Hollow’s Resolve is an open-world RPG prototype I developed for my Game Design & Development final project. Most of my work so far has been on dialogue and combat: spawning characters for conversations, framing them correctly, and making sure attacks deal damage to the right target.

Dialogue and cameras

A conversation can spawn an NPC if its speaker isn’t already in the world. The system places them at the position set for the scene and removes temporary speakers when the conversation ends.

Getting the cameras right took more work. A spawned character can exist before its mesh and appearance have finished loading. Starting the camera too early meant it sometimes pointed at an empty spot.

Dialogue now waits briefly for the visible character to be ready, then gives its transforms a few frames to settle. The wait has a time limit so a broken character setup won’t stall the conversation. Camera targeting uses the head socket or bone on the visible mesh and caches an offset for later shots.

Combat

Custom character visuals caused similar problems with hit detection. An attack could hit the mesh without finding the character that should take damage. Collision settings, faction rules, and uninitialized ability state could also leave characters swinging at each other indefinitely.

I’ve been working on the path from the hit mesh to its owning character and damage receiver. These systems need to work with characters that quests can spawn, move, and remove, so I’m building them out before adding more content.