Project Arkavite is a top-down H-RPG game about experiencing the adventure of a lifetime. Our tale begins in a land rich with fantasy and sprinklings of dungeon-punk. This is a world of magical guns, swords and sorcery -- sporting lecherous lewds and magnificent mysteries!
Broadly speaking, I’m designing an open world in which you can go around adventuring, surviving and exploring endlessly. Something with many JRPG fantasy traits, but doesn’t strictly lock you down the path of a linear story. While the game will have a core narrative, there will be plenty of other aspects focusing on exploration, combat, survival, romance, "romance~", and customization.
◉ Customization - The player character is provided with numerous slots for apparel, but customization doesn't end there! Magical potions, curses, and esoterically induced transformations will present an added layer of customization, allowing you to alter your body in lewd and perverse ways.
◉ Romance - In Arkavite you will find traditional romancing akin to what you'd see in otome gamu, and that other kind of "romancing~" you may find in eroge. Let your mind run wild! We have a main cast in mind. Pretty bois and some lovely ladies. Capture targets are key!
◉ Survival - Food, drink and rest will be present in this game. When the going gets tough and supplies start dwindling, you may find yourself forced to dine on things you probably shouldn't be eating. Crafting, and construction are also a given. In later stages of development we will tackle weather systems and environmental hazards, both standard and magical.
◉ Exploration - We’re aiming for an open and somewhat organic world. From cities and villages to castles and ruins, a large portion of the world will be hand-crafted. To make the world feel truly larger than life, portions of the world will be procedurally generated. Devious dungeons and wilderness that'd swallow you whole. Our goal is to create an unpredictable, yet enjoyable experience in this endless world of Arkavite.
Why Support Arkavite? Developing games and experiences is my passion. If you've arrived at this page, genuinely like what I do, and want to see it go further, your support would mean the world to me, and go a great way in helping secure the future of this project! I’d like to offer more if possible, so if there’s anything you want to be seeing from me on top of new builds, dev logs, and server roles, do let me know!
Hello there. We have some changes, some additions, and to top it all off, some fixes!
Recent Changes
Reduced breast size range to avoid scaling issues.
Updated Credits Page
Recent Additions
Added Codecks Page for public development tracking
Character Creator: Added Futanari
Character Creator: Added Confirm page
Character Creator: Added archetype selection
Character Creator: Added player Character Bio screen
Ported the dialog parser system to C++
Ported the entity description system to C++
Ported the entity framework (formerly known as the actor framework) to C++
Recent Fixes
Fixed issue of splash screen not appearing in builds
Multi-line Choice Titles not Displayed Correctly
[Bakuretsu] Choice Displays Invalid Tags
Character Bio
The quill button finally serves a purpose. On click, it will bring up the above finalization page. All that’s currently displayed are the Character Bio and Archetype sections. The final version of this page will feature an overview of your beginning stats, and a list of which traits (boons / banes) you’ve selected. As of now the confirm button does nothing. It is merely placeholder.
The underlying player structure and dialog parser system (responsible for handling character description generation) has for the most part been ported over to the new engine. This allows us to generate the “Character Bio” you see above.
The dialog parser system is used whenever we need to reference aspects of a character. Their appearance, what they’re wearing, their name. All of it. We use it in dialog scenes, and item events. This system is applicable to all characters. Not only the player. It’s been future proofed so that we may have procedural or custom NPCs which can be manipulated in the same manner as the player.
Returning to character creation, alterations to the player appearance will be reflected in the Character Bio. Now height, breast size, etc. can be converted into meaningful descriptions from their slider values, we can add these descriptions to the slider display. A little extra job for me to do when polishing up the UI.
Archetype
Archetype dictates the temperament of your character – how they respond mentally to scenarios and predicaments. It’s our alignment system. We use the archetype stats to run skill checks for various aspects of gameplay. As for archetype selection at character creation, for now we’re relying on sliders. Some choices are stated to influence these archetype stats. In future we may make the starter archetype entirely dependent on which traits you pick. I also like the idea of having it be dependent on some choose your own adventure style scenario at the start of the game much like some older RPGs, buuuut that’s just an idea.
The player archetype is something which can shift over the course of gameplay depending on the actions a player takes. A pure individual may fall from grace or one who is corrupt may seek redemption. Some may fall to insanity while others give in to chaos. It will make for a lot of fun, I’m certain.
Sex Selection
I’ve added a series of new buttons to the right. As you can see we have “Sex” and “Build”. Sex changes the sex of your character (i.e, what genitalia they have), while Build will change the shape of the character body. The Female and Futanari sex options are working. And yes, the futa is physics enabled, though I will say it’s not the most realistic right now since I’ve made it a floppy hard on. I will need to add a flaccid model variant, or create a model which can blend between the two desired states. More peen models, coming soon!
As for the male “Sex” and “Build” options, their models are currently being worked on. Getting that done is now my primary focus. Peen sliders will also be added along with the remaining male models.
The male model
Some all around UI polish
Tutorial-ish Guidance for first time players
These are the last few things to complete before I can make that juicy public release and shift the majority of my focus back to sandbox dev. We're onto the final stretch. Hopefully soonish I'll be back to working on some real gameplay.
An experimental build will be dropping momentarily.
I recently launched a CoDecks Page to provide you with a better picture of what is currently being worked on. The codecks page allows ongoing and future development objectives to be elaborated upon in greater detail than the roadmap. With this option now available, the roadmap page has received some changes. The roadmap has been simplified to provide a clear and general overview. Detailed development tracking has now been sequestered to CoDecks.
Additionally, https://open.codecks.io/arkavite has been set up to issue live updates to our #arkavite channel on discord as objectives are worked on / marked as complete. I want to keep everyone in the know with what’s going on and being worked on. I hope this will help do just that.
Furthermore, I've made some changes to how suggestions and bug reports are managed. You may now submit suggestions in #idea-chat, and bug reports in #bug-report via slash commands. Any suggestions made will show up here: ◉ https://open.codecks.io/arkavite/decks/9-suggestions
Here, you may browse and upvote ideas (which helps me know how popular they are). I might even post some of my own from time to time, just to test the waters. If you have an idea rumbling around your noggin, be it for Arkavite, the Server or whatever else, head on down to idea-chat and let your ideas be known!
The next experimental build will be posted shortly, but for now, let's get right into the news.
These last few weeks my primary focus has been finalization of the player skeleton so that sandbox development may resume. This finalization process did result in a little model revision... which snowballed into a lot of model revisions following our discussions in the ol' Discord server.
We’ll begin with the most glaring change. The head and face have been completely remodeled.
Larger eyes, improved facial structure, and supple lips with improved topology for animating.
The consensus so far is that this is a notable improvement over the previous iteration. Admittedly, after staring at the previous face for so long, the new one has taken some getting used to. That said, the new look has grown on me. It edges away from realism and leans into the realm of style. I like where it's headed. Be sure to let me know what you think~
Moving swiftly on, since I cleaned up the face, I couldn’t stop there. As if led by my own mania, I became absorbed in cleaning up the rest of the body and ironing out the mesh geometry. The goal was to further improve upon the model topology so that animations moving forward are cleaner. I believe I have achieved this. All the outfit components were adjusted to fit, and in testing the movement is better than before.
Drowning In Drip
Speaking of outfits, I remodeled the player shorts, shirt, socks and boots. I wanted to go for a more fantasy aesthetic with the boots. I also modeled up a set of underwear for the player.
After the male base outfit is sorted I'll begin creating a Meido starter outfit to pair with the cuteness curse. Maids are cute, right?
Hair
All hair models required revision to fit the new head shape. During this process I implemented the basics of our modular hair framework, and made substantial advancements with hair physics. Most styles and attachments are now physics enabled. A few remain which require physics to be applied or re-applied due to instability. Just a few kinks in the process which will be buffed out.
So, how does this modular hair system work? As outlined in the roadmap, we have begun with modular buns and ponytails. Of our base hairstyles, four of them have been set up with modular attachments. These styles have been marked with a purple background. Of the four, the first two allow for twin attachment points, so you can have twin buns or twintails. The second two have a rear attachment point, allowing for the attachment of various ponytails and buns.
I quite like this system as the addition of new attachments or bases exponentially increase the number of potential styles to choose from.
To close on the topic of hair, one last thing I’d like to discuss is the inclusion of a “Conceal Ears” toggle. This has been added exclusively for the Magus race and serves two purposes. Firstly, their ears are short enough such that one could argue Magus can hide their ears behind their hair. In some cases this is a desired “look”, so the option is there. Secondly, since our kemonomimi races are anatomically correct, there is hair in places where ears would normally be expected to stick out. This means that in the case of Magus, their ears will almost always end up clipping through the hairstyles. This is predominantly an issue for styles which are short on the sides. In future, I intend to resolve this by designing base variants which take into consideration non-kemonomimi ear placement.
Sandbox Development
Sandbox development has sort of kicked back off again. I’ve added player movement (walk, run and jump). Last post I mentioned I’d like to get leg IK working. This process ensures our legs position themselves correctly depending on the terrain beneath them, so when a player walks on stairs, their feet connect with the individual steps rather than clipping through them. Or, if the player happens to be standing on uneven terrain, their feet would remain planted on the ground beneath them (as opposed to having one foot hover or another foot clip). It’s one of those overlooked details which has a big impact, and I just love the look of it when it works. I've included some earlier test footage of the legs in motion below. Note, this was recorded before the face and body update, so it looks a little different to the image above.
Later I’d like to add turn based tilt for run animations. I ran some quick tests earlier. Didn’t work so well. There are several more aspects to movement and control which I should really square away first, so we’ll return to that little detail another time.
Finally, I’ve added a pose system to the player which handles pose animations in the character creator. It’s now only a matter of loading the system up with pose animations and adding the ability to switch poses on UI. I figure it will also find use in a future photo mode.
This, That & The Other Thing
Some other changes and additions of note.
◉ Audio Updates
Refactored the game audio management system and fixed some underlying pointer issues
Added additional BGM to the Extras audio compendium
Added additional BGM to the character creator. The Unity playlist is finally making a comeback
◉ Added choice portrait for [Broken] ◉ Shrunk and symmetrized limiter seal texture for the player mesh ◉ Eye Updates
Added Heterochromia toggle for eye color (This may later be tied into another Boon/Bane trait choice)
Added new eye style option. I should add cat eyes and heart eyes at some point shouldn't I?
◉ Credits page update
One final plug. If you’re not already on the Discord server I would recommend checking it out and joining in on the chit chat. I post updates in the #arkavite channel frequently as developments are developed, so if you ever want see all this unfold in real time or shout at me directly, that's the place to be!
This weekend I will be putting together a basic sandbox map, modelling up some dicks and porting over the character description parser. I would also like to add the basic “player archetype" selection screen to the character creator, but that will depend on available time. In the new week I'll be jumping between working on the male base, implementing choice functions, and beginning a port of our old inventory system.
And that is all for now. Thank you all for following along. Be sure to let me know your thoughts, and I hope you all have a wonderful day.
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Goals
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I'll create public 'development roadmap' pages on the Arkavite site, and ensure these are kept up-to-date with every release.
$500.0
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Operating costs covered! I can pay to keep the lights on and not starve~
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Things are getting serious! I'll be able to dedicate a greater amount of time to development moving forward. This means more progress, and more consistent updates~
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I'll create more and more! I will be able to work on this project full-time. This would secure the future of Project Arkavite, and allow me to increase the scale of development moving forward.
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