The forum software has informed me that this topic has not been posted on in over 120 days. Apparently I've been
slacking somewhat. Nevertheless, I finally stopped being useless and started working again.
The first map I had planned was a section of the city of Ancipes, which is finally underway. I decided on using a location called the Quarry District: after the death of the leader of a cult dedicated to a particularly violent spirit, the district was evacuated and quarantined until the Wardens could be called in to deal with the lingering entity.
The map has been entirely blocked out with primitives, and I'm currently going through bit-by-bit and filling in details. It was interesting carving this map into the terrain - there's a 50 meter difference in height between the northern end and the southern end, which makes freerunning a lot easier in one direction over the other. I've decided to use very, very simple graphics for now and instead focus on the bare minimum of what's necessary to make the game technically playable, even though it may not be particularly striking at first.
With that in mind, I've also created a new placeholder model for the Wardens using the new rigging techniques I've learned between the creation of the last character models and now. Placeholder animations are in-progress: walk cycles are finished, running is almost complete, sneaking is barely started, and climb animations are complete. Speaking of climbing...
Freerunning has been significantly debugged and animations have been implemented. Your character now actually appears (more or less) to climb walls rather than zooming to the top of them and then momentarily freezing in place. The animations are still rough, and, although I would like to implement IK hands (so that the Wardens' hands actually make contact with the surface they're climbing) I'm not even gonna take a shot at that until the game is playable.