REPLIES:
@Bladestorm Games lol thanks. I'll be sure to give you a favorable life when I take over the world with my matrix.
@asollazzo Thanks! And 3 months later it looks like you've succeeded at making your water.
@lolslayer I actually do a lot of my coding at work when it's slow. (Don't tell my employer

) Thanks
@CMAllen I actually tried the rotating UV coords thing and it worked, but the seams between different flowing water directions all looked terrible. It could probably be done by some one more experienced though. Thanks for your comment.
@mikix I suppose the politically correct term would be "Exclusively 2d programmers"
@JaimitoEs Thanks a lot! I hope darkspine is going well for you too.
@HayManMarc Thanks mate, and welcome back to the thread. I like the frogs too

It was fun to make their goofy animations.
@Let's Clone I hope your still stoked after reading it
@Ninety Welcome back to the thread! (Sock puppets were a little too gimmicky IMO) Thanks.
@Colin B Yes, it's still a 3d buffer that holds the tile data. MOST tiles are billboarded, but water is drawn as an actual 3d plane. I'm honored to be the most impressive thing on this site

Also is three years a short time? It seems like it's taking way too long... But then again, I do have a family and work full time, so I guess I'm doing okay time-wise. Thanks again for your comment.
@Samuel Venable Thanks mate. Anything is possible if your obsessed enough
. . .
DEVELOPMENT:
So I finally was able to make a working IK script:
Unfortunately, the joints still got themselves tied up in knots and would go into completely unnatural positions. After a week of trying all kinds of complex math transformations I realized you could just apply some upward velocity to the joints and they would sort themselves out:
It's literally one line of code but it's 100% effective... Too bad it took me a week to figure it out.
I needed the IK script so I could make 5 bone joints like wings:
So then I could make a dragon:
His idle animation is pretty cool.
And finally, I made some
REAL TIME EVOLUTION so he can grow a little every time he levels up.
(Snake > Lizard > Spikey Lizard > Dragon)
YOUTUBE? (Ugh...)
And finally, I "experimented" with video devlogs on youtube. I have about 8,500 followers on twitter and I
thought it would be easy to convert twitter guys into youtube followers. But dang, I can't even get 1000 views. Here are the videos for the morbidly curious: (I'm still improving, I swear!)
The
1st video had very poor audience retention and most people quit after 2 minutes. I figured it must have been too boring, so for the
2nd video I tried to "
spice it up" and eliminate any dull moments to keep the audience watching, but I took editing too far and several people told me it was unwatchably irritating. I obviously still have a long way to go as a video editor, but I just started a month ago so hopefully I'll improve. I'd appreciate any honest feedback or suggestions for the youtube videos even if they are negative.
I'm not even sure if youtube is worth pursuing though because it takes a lot of extra time. I thought it would be so easy with 8000 followers

(I guess you still need good content first

)
Thanks for all your comments guys. I do appreciate them and read every one at least twice.