Note : Godot 3.4, Blender 2.83.
The very first edition of 'Finding Fifi' was released on
Newgrounds almost 7 years ago.
Gasp.
The game was designed as a small resolution / limited assets 2d web game, following in the steps of such great (old school) developers as Takagi ('the crimson room') and Jan Albartus ('MOTAS').
Sadly, the game is no longer playable in the latest browsers ...
So, time for a much needed update !
The plan was to (quickly) port the game from OpenFL to GDScript.
However, as usual, my plan hit a snag : the game's resolution (800x600)
is too small for a stand-alone game.
This means I have to recreate all game textures ... or, release the game as a 3d game instead. Either way, more work than expected. That is, if I can find the original Blender files ... =)
Ok. I found a Blender file with the somewhat cryptic (and unlucky ?) name 'FF_13_275_S4.blend' in a folder named 'art'. I think I'll use that as my starting point.
After spending some time cleaning up the (messy) meshes and removing textures from materials,
the meshes were deemed ready for export to Godot.
Since this game has a limited number of (simple) materials, I decided to export the
scenes -with- materials (as opposed to creating all materials inside Godot).
And of course ... in game development nothing is ever easy.
Luckily, I quickly figured out the problem : 'old school' Blender materials (not
node-based).
So, let's just quickly convert the materials by pressing the 'use nodes' button in the material properties section in Blender ...
And ...
OK. let's explore some other options then ...
1) Try different export types (fbx, etc) and settings (vertex colors etc) ... Nope.
2) Find an addon ('material utils') ...Nope. Outdated.
3) Final, desperate, attempt : download 2.80 and try the conversion there.
It seems my Blender version was broken ...
Many hours & other problems later, and now in Godot 3.4, the real work can finally begin.