Gameplay
Fluidity and dynamic interactions have always been core focuses for Naginami and the Crimson Thread. Each thread interaction is uses dynamic vector calculations, precisely adapting based on the player's position relative to both creatures and the surrounding environment.
Rigging and Animation
I handle all animation and rigging personally for Naginami and the Crimson Thread. The game utilizes Spine by Esoteric Software for managing all rigging and animation processes.
Art
My primary focus for the art of Naginami and the Crimson Thread is environment art, specializing in distant backgrounds, terrain design, and select foliage elements.
Blended together in a beautiful water color aesthetic.
I've developed an environment and lighting system that dynamically adapts to meet the evolving needs of the game.
Some major set pieces such as checkpoints, gates, and crystals are made by me.
Naginami and the Crimson Thread requires detailed and varied foliage, so I've developed a custom foliage tool that automatically populates terrain surfaces—all at the click of a button.
To help blend the background elements together, I developed a watercolor shader that creates a flowing watery texture that blends all background elements together to help make the foreground pop. This allows us to create detailed visually interesting backgrounds that do not overwhelm the important details.
Tools
Auto Foliage Tool
The auto foliage tool populates spline-controlled terrain with instanced foliage objects that helps define level boundaries. It provides great flexibility and control. Instead of hand placing foliage on every terrain object, it gathers all terrain in the level and auto-populates it, while still letting you tweak specific instances, saving hours of manual work.
Cutscene Manager
The custom cutscene generator allowed for easy generation of cutscenes in an easy to see timeline allowing the user to create, restructure, edit, and test cutscenes in a quick manner.
Dynamic Level Streaming
Created a dynamic level streamer to ensure seamless level transitions, with the ability to jump between levels, and have the whole game within a single instance without loading screens.
PNG to terrain Generator
The PNG to Terrain Generator is a tool created for an unannounced project. It will take in a simple image and generate grid based terrain based on the image. providing great flexibility in generation processes using Fractional Brownian Motion as a base with various other rules. This allows the developer and players to easily create base maps for use in the game.