Procedural creature progress 2021 - 2024
For my game The Big Forest I want to have creatures that are both procedurally generated and animated, which, as expected, is quite a research challenge.
As mentioned in my 2024 retrospective, I spent the last six months of 2024 working on this — three months on procedural model generation and three months on procedural animation. My work on the creatures actually started earlier though. According to my commit history, I started in 2021 after shipping Eye of the Temple for PCVR, though my work on it prior to 2024 was sporadic.
Though the creatures are still very far from where they need to be, I'll write a bit here about my progress so far.
The goal
I need lots of forest creatures for the gameplay of The Big Forest, some of which will revolve around identifying specific creatures to use for various unique purposes. I prototyped the gameplay using simple sprites for creatures, but the final game requires creatures that are fully 3D and fit well within the game's forest terrain.
