it has been a while since the last official news. If you thought that this project is dead... well I can't blame you
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/px_e_wink.png)
I am happy to announce that Pixel Tennis is finally going to get anime style character models. The old existing placeholder pills will be replaced with Kuro (left) and Lea (right).
They are fully animated and support swapping different outfits and hair styles. There will be also a new isle/beach themed court with way greater detail than the existing basic and arena ones.
Oh.. and rackets! Do not ask me, why it took more than 4 years for a tennis game to implement rackets
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/px_e_confused.png)
The previous updates mainly focused on gameplay and technical stuff. Visuals and everything related to 3D modeling were neglected across the board because of its complexity combined with my lack of knowledge. Outsourcing this task did not work that well, so I crash coursed into Blender, meshes, vertexes vertices, UV mapping, rigging, weight painting, blend shapes, lightmaps, matcaps, normals, pbr, culling, lod, animations, shaders and donuts in the last 4 months and this is the result.
There is no release date yet, because I want to take more time for polishing and also tackle the following topics:
- Add more equipment variations
- Better visual effects for charging, hitting and running
- Handle/convert old items that were purchased in the current version
- Rebuild the UI for theme support
As always, every feedback is welcome!