AzureTales on SubscribeStar.adult

Hello everyone, it has been a while…

We have some good news and some “not so good news” here, and it is time for some explanations to be made about this project going forward, what has been done, and what is happening now.

I’m @hellone on discord writing this currently.

So previously, like already a month ago, we delivered a patch 1.3a as a small fix for a lot of things that have been pointed out by people playing the game. And promptly after that I made a statement that “you may expect monthly content updates”, well you have already seen how that went. But I want that to be true, and actually believed that to be true at the time of saying. So “why isn’t it true then?” you might ask, that is a complex question, so let me elaborate on it first by giving you some context and idea about the things that are currently happening behind the scenes.

So here is our current progress for the map expansion that has been promised.

It is supposed to introduce our baby steps into actual exploration outside the camp area, basic combat, resource gathering “crafting materials?”. But I’ll be honest with you this time, do not expect it to be functional on the next content release. By the way, about the “combat” here is the concept art for the kobold faction that we plan to add to the game.

Also we are on the lookout for the talented 3d character artist, but more about at the end of the post.

Okay about the things that have been done already.

So I’ve always had a problem with the way our lizards looked, and I wanted to make them slightly more detailed, and less cartoony. Whether or not I’ve succeeded is for you all to decide, but I'm quite happy at how this turned out. I wanted to preserve as much as it is reasonable to preserve from their old look but make it better. Now Nora has her own set of body paint that specifies her status as a shaman. And as a result of me learning the framework, you may expect further alterations for the existing and new characters so you will have an easier time distinguishing them from one another. Also another thing that you might have not noticed, “and it is good if you didn’t” but the seams on Krystal’s shoulders are now fixed, as well as the lizard male’s dick not being a part of the body “lol”.

Now here is the part where I will explain what is taking so long. Aside from all this texture work “that I'm in no way competent in and had to learn from scratch”. There are some fundamental flaws on the technical side of the character models. Some of you might have noticed a slight difference in Krystal’s model in the “horse scene” compared to the other scenes. The reason for it, well, you are right, it is a different model, that more than that has, a different skeleton, different mesh, and plenty other dumb quirks that were implemented by my retarded self. The reason for this is, well game development is hard, like really fucking hard. The problem is not with only this one Krystal’s skeleton being different, in reality there is a complete clusterfuck of a mess that happens now with her models, where she basically almost has a unique one for each sequence. Reason for it is, I was learning by doing, and now I want to actually make it a proper way to excuse myself from a gigantic pain in the ass going forward. The solution is, to make one root model that will house all of her existing animations, which as well would allow me to animate her inside the engine. Current state of affairs was that I was animating in blender, and then I had constant anxiety about how well and “IF” my work will be exported properly to the engine. When you are not animating directly in the engine you are working half blind folded, you lack the context of the scene, proper scale of objects, how your animation is going to look after you import it, actually inside the game. But in order to animate you have to have a rig, set of controls that you can keyframe on the timeline, and if you are a good animator “I’m not” you would also develop your own tricks about achieving certain animation results. Well i’ve never animated in unreal, never built any “Control rigs”, everything you see inside the game today which contains animation, was authored by hand and exported from blender, well not all of it ”locomotion mostly is a default epic’s animations”. In addition to all of the above i had to go and manually retarget and re export most if not all of Krystal’s animations, so they would align with the new skeleton. Which was a gigantic pain in the ass, but if I haven't forgotten anything I think I'm done with it.

So you might say, me a month ago, claiming “ monthly updates!” was a complete insanity, and although i agree, sadly it was, but not to its full degree. You see, in 5.4 Epic released a somewhat functional version of their “modular Control rig” and with all those unresolved problems with the models piling up I decided to finally make a switch. Modular control rig allows “as Epic put it”, intuitive rigging process for non riggers, so i figured, “well i know something about rigging” so i gave it a go, and it was not as smooth sailing as you might’ve guessed by now. Unfortunately I couldn't make good use of it, so I did it the hard way using their old framework. On the bright side, remember how the tails and hair went crazy sometimes during animation playback, well now I will be able to make it no longer be the case. Also because the piece of import/export issues are out of the puzzle now, it will be much faster for me to get to the end result of any animation going forward.

I hope that sheds some light on the current state of development of this project. It is most definitely not the best, but not the worst that it has ever been.

Referring to that statement about a 3d character artist. We are currently looking for the person to work with us, either to commission, or even hire” but that’s less likely”. If you know a person, or you are such an artist, and you have some portfolio pieces that you can show. Leave us a message, anywhere, in dm’s on discord, f95, here, or at [email protected] don’t be shy.

So that basically concludes this post. Thank you again for an incredibly warm reception of the project on release, I'm still in disbelief of the amount of people who have tried our game, and the amount of positive feedback that we got. THANK YOU! <3

To all of you subscribergigachads. Well I can learn and solve Ue rig problems, look for and potentially pay a 3d modeler, and do all this because of you. You are basically paying my bills and buying my groceries, putting the food on my table. Thank you, I hope I will be able to pay you back with a good game.

About the actual date of the new content patch, I will say, you will be notified as soon as possible, I will post some treats in the WIP channel as soon as there will be something of value to show.

Stay safe :*

New build is up! Mostly fixes and tweaks/improvements. You can check the detailed update notes down below. No new scenes or gameplay content added in this new version. So, if you are looking for new scenes, save the bandwidth and wait for the next build, which SHOULD be coming early next month.

Download links:
Mega | Mixdrop | Gofile

0.0.1.3alpha Changelog.

1: The default Menu key is now set to ESC and is no longer remappable in the controls.

2: Motion blur setting is added.

3: Added the camera sensitivity setting. (It works for every camera that you are able to control, that is important.)

4: Added framerate cap slider.(You may now experience the game at 1 fps if you really want to, and are not already :D)

5: Added Post processing quality settings. (DepthOfField camera settings, setting it to low disables DOF.)

6: Krys now jumps higher.

7: Sprint no longer costs stamina and forces a sight FOV change when you press it. (There is a hidden stamina bar with its own stat, happy sprinting.)

8: Cinematic sequence UI has been completely overhauled.

9: The scenes now will progress instantly by a click of a button on the screen, you may go back in order as well. Clicking the camera icon with a circular arrow will progress scenes and switch cameras automatically.

10: Added POV cameras, you can access them in the top left corner by clicking on the camera icon. You can rotate the view of the cameras by holding LMB, there are also slight zoom adjustments that you can make with a scroll wheel. (Only the horsey doesn’t have its own camera but it’s not a big deal because it didn’t show anything anyway :D)

11: You can now instantly quit the cinematic by clicking X at the right bottom corner of your screen. (And skip all the hard work done by the animator.)

12: You can now sleep on the couch inside Akaro’s house, if it is too dark outside, to skip towards the morning. (The night also have been made a little bit brighter.)

13: You can now zoom the player camera in and out.

14: Added a small cute little dot at the center of the screen. (Now it should be easier to interact with things)

15: NPCs will no longer break their necks trying to look at Krys. (They will try though.)

16: Added a new save game button. (It works like the old one, but better.)

17: You can now use and adjust settings in the pause menu right in the middle of the cinematic.

18: Added settings for: Foliage, reflections, shadows. Also added a few extra screen resolution settings.

19: Improved Akaro, Kai & Lyn house interior.

20: Small tweaks to tavern interior.

21: Minor tweaks to landscape.

22: Improved canyon boundaries/collision.

23: Minor mesh/textures optimization.

24: Ayla, Akaro, Kai and Nora dialogue adjustments.

25: Overall small fixes.

Thank you so much for your overwhelmingly warm reception of our initial release. For all the support and feedback. For now though we will continue working on the "actual" content update, and hope that you will like it when it drops. Thanks to all subscribers, your monetary support is essential for the continuation of this project!
Until then peace out!

Subscription Tiers

Features

Posts

Creator Stats

Other Creators

Your Privacy Choices