new game dev series hopefully all goes well!

[@ThatGamePerson]

Thanks for explaining this the top down thing, As soon as you did it before you even said anything I thought "Oh that's bad cause then he might as well have the whole game like that)

[@Delusion_9691]

Will the climate effect the activity and needs of the sapiens?

[@kristinlow1205]

Wow - you really re-frame what one person is capable of!

[@GloomyPie1]

could you add some other way to view the bond level other than a number? also I think a loyal trait and a distrusting trait would be pretty cool

[@Ashman792]

Yay! Animations! I’m excited to see more, like idle animations

[@Dragon20C]

I think a way to make them more livily is maybe giving them a voice like when they pass someone they say hello but in their own language (Like the sims)

[@Gaark]

I think you're progressing well. Other games I've played had no movement animations at all, the 'people' would slide over terrain like a mannequin. It was a bit eerie, but also quite amusing hahaah

[@ViliamVadocz]

When you were describing bond it seemed more like trust to me

[@zac5189]

Sapiens! I love this game!

[@MaxPicAxe]

"it's been on my todo list for a good couple of years" xD

[@DR-54]

Woke up just to watch this

[@TheRubiksrocks]

Bro, your walking animation and transitions in between animations is incredible. Better than any motion capture a AAA studio has ever done, seriously. Explanation video? :o

[@EldeNova]

Love the updates - I think I enjoy the devlog more than I would the game. The journey is what's more interesting. However, I had a thought while you mentioned being "only one person" as opposed to a AAA team. Could you imagine Sapiens if it did have a massive team?! It would kick so much ass. I'm imagining highly realistic people animations - with a vague ape-like nature. Looking forward to the next video!

[@LandryW]

This mood mechanic reminds me a lot of the game Rimworld, one of my favorite games ever. I think this certainly has a lot of potential.

[@PowerfulAtom111]

I’ve been meaning to get the game, but never bought it. can you give me a summary of the game? id love to play it but im not sure

[@Mycon]

Game looks awesome, I'm curious to see how far can the humans progress technologically. Also, I have an idea; a tribe member could check his surroundings (or something) when doing a task, like picking apples. And if there's for example a stick near by, there's a chance they pick it up and use that to reach the apples giving them a speed upgrade to perform the task. And they could teach it forward. This could also lead to them having a walking stick and thus, a stick to help with other tasks if they roll the die successfully again. This way the whole tribe might adopt some customs that you never see in other playthroughs since there might be different ways to boost the tasks, like carrying a stone and throwing it at the apples instead.

[@DavidFong21]

Hey Majic Dave! Unmajic David here. I really love these dev videos. Your consistent hard work and good attitude are really inspiring to me! I had a couple of thoughts that I hope won’t be too off-base. First, I really like the multi select tool you ended up with and I get why you picked it. However, giving the tool more of a mini-map feel by adding things like buildings, water, tribe members, etc. could help add a sense of relative location and physical distance to the tool. Not sure if that would be difficult or add too much visual clutter, but I think it might help. The other thing has to do with animations. I noticed in your front-facing camera shot that when your arm swings forward it also swings in toward the center of your body. Is this an axis of rotation that you have in your models yet? If not, I think it could really help make the movement feel more intuitive and natural. Other than that it’s starting to look great! This game looks amazing by the way. Can’t wait to play it some day!

[@Tokmurok]

Could you make a video on the soundtrack? I would like to see what twist you put on it, because most games end up sounding like sim animals.

[@PowerfulAtom111]

bruh i thought you time traveled for a bit

[@mitchy5480]

is it possible to make kingdom's/cities and have tribe war's?

[@samcousins3204]

wars*

[@dicksdiggers]

@Lance Anthony That's not an obvious autocorrect mistake, though, autocorrect wouldn't just add an apostrophe like that.

[@shipshrekt2156]

He said we’re not gonna get any city builder features. At least from the common rts too down side of things

[@prudiiarca]

Hi Dave, I follow your devlogs quite a while now and want to thank you very much for making them. You and ThinMatrix make me remember how I fell in love with making games and push me towards continuing this lovely activity as soon as time allows. I really liked your explanation of the server client architecture and would love to see such details more often. My question is: how do you make sure that client and server are in synch? Do you send a hash (and what if that hash gets corrupted in transmission)? And how does the client know to which status the delta has to be applied? I would love to hear back from you. Anyways, thank you very much again and keep up your hard work! Best regards from Germany

[@EJ3001]

Such great progress!!!

[@theaifam5]

I think you should do something with the ground. Foliage and the ground color are the same.

[@Ybot76]

Didnt see this till now!, SO EXCITED

[@DavidFong21]

It could be cool to have a hotkey that turns off all the UI elements so players can just admire the beautiful world you’ve made!

[@iwp112Gaming]

Awesome work Dave! 😃👍

[@ryanmccauleyfootball3258]

Keep up the awesome work!!!

[@sebastiandecort6024]

I like the multiselect thing, it's one of the best ones I've seen.

[@LukeLaczynski]

Looks good Dave!

[@PiotrekZadworny]

This is soooo good! :D Is there some kind of tech tree planned, with paleolithic skills? Like weaving, sewing, fishing, boatmaking and so on? It would be cool to have different lithic cultures represented for upgrades in tools and stuff. Perhaps with different things useful/boosted depending on the biome you're in? What do you think about it? Also, I'm not sure if you get enough kudos for the music - it's perfect! :)

[@ztrglider]

A cool interaction could be that they have to work together to accomplish certain tasks. Maybe some objects have to be carried by two people.

[@trafficface]

Love the office!

[@georgegoddard1550]

This game looks awesome

[@Rouverius]

Animations are looking a lot better. Great work! Out of curiosity, how do you handle animation over varied terrain? Is is possible to interpolating the key frame with the general angle of the surface? (Sorry, I might be using the wrong terms here. But I hope my questions makes sense.)

[@joejia1410]

Damn youtube finally wasn't late on daves videos.

[@megacoomer1617]

With the multiselect thing you should have made a general actions menu and just had the cursor show in your normal cameramode, then just box selecting things

[@dominicschaefer8738]

Great work Dave! Keep it up. I am very fascinated by how you are driving the animations with the code just using key frames. Is this how other engines drive animation? Where can you learn more about doing this?

[@nizzel_]

majic dave must really be magic to make his hair disappear like that "wingardium male-pattern baldness"

[@timon7651]

Incredible how long you have been working on this game all on your own. I could never do that.

[@keyboardwarrior8317]

Im so buying this once its out

[@comradesushi3722]

Would you be interested in getting a team to work on things like animation and stuff just to perhaps take a load off you I imagine it may make making the game a bit faster if you weren't sole developer

[@majicDave]

I've thought about this many times, but it still doesn't quite add up just yet for many reasons. The major one is that I am really enjoying working on this myself. I know I can pull it off if I don't try to create too much content for the initial release. So my plan is to create all of the content (except music) myself for Sapiens 1.0. If that goes well enough, I hope to take on a small team to help create Sapiens 2 which could add a lot more content and depth, but we'll have to wait and see how it goes!

[@RandomHandle837]

Dave Frampton why don’t you just update sapiens after release?

[@slum7448]

@@RandomHandle837 i think thats what he meant he like sapien update 1.0 update 2.0

[@Noone-dg8io]

Eyad Gaming he also has to live and earn money. If Sapiens goes to medieval times and Sapiens 2 to Modern Time and adds more thinks it isn’t just a update, it’s a sequel. Movies don’t update to add another story the create a new one. But if Sapiens 2 gets like FIFA I wouldn’t buy Sapiens 2. Just fixing little bugs and wanting to get 60€ again

[@slum7448]

@@Noone-dg8io the reason fifa and any 2k game is like that isnt because of that its due to the fact that they way the made it is weird they do every year with players and matches from every year and etc they also do that so people that want a game based of 2014 playoffs could just play 2k14 and stuff although they could add a menu to switch it ,its just the way they earn money bc all sports games are dying

[@rockyraccoon]

Thanks for these videos, Dave. I can't wait to play the game. I've learned so much about game development following you. One thing I wanted to ask about was how much control you have with the variability and density of assets like trees, grass, and rocks. The game is looking amazing but I'm wondering if you've tried to push the engine by temporarily doubling the number of trees you generate. Or thickening the grass.

[@andyklyen6885]

Thanks Dave, all looks interesting. AndyfromNZ here by the way..

[@riaanwessels225]

I'm not too sure how exactly everything works in this. But it sounds like a check sum every now and then on sapient traits on sever and client might prevent or catch some bugs. You wouldn't need to send the full list of traits only a single integer to just check all the deltas add up to the same thing on both server and client. I'm not sure about the environment or protocol here of course but even having a few deltas read in the wrong order and could be a problem. Depends on a few thing of course and I can't remember if you ever mentioned how much the client actually does with the data.

[@Kalhauge]

You could add holding down when multi-selecting. Right now, there are a bit too many mouse clicks involved in selecting multiple objects. If you perhaps kept it at only one, but activating it during a hold down, changing size according to mouse movement whilst held down, and then enabling the selection and exiting the select screen upon releasing the held mouse click. The current option seems to really slow down the game, and I could imagine it getting tedious once you get going.

[@enthargaming9700]

Can’t wait!!

[@CheeseTuna]

I have a suggestion: some sort of tribal wars event. Maybe a big group rather than just one sapien could try to steal food from your tribe at a time, like as if they are a whole tribe. If one of your sapiens notices them, then they start a war with them. It would be fun, I think. Two tribes with spears and bows fighting it out for food.

[@LemmiwinksH]

I think the perspective that showing top down for selection can go down a tricky path that would lead to people defining the "meta." However, the radar view could be confusing if the player is unfamiliar with their surroundings but does want to keep a specific tree. Maybe rather than the blue radar-ish view, a top down view on some kind of orb (sort of fantasy style) that shows the area the player can affect. If, down the line, you want to add unlock progression (can't remember if you've mentioned wanting to avoid this, in my opinion it'd be nice to avoid it) then players can unlock bigger orbs, that show more area allowing them to make selections etc. Unlock progression is a fairly shallow gameplay restriction though. I don't mind the radar at all, and really the player should just take the extra miniscule effort to be aware of their surroundings.

[@shipshrekt2156]

Sorta sad that we’re not gonna get any top down city building stuff. But it is your game, very unique indeed! Maybe some modders will take on a different approach.

[@jameskoss]

Maybe some bushes? What a bizarre "forest" you can see so far :D

[@djm7323]

Can make so that people travel in groups? Like in real world, when people go to get wood, they go with other who want to get wood.

[@ChavvyChannel]

Hey!! i don’t want to pull you back onto something you’ve already worked on, but to make the animations look much more natural; you could create a few different walk animations that all are the same for a certain frame, such as when the left foot first touches the ground. Every time their left foot touches the ground it could choose a walk animation for the next step. I have a hunch that if this was done subtly, it would really remove the robotic feel of their animations.

[@Linrox]

How long will the tech tree be? Will the tech tree open slots based on achievements or another factor? How advanced will the tech in the tech tree get?

[@cam_pent]

You should watch David from wolfie games' gdc talk about animation, has some great tips for indie devs

[@vForVi.21]

As a runner I noticed something that could be touched up in the slow running / jogging animation. I think the animation might look a little more realistic if you keep the elbows bent more with the forearms closer to the chest in more of an L shape. If you want reference, just look at professional marathon or super marathon runners (because they are runners with great form who aren’t moving all that fast, relatively).

[@definitelytime4404]

I know this would be time consuming, but what if you did a few different walking/running animations to accompany the sapiens personality?

[@benrex7775]

I think your multiselect is better than the top down. I love the new animations. Sprinting is still missing. As well as going up/down. Although that might turn out to be a bit time-consuming. I like the technical explanations. I look forward to what your psychology system turns out to be. Will animals get one as well or will they be stupid and unsocial?

[@KeithSchumacherPortfolio]

You probably have bigger priorities. But you can go directly from your reference footage to the wireframe mockup. You can feed video frame by frame into a neural net to extract key points (hands, elbow, knees, etc.) I have a little python script that feeds video into an openCV NN ( I created it for a gait analysis project). Let me know if you're interested.

[@brettgoldsmith8584]

Do you like doing every part of your game? Or do you wish you could focus on just a few parts?

[@chazdomingo475]

Hi, I'm just popping in, haven't seen every one of your logs and I'm not a game dev. Why can't you just make multiselect your typical box-drag select where all units within the box get selected? Wouldn't that work even in free camera mode? Make it tied to a modifier like control or right click or middle mouse. Maybe make it cull any units outside a certain range if you're worried about people selecting too many units?

[@Mattstov]

Is happiness like moral like if they are too stressed they won’t do anything stuff like that

[@ShanSan757]

You can live 2 types of camera and the player can switch between them.

[@miniloserchamp1960]

Wow you have done quite a bit since I last watched your devlog. This reminds me of rimworld except 3d. And are events planned? such as heat waves or something. Well done, you have a lot of potential.

[@gimps3937]

Miniloserchamp heat waves noooooo

[@gimps3937]

Miniloserchamp “a pawn has collapsed from heat stroke”

[@miniloserchamp1960]

@@gimps3937 A pawn is having a tantrum (targeting 20 mortar shells) Reason: ate without table