Hey hey~ Apologies for the delay. 

There were some menu routing issues present in the last build which had to be fixed. I’ve taken this opportunity to eliminate more bugs which were present and make some additional tweaks.

Let’s take a stroll through all that is new.

Here is the refreshed inventory. There have been a few additional tweaks since the recent update.

Between 0.14.0-A and 0.14.1-A I’ve enlarged and optimized character preview system. The inventory character preview is now larger and functions similar to the character creation preview in that it can be rotated with your mouse.

We also have the new radial stat bars and a fuel gauge. Top to bottom we have satiety (stomach capacity / hunger), hydration (how thirsty you are), LP (lust points – how lusty you are), AP (action points – a store of excess energy for performing actions and a measure of wakefulness) and energy (energy / stamina for performing actions actively – drains AP when depleted).

In the case of AP and Energy, you'll notice I’ve decided to merge them into one with an outer AP ring and an inner energy ring. Having one inside the over helps express their relation to one another and makes the stat appear less complicated than it would otherwise seem.

I’ve been making some changes to how these survival stats should function in anticipation of stamina being implemented. Hydration and Energy are now given to the player instantly upon consuming an item, and any excess energy is converted to AP instantly. Previously items would have to be slowly digested over time before these stats became usable. This does in fact mean the bars were displaying "potential energy" and "potential hydration" rather than the true current values.

Considering we have HP and MP items which provide the player with instant feedback I felt this disparity would be confusing in play. Furthermore that level of realism is hard to convey and probably not all that fun. Now, the only durational consumption stat you have to worry about is satiety and that is the one which has more of a clear gameplay function. The plans haven’t changed there. The aim is that once you’ve reached your limit you’ll be restricted from consuming items. While you can stop and chow down mid fight, I think restricting the player from eating 10 plates of food 600 potions and 100 cheese will make you think carefully before they eating and prepare before getting into a fight. I may add some add some overconsumption mechanics at a later point in time (there are games like Noita which handle it in a pretty funny way which one could lift inspiration from).

I wanted to replace the bars with these radials because I feel it would help compactify the UI both in the inventory and out. Some of these bars do need to be seen outside of the inventory when in use. For instance, energy and AP will be utilized when sprinting and performing other actions which consume stamina. LP may be utilized when taking lusty attacks or under certain passive effects. These radial bars will look cleaner than a column of regular bars shunted to the side of the screen.

Then the case of Satiety, the fuel gauge representation is far more descriptive than what we had prior, and a good analogue for understanding "this stat represents the fuel for your character", so you should try to keep it topped up above the red line, lest you wish to starve.

To the right of the player we have the new slotted item display. It’s interesting and at least more functional than what we had before. Hovering over a slot will show what’s slotted inside it. It is challenging to represent all these slots. I have an alternate visualization I am toying with which I may try once we have slot icons for item descriptions. I’ll get back to you on this.

Apparel and weapons have been assigned basic stats which are visible in the inventory. This is represented by a number on the item frame. Equipment stats are super basic right now. Weapons do flat damage, and apparel mitigates damage based on the total equipped across your whole body. We can’t have damage stats without damage numbers! When hitting an enemy, you will see the amount of damage you are outputting above them. Funnily enough the weakest weapons now do more damage than the strongest enemies HP. Enemies will need both their attack and defences buffed, and to improve combat just a little bit more, I will be adding HP bars to enemies in the next update. Let me know whether you love or hate enemy HP bars and / or damage numbers. I can always make these optional.

To the right of the player, above the slots I’ve set up a little display for key inventory stats. These will represent, your mobility, carry weight and base protection (please note, only the base protection stat is functional at this time). These stats are influenced based on what you’re wearing and how much you’re carrying so it makes sense to have them here. The radials as well as these stats will soon receive tool tips which should help clarify what each one means and provide you with more granularity where relevant.

I think that just about covers everything new about the inventory. As of 0.14.2-A I’ve redesigned the side buttons to resemble those seen in the character creator and shifted around the interface to balance the left and right sides. The lack of symmetry irked me.

Left of the LP bar there is a new button. There have been a number of LP related changes going on in the background; Consuming lewd foods now grants LP, TF items have been added to dungeon chest, and lewd scenes triggered by consuming lewd foods will now reduce LP to 0 where it makes sense. The plan is to have this new button let you manage LP by triggering fap scenes in a similar vein to existing events. It is currently developing, and I’ll let you know when the first set of scenes are added~

- I’ve added several more hairstyles. This marks the last of the regular main hairstyles I wanted to add. We will have some additional variants coming later, based on a couple of the old hairstyle variants which were popular. I am aiming to get some squidstyles into the next update if god wills it.

- Moellas have received a nerf as they were growing boobs too quickly.

- Player skin shading in low light conditions (most prominent in the dungeon) has been updated. I rewrote parts of the Arkavite cel shader to improve consistency in skin shading and support more shadow levels.

- If you’ve played 0.14.0-A and had a rocky time you’ll be pleased to know all the weapon and inventory bugs have now been fixed.

- Adventurer apparel has been hidden around the sky island in chests, and knights armor now spawns in high level dungeon chests. Eventually I would like knights armor to be attainable on weapon stands and in dungeon shops, but this is just a quick change to make exploration slightly more enjoyable in the meantime.

- Last but not least – what has delayed this little log so much – I have refactored the menu routing system. Ever since I made it so [ESC] could back out from menus, we’ve been having problems, and as more sub-menus have been introduced, the problems have been ever mounting. I’ve gone through and rewritten how menus route and given top level menus and sub menus used throughout the system (e.g. Load Menu, System Menu) a distinct hierarchy. Now robust, and if any other issues arise they should be easy to fix.

The next build will arrive next week. Building on combat with HP bars, stamina, improved descriptions for equips (i.e. slot icons and stat comparisons) and the addition of tooltips for stats. The face texturing options which I spoke of last log should hopefully make it into that update as well. I am cleaning up some parts of the character creator and player texture system to make adding these customization easier. Finally, the other major priority is bring in some of the pending outfit sets.
There are a few other things I’m preparing on the side in the name of survival. Now skin shading has been updated the day night cycle will probably make a return and I don’t think it’ll be too long before we see some new rooms added to the sky island.
But that’s all for now! More to come. Until next time~

Hey everyone. I'm making this post to let you all know the new build is scheduled to arrive over the weekend.

The build coming will feature the updated character body. This is a complete upgrade to the player model and how player customization is managed on the backend. This has all been done to let us to feature a higher degree of customization in a far more manageable way.

Let's take a look at what's new.

As mentioned earlier, we do have a new base body model. At first glance it's hard to notice the differences, but I can assure you there are a lot of differences. The new base is better proportioned, has better topology and improve rigging. Some of these improvements will translate to slightly better character animation.

You may also notice the body has a more "neutral" shape than the previous iterations. I’m employing a lot tricks to give us a body which can work for both male and female characters, and by starting from a more neutral basis, it simplifies morphing the body, outfits, and should simplify outfit creation in the long term.

As a part of this update I’ll be introducing the all new outfit layering system. A system which uses far too many slots to create a very modular character body.

The new body is designed to be broken up into multiple slots. Each item you equip can now define a set of slots it masks, so if you put on a shirt, it can mask the body underneath. If you put on a chestplate over that, the chestplate can then mask out the shirt and everything underneath it. We had a basic prototype of this system running in previous versions, but the updated system is now formalized.

We do this masking dance for a number of reasons. It's more performant to mask off geometry the player isn't going to see, and more importantly, it lowers the chances of lower layers clipping into higher layers. Clipping is unsightly, and something which becomes more common with bodies that morph. So by using this system, outfit sets with wildly varying geometry can now fit underneath or on top of other outfit sets with no additional headache needed on the developer side. This makes creating outfit morphs and potential future outfits a lot easier. If it can be hidden by what’s on top of it, and hide the things beneath it, you don't have to worry about it.

This is one of those systems you should rarely notice in play, (assuming it's doing its job correctly), but an obvious example of it at work would be where we hide a players casual dress underneath their armor.
 
The new layering system does include a number of additional optimizations. It can handle the creation and destruction of meshes dynamically where we were previously defining all the slots before runtime. This should allow us to handle more complex equipment scenarios and make extending the system with additional slots a trivial procedure.

The equip system now features morph limits and overrides. Allow me to explain what exactly that means and what it lets us do. Morph limits allow us to define how much a piece of armor or clothing can deform. For example, if you were to wear a tight chestwrap item it would limit breast morphs to 20% of the potential maximum. The limits are set globally so if your character had the max possible breast size, and you were to wear a shirt or another piece of clothing above the chestwrap, all clothing above it would then be limited to 20% and therefore appear smaller. Limits in conjunction with overrides will enable the creation of items which can influence the visual state of other items. Padded bras or rings that shrink particular body parts in order to make them more manageable. It does have quite a lot of utility.

We have new and improved hair options. Options for guys and gals. Almost all the new styles are physics enabled, which is a breath of fresh air considering the mostly static hairstyles we've had up until now (excluding ponytail attachments). New ears, ear physics and tail physics are also making an entry. This would have been very difficult to manage with the old player setup. Now we can easily apply physics to player clothing and body parts. 

We are retiring the old hair attachment system. It did have a number of issues on the backend making it difficult to scale. For now it's more manageable to stick with preset hairstyles. We may explore attachments again at a later date...

In addition to the new hair styles, we cannot forget the new outfit sets. Several new outfit sets are being introduced, along with a rework to the low tier prosthesis. 

I haven't had time to implement all the new hairstyles and outfit sets, so I will be introducing more next week and the week after, along with any I mentioned would be getting a port over to the new body.

I have teased some alternate outfit colors over on the discord. Outfit recolouring will be added to the character creator after all the currently planned outfit sets have been added to the game.

New eye animations and improved blink animations. I'm not sure if anyone noticed but the character didn't blink in sandbox mode. Now they not only blink but also look around from time to time. I feel this really brings our characters to life and I will be applying facial animation to other gameplay aspects in the coming weeks. (e.g. injured, on death, hurt)

I've improved the first person camera experience. The camera is now positioned correctly at eye level. Player head and hair (and anything else that may obstruct your view) are now hidden in first person mode.

I don't think the first person cam is ideal for combat granted we don’t have dedicated first person animations. That being said, I can totally see the appeal of exploration being done in first person. To round this system off, I'll soon introduce a change which knocks you out of first person mode when in combat.

This is something I’ve wanted to add for a very long time. You may now cycle between poses in the character creator. This allows you to see what your character looks like in various positions.

This also exists so that when I inevitably add a camera item with a selfie mode, you'll be able to photograph your character in-game in various poses.

The character creator idles have been updated to match the in-game character idles. This is in part a move to return to actor parity. As of the last release, the player you've seen in the character creator is not the same character as the one you've been playing as in game. The character creator player is the old version from before the great locomotion upgrade, but as of 0.14.0-A, the old character is no more... There is an additional benefit. By using the same in-game idles, you can now see the shift in stance when adjusting hip width for a masculine or feminine character.

In the following week I'll introduce equipment stats, along with an update to the inventory interface. There are some flaws in the current layout, and it doesn't accommodate a stat display very well. There have also been requests for a larger character preview in the inventory, and with the entrance of all these new outfits, I agree. You should be able to get a good look at your character in inventory without having to flip in and out.
All that and more, next week~

That's all for now. Keep an eye out for the update this weekend. Until then~

Good evening, good morning and good afternoon!
There is plenty to discuss... Shall we begin?

- Download Arkavite [0.13.3-A]

By popular demand, I’ve added a persistent crosshair to the game. I’ve also given it a toggle under gameplay settings, so if crosshairs aren't your style rest assured you can disable it.

More importantly, I’ve fixed the various issues plaguing the new interaction system. There were found to be quite a number of bugs. Precision interaction was found to be outright broken, the interaction frustum was killing players in the dungeon boulder rooms, the system was targeting the “closest object” instead of the "closest interactable object”, and shelves were found to be blocking access to the items on them… I’ve rethought the core of the system, introduced several improvements and it should work a lot better now, or rather, as intended if I may be so bold.

If you happen to be interested in the technicals, we now fire a trace from the camera (centre-screen) to the surface, and get the closest thing to that impact point which is interactable (i.e. can be picked up, opened, or locked onto), and in range and line of sight of the player character. This method combines proximity and precision interaction all into one, and with the new crosshair it should be very intuitive. The design is very human. Easy to use.

I have added an extra setting which will allow you to switch the system between “closest interactable to crosshair” and “closest interactable to player character”. If you’re a loot goblin interested whatever’s closest and not nailed down, then the latter may appeal to you. Let me know what works best for you~

We now have standing in place sword attack animations for instances where you’re performing a melee attack, but not moving. The previous forward moving melee attack still exists, however it will now only play while attacking and moving forward. My hope is this will allow players to be more controlled with their movements.

In addition to the new attack sequence, I’ve added a basic melee aim assist system. This is a little experimental, and can be toggled off in settings. In principle it should help your attacks connect with your enemies. It is very basic right now. I have some planned improvements which may make it into 0.14-A or 0.15-A. More on that then~

Finally for combat updates, I’ve improved the in-air attack. While it looks cool, we don’t have tall or flying enemies right now, or skills which would let you knock enemies into the air, so it doesn’t offer a lot of utility outside fall-damage-cancelling and platforming.

TLoH standalone should be updated tomorrow or the day after, the next public Arkavite build is arriving on Friday, and the big body/customization update is coming soon. I’m looking forward to the improvements it will bring, and I’d like it to be playable in a couple weeks.

After this update goes out I’ll immediately begin decommissioning the old body and updating the appearance framework. Most of the body base texturing and morphing has now been handled. The body morphs are being pushed further than before.

We’re in for a tight schedule, but I’d like to also begin bringing in new lewd mechanics and text scenes as that is a point of interest I’ve been neglecting. This new body will certainly offer plenty of opportunities.

But that’s all for now. If you want to keep posted on things as they’re developing, be sure to join us over on the discord! Also, be sure to let me know what you think of all these new changes~

Till next time~

Hi everybody. This new build introduces the golem. A small enemy which packs a mighty, albeit clumsy punch.

They can be found waddling around grassy areas of the map. It has a simple attack. First it spins up, and then it throws its hands at you.

As has been done in other games, this could work well as an ambush type which pretends to be a regular rock until approached. That is one method, but it’s also cute to see them stomping about so maybe I’ll do a little of both.

Some changes to the character creator which are of note -- Boon, Bane, Item & Race scrolling are no longer linked. The system will now scroll back to where you were in these menus when you switch between them. These scrollable menus differed from the others, in that they are actually a single menu running off the CYOA system, hence a little extra code was necessary.

Now for something a little more interesting! Players may now export and share their trait loadouts with others. I’ve added this “Build String” system which is accessible from the pause menu. All you have to do is copy the output build string and share. Then someone can take this string, input it into the “Input Build String” field, and hit “Load Input Build String”. 

I’d love to see the challenge builds people create and share once the game is a little more fleshed out.

I've added Save Slots to play mode. You may now set build names and descriptions. You can also use the same build string function as the character creator, to export a string of choices which can be shared with others. Note the build string currently only includes selected choices.

I’ve made a fix/addition to the save/load process. This is just something I overlooked last update. You may now load a save from the death screen. The menus should all display properly now, and you shouldn’t get stuck in slow motion or respawn with no health.

    • Fixed: Cloudflare issues which would sometimes block updater requests
    • Fixed: Cloudflare issues preventing access to the TLoH network
    • Fixed: Minor typo in moella and peka
    • Fixed: Menu ESC bug where Pressing [Esc] key while transformation event was on screen would take you out of the inventory, but the transformation text will stay in the foreground.
    • Fixed: Broken tags on the stats page.
    • Fixed: Issues with the Game Over > Load Game screen.

The next update is due next weekend. We’re going to check off the UX focused combat, interaction and dungeon changes which didn’t make it in these last few weeks. Something i'd also like to try implementing is a soft lock-on system. Essentially, the player would snap to face the closest enemy they could lock onto when performing melee but not locked on anything. It’s a light change which should make landing hits just a little more intuitive (like the proximity pickup system). Another desperate change we could do with are in place sword attack animations. This would at the very least apply to the first swing in the chain.

Very soon I'd like to introduce equipment stats. This applies to both weapons and armor. As discussed in previous logs, the new weapons were introduced in anticipation of this, but before we get into the thick of it, I'd like to introduce some new outfit sets as well. There is just one minor obstacle. Before we can move forward with the new outfits, there are some outstanding changes to the player body which have to be made.

Since the last big beautiful body update I've received a tonne of feedback for areas where you'd like to see more customization and an improvement in quality. Things like body textures, an improved thigh gap for larger hips, a resolution to the same face syndrome our poor characters currently suffer from.

In general, my goal with this new body is to:

I'd like this to be the last major rework to the character base model, and modularity plays a key role. Should I ever need to remodel a particular sector of the body, it can be dealt with independently.

I have been working on this these past couple weeks. The player base is already modelled and ready to be dressed. I addition to the new base I have staged new hair options (long, short, masculine and feminine), some ikaware tentacle styles (finally), several new outfit sets, and I am considering ear options for the Magu and Ika races. 

As the prospective outfits offer a higher degree of consistency and quality, some of the old won’t be carried over. I can at very least confirm the Sky Punk set will be updated to the new body. Any existing underwear and prosthesis will be getting a rework.

I’m aiming to introduce the new body and these customizations throughout version 0.14-A (eta. a few weeks from now) and 0.15-A. I’ll probably be implementing equipment stats at the same time.

With all that being said thank you all so much for joining me. I hope you’re excited as I am for what’s to come. Be sure to let me know your thoughts down below! I’ll see you next week~

Hey everyone~ As promised, a new build is here!

I've added the long awaited Save / Load system. This will allow you to save and load your created characters. In order to make this work, the method I’d typically use for storing and processing player data had to be reworked across the board (hence the delays). The system is new so let me know if you happen to run into any issues~

For my librarians out there, save and load are being added to TLoH for the next update. 

As the CYOA portion of the Character Creator happens to use the same save string backend, I'm considering adding an import/export option so players can design their favourite loadouts (race, blessings, curses, items) and share it with others. It's a small addition which may foster fresh discussions. Do you think it’d be a neat feature? Let me know your thoughts!

Up until this point, it's been the case that players drop their weapons on ragdoll. This little mechanic was primarily intended to arise in combat when facing certain kinds of attacks. For instance, the player could ragdoll if hit by a boulder, or high energy electric blast. Something you’d expect would cause you to drop what you're holding.

I understand many have taken issue with dropping their weapons on fall, so in order to balance out this little mechanic I’ve checked off yet another long overdue objective. Weapons will now be sheathed/holstered and attached directly to your person while out of combat. You can only drop something while it's being held in your hands.

In addition to this, I’ve introduced the proximity pickup system. In simple terms, the game tracks items in a cone from the player position in the forward vector of the camera, and the closest item in that cone in line of sight of the player (not behind a wall) is made intractable. It's a pretty straightforward change and should make picking up items a heck of a lot easier. 

Factoring in the auto-equip system (where a weapon will automatically equip to your hand on pickup if no weapon is equipped), and the aforementioned sheathing/holstering of weapons, not only will these changes lower the rate of accidental drops, but if and when you do drop your gear, you can pick it right back up.

As a side note, I’ve also increased the lock-on range for enemies (now at 20 meters) and set them up to use the same proximity interaction system. Just one last note on the proximity interaction system; I am aware it’s not perfect yet. I’ve found It doesn’t work so well with shelves and cluttered desks (possibly a result of uninteractable clutter blocking intractable items), but I will be exploring solutions in the new week.

Spears glorious spears! I've added a custom animation set for spear attacks. As the spear is a two handed weapon, the spear specific animations will only play when you have no gun in your offhand. Spear-like weapons (e.g. polearms, brooms, and staffs) will use the same animation set as spears. I am planning on adding heavy weapon animations for the greatswords and sledgehammer. I would also like to add throwing animations so I can implement weapon throwing, and possibly later, potion throwing.

I've added a simple in-air sword slash for when the player jumps and attacks. Gravity still applies to the player when they're attacking in air, but I may look into changing that so we can have chained in-air attacks. It’s not all that realistic, but it would be pretty thematic. It may also become another platforming adjacent mechanic with wider reaching uses. Something for me to think about.

Also in the news, torches are now treated like torches. They have their own “held in hand” animations for when the player is walking and aiming. The flame effect has been updated to look less like a choo choo train and more like a fire burning in a torch. Torches still use the same attack animations as short swords, however, they will now deal damage to enemies.

All the recently added weapons have now been given descriptions. This should provide them with a little more flavour. 

I must also note a change which is more a fix than an addition. At some point there was a alteration to the way melee hit tests are performed and I realized today that I forgot to set a size for the weapon hit boxes. This means that for a while now, weapons have had pencil thin attack boxes making it very difficult to hit enemies (especially small ones). This issue has now been corrected.

Speaking of enemies, slimes will now spawn randomly throughout dungeons. Gone are the days of walking the halls in solitude. Squishy monsters now lurk in these dark halls...
Soon we should have more enemies to join them. In the new week, I would like to get golems in and make some further improvements to player melee.

The 27th is being targeted for the next update, though you’ll probably hear from me sooner if any bugs crop up. We have golems on the cards, as well as enemy drops and more changes to combat. I will also try to address the reported dungeon soft lock issues. 

I’ve yapped a bunch, but before I close here, I'd like to know what you personally would like to see. Is there a particular vein of content you'd want to see be brought to the forefront or see be developed more? More items, or items which could do more? More enemies? New systems you're hoping to see sooner rather than later? More lewds? 

I'd love to get a read on what you want to see and hear your thoughts on all these new changes. While there is always a lot of work to be done, I'm not against increasing priority on areas of interest~

Be sure to let me know your thoughts and feedback in the comments! Till next time~

Hi everyone.

I have a quick evening patch for you all. There have been some additions, some changes, and some fixes. Let’s get right into it.

 • Download [0.12.1-A] (WIN)

This build introduces language translation support. This means that the game can begin translation to other languages. Translation support doesn’t cover all of the text in the game yet, but it already covers the overwhelming majority of it.

This feature was going to be developed post-combat update(s), however it has been pushed back so many times, I felt it wise to slide in ahead of schedule. It has waited long enough.

If you know a second language or are interested in translating the game to your mother tongue, let me know over on the discord. We have a little channel where translators are hanging out, and we’d love to have you!

Also in the news, I’ve added a couple of new slimes. Nothing major. Just a new splitting type, and a simple little tough type. These are very rough test enemies I cobbled together and will certainly require further tuning and some unique design touches if they are to become serious monsters.

I am now working towards the long awaited golem enemy. I’m not sure whether it will be quite as cute as the slimes but I’ll try my best~ After I’ve made this little golem, I would like to make a couple more, at differing tiers of difficulty (i.e. a mid tier golem and a mid-high tier golem). Honestly, I think tuning combat on the player side should be priority before adding more mobs, as the current combat system doesn’t feel as great as I’d like it to, and clunky player vs inherently clunky enemy probably won’t make for good gameplay.

Finally for new additions I’ve made what I hope will be considered a quality of life improvement to weapon equipping. Now, weapons will equip directly on pickup if no other weapon is currently equipped to the weapons given slot. This means that if you drop your weapon, you can pick it up and get back into the fight immediately without having to fiddle around with items in your inventory.

Aside from new MOBs, there are a few combat adjacent objectives I want to check off in the coming weeks.

Firstly, picking up loot and other drops right now feels a little weird. To resolve this, I plan on having 2 ways to pick things up. There will be precision pickup, where you hold right click to aim, and then pick up. The second is proximity pickup, where you have the option of picking up (or interacting with) the closest thing your character is facing towards. This would make picking things up far quicker than the current raycast method, and offer more accessibility to controller users (once support is added there).

Next is the issue of dropping ones weapons. I’ve set things up so you drop weapons on ragdoll. The reason this exists is so I can have enemies blast you with magic beams and throw boulders at you causing you to ragdoll and drop what you’re holding. We may not have scabbards yet, but weapons will finally be getting attached to the player back directly so they won’t fall when sheathed even if you ragdoll. This will make dropping things a lot less frequent. Once we have an enemy that can ragdoll the player, I would like to experiment with having your items drop based on player stats and strength.

While we’re on the topic of stats, weapon stats are to be added fairy soon, and will make the different grades of weapon a lot more impactful.

Last but definitely not least, the final major priority for combat (for now) is the overhaul to combat animations and move sets. I want to completely round out melee sword play and may also touch on gun aiming. As mentioned in previous updates, a point of focus will also be improvements to torch held animations.

These are just the major priorities. I’ll be checking off other objectives in the background in as we move forward, (such as save slots, enemy drops, enemy spawns in dungeons, trait development, crafting system prep, e.t.c). Projecting a little father, after I’ve improved sword play, we will be getting some spells.

That’s all from me for now. I hope to be back here soon. Thank you all for following along. Please be sure to let me know your thoughts, or if you have any comments and questions.

Till next time~