(This is a PSA for Palworld Modding Communities which will be posted in a few other places. If you're here from one of said places, Hi! Careful checking out my posts, they may contain NSFW content! =^.-=)

Well this has been a mess...

Over the last 2 days we've had some really confusing changes for Palworld modding, the large Sakurajima update was super exciting but it also came with a surprise! With the update, PocketPair changed the packaging format to use a superior format with something called "IO Store", this newer format allows for fast loading and better streaming for many platforms and is a huge benefit in other categories. The issue? When the game is set to use a different packaging type, other packages become incompatible. This means mods in the older .pak format were no longer compatible with the set of IO Store .pak types, and vice-versa, meaning only one package type can be used at once. This 'broke' all previous mods Palworld had released for it, thankfully updating mods is really easy (it's a tick-box in UE5, then you just re-package and distribute the new pak format) but the community got impatient and vial toward the devs, so they reverted the change in format, but only on Steam.... (aka, Steam on old format, XBox/Gamepass on the new format)

Now, this has been a mess, and it's been really confusing with inconsistent messaging. So I want to make a post here with recommendations for modders on how to properly adapt then go over the situation and try my best to explain things in more detail (like why a switch to io store was even done in the first place, explain how reverting is going to cause us more issues as time goes on, and then explain how you can help improve things as either a modder or user).

--- --- ---

Users/Player - Here's some recommendations on how to proceed from this point forward

Rec. 1 : HAVE SOME PATIENCE. Like, holy damn, just wait for mods to be updated before storming PocketPair with pitchforks, alright? (Note, this isn't directed toward my usual NSFW audience, you guys have all been really awesome and patient. This is more targeted toward the casual crowd that lost their minds within minutes of the update)

Rec. 1.1 : Building off that last point, shifts in the modding space for games that are updated over time is extremely common and it's perfectly normal! PocketPair should be making changes that are the best for them and the game and we shouldn't impede their efforts. Modders will get around to updating everything and replacements for older mods will naturally take the place of those that don't. This is all expected, it'll take some time but moving forward is a positive change. (I understand the frustration when stuff stops working, but chill, things'll get fixed ^-^)

Rec. 2 : Take caution when updating from now on. Disable automatic updates for your platform and wait for experienced users to test the waters and see what does/doesn't work if your mod set-up is important to you. If you are an experienced user or modder, make sure to back-up previous versions just in-case something breaks and you need to revert for either play or testing. Even games out of early access can get a random update years down the line that breaks things (Looking at you Capcom, why did you do this to RE? What did we do to deserve such punishment? WAS IT THE BOOBIE MODS??? Q.Q)

Rec. 3 : State your platform when reporting issues and, if a mod doesn't support your platform, kindly ask the modder to release a compatible version. Since we now have to support 2 different formats this means there could be differences between the 2 we're not aware of. It's always best practice to note your platform when reporting issues, but this makes it even more important. Additionally, typically when modders don't release a compatible version for multi-platform it's normally caused by a lack of knowledge or time. So be understanding and link to resources like this one so they can get a track on what's going on and what to do to make a compatible version!

--- --- ---

Modders - Here's some recommendations on how to proceed from this point forward

To ensure the best experience for everyone, we as modders should try to support all of the latest versions of Palworld that we can. Previously that was easy since both PC versions were on the same format, even though they were technically different builds the functions and code between them were still compatible so even script mods had no issue. However, (at least at the time of writing) now we have 2 versions that require different steps to support, Steam's PC release, and then the XBox build that includes the PC Gamepass and MS Store releases. This means we need to supply 2 versions of our mods packaged for each platform from this point forward unless PocketPair decides to revert their revert and moves both platforms to IO Store (or they harm everyone by moving the xbox build back to the old format, I'll explain later why this would be a bad thing). This doesn't apply to Lua or C++ mods since they are loaded by UE4SS in an unpackaged state, but for BP mods and replacers, we'll need 2 versions.

So, here's my recommendations for Palworld modders moving forward.
(Nearly all of these apply even if PocketPair moves to a single format, so consider these 'best practices' of a sort)

Rec. 1 : Backup versions before updating. This applies to both the game version and mod versions! Preferably you'd keep an archive of your mod releases so you can always revert or reference back if something goes wrong. In this specific case it was easy for us to just release the 'previous version' as the Steam compatible version if you had released an IO Store version. Should also be fairly well known that game updates can break mods, if you're not an experienced modder it may be best to wait for others to test the waters and for tools to be updated if required before updating.

Rec. 2 : Modders should move their entire workflow to involve the UE5 editor, preferably using the Palworld Modding Kit ( https://github.com/localcc/PalworldModdingKit ). You can find a guide to setting up the modding kit on the modding wiki ( https://pwmodding.wiki/docs/category/palworld-modding-kit ). It looks daunting at first, but don't worry, once things are set up it's rather simple. The reason for this is reliability and consistency. I've been telling modders in our community to set up and use UE5 for their mods since it allows a lot more advanced workflows and ensures their set-ups survive changes like this. (Also worth noting, UE5 is required for animation importing, which is a bit of a focus for our community...) If you're looking for another guide on this matter, you can check out my SCake animation importing guide (no NSFW images in the guide itself, don't worry - https://www.michaelpstanich.com/article/SCake_HowToMakeAnimsGuide ) For everyone that followed this advice the IO Store change was just a tickbox in the editor and a repackage, it took less than 10 minutes to push a new version out and was fairly painless, everyone should be shifting to workflows like this one to prevent breakage in the future.

Rec. 3 : Package a version for each format/platform which means 1 for Steam with the old format and 1 in the new IO Store format for XBox/Gamepass. If you set up UE5 and start using ChunkIDs to separate your mod packages properly then this should be relatively easily to do (just a pain on the release and docs front). As mentioned in the previous Rec. 2, UE5 has these tools built in and IO Store is just a checkbox within the packaging settings (Go to "Platform" in the top bar, then down to "Packaging Settings" as a quick access to packaging settings. The setting here is called "Use Io Store" which you'll package 1 time with and 1 time without). For my own workflow I separate things into incrementing ChunkIDs (ChunkID determines what pak-# the file goes into), then when you go to Platforms > Windows > Package you'll get an export with each package number, I copy that into a folder then toggle on Io Store and run the process again to copy into a different folder. (Annoying, but not difficult)

Rec. 4 : Include version compatibility in your ReadMe/Download Pages/Filenames. We can't really determine what will be compatible in the future, but for current versions try to ensure users know which version is for which platform. Personally I'm doing this at a file-name level where the archives for Steam will now prefix with (Steam) and XBox/Gamepass prefixes with (XBox-Gamepass), then all version compatible stuff (like, say, lua exclusive mods) will have no prefix. It'll take time to have everyone following these kinds of standards, but try to keep your community/followers posted on where compatibility is if its relevant to you.

Rec. 5 : Adopt open modding and collaboration! One of the major issues I noticed was a lack of communication in the modding community about what was happening and a lot of selfish hostility demanding things that didn't make a whole lot of sense, eventually leading to this worse-than-before situation. We as modders should be working together to get things working instead of pushing against one another and refusing any help, or refusing to help others. If we continue down this path and keep giving PocketPair these mixed signals then modding is going to be completely screwed. Ultimately, in this case, PocketPair listened to less-than-experience 'modders' that refused to adapt and listen to more experienced modders, and has made the modding scene much more complicated as a result. We need to start sharing standards and better knowledge with one another so that things like this are less likely to happen in the future and adaption is quicker. (Our community had already adopted this mentality and we were fully updated without any struggle, and again after the revert. These things matter and can make all of our lives much easier. If you're confused about a change, ask experienced modders about it and be patient, listen in and be ready to adapt. A great modder adapts, a bad modder gives up and refuses to change.)

--- --- ---

Explaining the situation

Ok, now lets actually explain the shift in package types and what's going on.

Why switch to Io Store?
Simple, it improves loading and streaming assets on a wide range of platforms/hardware. While for a lot of modern systems you won't notice a difference (especially if you're not hitting memory limits or have a lot of io bottlenecks) this has massive benefits to console specifically, especially XBox Series S. So the reason PocketPair made this change was to make overall improvements to Palworld for all platforms which should reduce load times and improve performance across the board. Of course there's other things they could do to improve these things, but it's such a massive win on console that there's no reason not to do it.

Ok... so why on PC where it's not as effective?
This most likely comes down to their development pipeline and because the XBox version IS the PC version. Well, for Gamepass/MS Store version at least. The XBox/Gamepass version of Palworld has always been a different build than the Steam version (at first it even had different features/content!). However, PocketPair has synced up their development and now they are most likely just different packaged versions/exports. PC DOES have benefits from IO Store, so it's not like it was a bad call, but in reality PocketPair most likely just synced up their 2 pipelines into a single process so both versions were effectively the same package but with different exports (for platform reasons). So since Io Store is a massive win for console, when they synced up the PC version just switched to the overall better IO Store package type for universal gains and easier development.

Makes sense. So why do we now have 2 versions?
This is where stuff gets complicated, because it has to do with the "have patience" statements I made earlier. In short, changing the package method meant that all older mods needed to be updated, so when people launched the update for the first time none of their mods worked! This lead to casuals and incompetent 'modders' to immediately complain to PocketPair, blaming them for the mods breaking while demanding a revert. And PocketPair caved... probably the best argument for "don't listen to your community" I've seen in quite a long while. As mentioned previously, the IO Store format is a massive win for consoles so they most likely couldn't revert the change on XBox to hit their performance targets and obligations, which directly affects the Gamepass/MS Store versions. So yeah, only the Steam version was reverted, and the community forced this issue onto itself.

Yeah but, at least old mods work, right?
Some do, some don't, really depends what's changed, and this only applies to the STEAM version, XBox/Gamepass is still screwed. The reality is that most mods need to be updated eventually anyways and there's shifts in the scene that would replace a lot of the earlier mods already, so reverting the change really doesn't do much for us in the long-term. This revert is short-sighted, both from the community and PocketPair. But still, it'll be nice to use the older mods that do still work. Keep in mind that only BP mods and replacers needed .pak files anyways, script mods through lua or C++ were never affected and instead all broke because of changes within the game (as they do over patches). The real concern here, however, is that PocketPair could bring back IO Store for Steam since it just makes sense to do so from a development perspective and for the long-term health of the game. When they do, not only will previous mods be broken, but also all those made after this revert, ultimately doing even MORE damage than if we just kept IO Store and modders adapted. In other words, we'll be right were we already were but even worse off.

--- --- ---

And that's what I want to help prevent!
I'm making this PSA to let people know what's happening and help educate users/modders, while also advocating that we start making dual packages now to prevent future issues and help people adapt. There is a silver lining here in that we have the chance to 'get use to' these better practices and packaging for IO Store without mods being 'completely' unusable, but that does only benefit Steam users. So, let's say Steam does switch back to IO Store packages, then we can just transition to using the IO Store versions already packages for XBox/Gamepass! This will help minimize potential loss of mods in the future and ensure everyone gets to access mods to the same capacity, a win-win! Of course, if the community had already adopted better practices to begin with then none of this would have been an issue, but we can't change the past, only work toward a better, more sustainable future!

A reminder to everyone, if you ever need help you can always try either our community, The Broken Chatbox ( https://discord.gg/h3vB7S4FEw ) or The Palworld Modding Discord ( https://discord.gg/qHTZNcvYsv ) to ask for help! (I recommend our community for NSFW stuff) Also, be very careful which guides you follow! There's a lot of bad info out there written by people who have no clue what they're doing/talking about (especially on YouTube, I cringe every time >.<). Hopefully as time progresses we get some better guides with best practices and proper information, and I hope to help on this front when I get the time.

Either way, thanks modding community for intentionally stepping on a rusty nail, now let's work on the anti-biotics!

Ok, I sorta, maybe, accidentally skipped last month’s update post, kind of. As a result, I’ve got lots to write about here as it’s been a good while since I’d done one of these. To quickly explain the gap (which, I know, I probably don’t need to but the story is interesting? Maybe?) I was transitioning to doing the posts near the beginning of the month instead of the end as it would be easier to be more flexible with the release, since I could still have it be within the month even if it went over a couple days. I originally planned to write about data structures and stuff I’ve been working on for a game project, but instead of actually getting the update post out I spent time just, well, actually working on the project itself!~ Aaand next thing you know, it’s been 10 days, 20 days, a month… Yeah, just didn’t feel like writing I guess! (I was also trying to decide exactly what to do about a couple of other things, but I’ll talk about that later in the post)

Before we continue, just wanted to say Happy Pride Month! (I always forget when June comes around so no special plans X.x). Now let's color the streets as we stroll over this months update post with 2 months of talk! (Sorry in advance for the length... =^.-=)

A long while back I said I'd like to start working on a smaller side game project for a while and after making that announcement I came up with a concept, released an overview of what would be included, then promptly ditched everything I wrote because I came up with more ideas and better direction. Yeah, common theme with me, I know, but now I've started DEV on what will be the 'actually released' version of this small project!

The original small project was called "Crystal Grimoire: Soulless Evolution" which was suppose to be a test bed for concepts I was working on for my main large game project, currently labeled "Crystal Grimoire : Project Soul". However, as I worked on some concepts for it I felt doing something too similar to the main project was not only boring conceptually (who wants to build the same thing twice?) but also just uninteresting as a release plan. So, I merged those concepts back into the main project as I expanded writing on it and instead started taking small side-concepts that didn't work in the main game and started this new small concept.
(Note: Some docs and files that release may reference "Project AI Cards" which was the working title for Data:EnCryptic)

I'm not quite ready to show anything as I'm transitioning to start sharing assets between the 2 titles, to which I have a LOT of polishing to do, and I want to re-build my prototype and actually make a proper early version for supporters to try. But I did feel it was important to announce it here since this will be my primary focus this month with most of my available time sinking into it. The new project will be built using Godot 4.2 with plans to transition to Godot 4.3 when it's ready. Although I've been working with prototyping and learning in Godot 4.x for a good while now, my main project is still in godot 3.5 as many aspects break in the transition. So, with this transition I'm looking to also restart my main project build in 4.3 when that becomes available and use this as a chance to make something 'real' in Godot 4.x. (As a note, I've been using Beta builds for Godot for these experiments and finding bugs/issues a plenty, but since I plan to actually release something here I need to use a stable version which does make me a bit sad inside... Q.Q)

Real quick though, what even IS "Data:EnCryptic" exactly? Here's a quick run-down, though I'm intentionally leaving out details since the game is suppose to be a bit mysterious in its execution.

(Editor note, the original write calls this AI Ult.Clarity, but Clarity AI is an actual company I didn't know about at the time, so I probably need a new name Q.Q)

 > Palworld Mods (Project Sugar Cake) <

I discussed a lot about my plans with SCake and what I want to try to create along side it in the last update post for 0.3 DEV, so I'll keep this relatively short. Made some major progress since the last monthly update post with a ton of game-breaking research going on. I feel like I've torn Palworld inside-out by this point and have a lot of surface level knowledge for nearly every system which has been rather helpful, not just for my own work but also in helping direct others in places to look and suggestions on best practices. There's been a major slowdown in most areas for Palworld modding with everyone seemingly waiting for major updates, but in The Broken Chatbox we've been seeing more people join into the naughty side!

The last major updates to SCake have been focused on feature requests and I've now made the TODO public which I also use as my internal requests tracker (I don't know how interesting my internal doc systems are to read about so I'll skip that for now >.<). We now have animation switching, gender preferences, some cool new API features... Actually, that last bit is the most exciting! Or it's related at least... Because the biggest feature is more modders joining the fray and making content! Aside from models and animations, I've also talked to modders about creating a combat submission mod, a 'fluids' collection mod, a futa mod, and more! We have some exciting stuff in the works! If you're more curious on my personal plans for naughty Palworld mods, I recommend checking out the last SCake update post! - https://subscribestar.adult/posts/1280485

> Skyrim Mods (Succubus Heart) <

I've been ironing out some issues here and there to work on finally getting another Stable Release build out, this time with 'proper' OStim Standalone support! If I remember correctly, I reported in the last major Dev update post that with the help of the community most of the major OStim issues have been solved and I can happily say it's now in a spot where I'm comfortable putting it into a proper Stable release! That said, it's still incomplete with some features that simply won't ever be possible because of OStim's self-imposed limitations. Stuff like creature support and non-con wont ever be working 'officially' through OStim, though there's some reworking for combat submission at least.

But if stuff's ready why haven't I released a new version? That's because I've still got standing bug reports with some being pretty major, but I've not heard back in quite a while from those I was speaking to on the issue and few have responded to my request for additional details. So I'm stuck in a bit of a limbo state. The 3 major issues I'm concerned about potentially missing are... 1 ) The sudden serge in reports that the MCM isn't showing up on all version, no idea what caused this but I've got no meaningful data on this issue, 2 ) Some crashes/lockups are being reported relating to the Sexual Enrage spell, I suspect this is caused by some sort of mod conflict or UI mod (It's confirmed that this spell causes crashes on OStim, so a work-around was put in place but it doesn't always work), and 3 ) I received some reports that Succubus Heart can fail to start properly and scripts can lock up or stop functioning properly, just today I got a report that Orgasms were not being accounted for properly.

All these issues are rather confusing and I haven't been able to find solutions no matter how deep I dive, and given the limited return in bug reports I may just have to let them go for now and push a new release version with hopes that they are caused either by user error or the influx of potential users will give us the details required to fix them.

Either way, I've dedicated to a new release version this month, so that should be out soon!

> Phantasy Star Portable 2i Mod? <

I got a bit burnt out while working on my usual projects (it also didn't help that I basically scrapped that prototype I talked about earlier and started anew, which always has a bit of a moral hit) so I wanted to work on something unorthodox and different. That's where PSoP2i comes in! I enjoy going back to the PSU style games quite often, and Infinity has been one I go back to regularly. In-fact it's my most played game on my ROG Ally at the moment.. that thing has basically become an oversized PSP at this point... >.>

Either way, I decided to do some texture modding and research! I wasn't initially sure if I'd release anything but my research ended up being rather conclusive and I have some working 'lewd' texture mods I may release as an R18+ mod! The initial mod I just called "Anti-Skirt" as it just removes skirts from some NPCs as a texture mod test, but I also worked on trying to get a working nude mod and replacing other textures. Now, to be clear, my goal wasn't originally to make a lewd mod but it just happened to be something worth trying since the skirt removal was a very easy start (just like re-colors are) but nude textures tackles some of the most difficult challenges in texture modding this specific game.

So... yeah, that'll be releasing once I package stuff up and maybe work a bit more on it to polish up the nude mod aspect. There's some major limitations and a lot of details I'll discuss when I do release the mod as I plan to do a write up about my research. To summarize though, PSoP2i does some really unique things on the PSP because it's the same engine used for PSU, but adapted to work with the PSP's hardware. This create some really interesting problems but honestly it was really cool breaking into the data of the game back when I was making a 60fps patch for PSoP2, so this is a fun prospect for me, honestly! Just don't expect major updates to this mod, it's really just an "I need a distraction" kind of project.

In the future I'd like to attempt a 'graphics restoration' project since it shares many assets from PSU, but most have not been gracefully down-scaled for the PSP. There's already a started restoration texture pack but it never got finished, so I'd love to step in and do a bit more work while also applying some AI+Manual upscale work as more texturing practice.

> Website Redesign (michaelpstanich.com) <

Been a bit slow on this front as I’ve been focusing on other projects since I hit a bit of a road block. Essentially the tools I was using and have been using for my own web stuff for years has really fallen short for me as I try to transition to using new tools and frameworks, which has technically been true for a while but since I did so little web-deb for so long it wasn’t a huge issue. But, that is why my website was so out of date since things were difficult to manage and update, which needs to be fixed. So, I’ve been transitioning to new tools and figuring out better solutions for managing stuff. The most notable transition is that instead of using Brackets for my web coding I’m moving to VS Code while making a set of custom scripts to translate things over quickly and easily. My transition to VS Code has been rather nice but I’m still getting use to the workflow and figuring out more tools which has taken some time (especially since I’m trying to transition the majority of my coding/docs work to VS Code). 

One of the challenges I have is figuring out ways to make translating articles over quick and painless so that I don’t have to spend a bunch of time re-formatting stuff for each platform. Although now I’m transitioning to just releasing my write-ups on 2 platforms instead of 3, I do want to make it simple so I can write things once and be done. To help with this, I’ve started experimenting with various text scanning/replacement scripts and methods while also trying out a really awesome bit of software called “Pandoc”. Pandoc is a universal text file translator which allows you to quickly and automatically translate certain doc types from one file type to another, although it’s not perfect it’s been really useful! Currently my workflow has me writing in .docx as usual, then I run it through Pandoc to translate it into markdown, then using a visual markdown editor I clean up any errors before I translate it directly to HTML which then gets the header/footer stripped and replaced and a few div tags are re-formatted specifically for my site. This is obviously much better than having to either manually edit in tags or translating manually to Markdown, but the process is still rough and requires manual work.

To help with this I’ll most likely start transitioning to markdown for the initial write, which ‘should’ allow me to directly paste to platforms like SubscribeStar, or at the very least ensure that translating the doc type to something else is smooth and doesn’t require additional editing since I can make my own scripts to fill in the gaps. Doing so also means I can just make my own arguments and replacement scripts as well, removing the need for Pandoc in the long-term. The issue is portability and just my own consistency, I’m not use to markdown so it’s going to take a while for me to get use to it, and even this update post still isn’t written in markdown so… yeah… ya know what? Fine. The rest of this doc is being written in markdown on VS Code!

(Note : This doc started being written on June 6th, 2024. If it releases later than that you know I struggled X.x)

(Back from transitioning to VS Code, I have 30 pages of documentation and 14 json files open. Halp Mee!!! =X.x=)

Oh, I almost forgot to add a somewhat important note. I will most likely be releasing a partial site update soon which moves the current site to /old and having a place holder home page so I can start putting up hosting pages for content to DL/preview as well as give easy access to tutorials, updates, and guides I release.

> AI Related Stuffs <

Got a few projects going on in the AI space, but first just wanted to note I've been learning about local LLMs, not just translation LLMs like before but also using LLMs for potential role-play RPG prospects and creative writing assistance to help break writers block and create interesting problems to solve through. I played around with the idea of starting an experimental bot for our Discord - The Broken Chatbox - to play around with as a fun side project, but it's not currently viable with my set-up.

On the image generation front, I've started testing and merging for a follow up release to SpiritMix - Soft and Cutesy, which has been requested for quite a while. The new version will focus on trying to make scenes and body forms more consistent while updating some models in the mix with those found within SpiritMix - Poly Cube to help with anatomy and clarity. I'd also like to expand the NSFW capabilities as some had requested, since multi-character generation with the model in particular poses is really terrible in its current iteration, but that's secondary to actually reducing the 'default' lewdness of adult characters on the model (it really likes to show boobies >.<)

Finally, I've been testing training a new SD1.5 base model with our new "Neuma Source" dataset (WIP Name), a new curated dataset featuring 3.6m anime/toon/3D style images covering several non-real domains. There's a massive amount of work to be done here and I've become the only one working on the dataset for now (previous team disbanded after being threatened by CivitAI) but the goal is to build a future-looking dataset of curated images which removes undesired images/concepts, trims duplicates to ensure only high-quality versions are used, weights validated images more highly in training, and purging images which fall below an aesthetic quality threshold. Currently the process still requires a lot of manual work, so the process is very slow at the moment (given I don't have funding to continue I just work on it between other things when I have low energy.). I plan to release an article after a few months of testing/training on whatever methods we find and hopefully release a usable model.

Also worth noting, I have been paying attention to both SDXL and SD3 advancements, and also looked into other non-SAI models. However, SD1.5 has a lot of research with a lower bar to entry so it's a good testing ground for this sort of thing to start on. Depending on how difficult SD3 ends up being to train, I 'may' jump in if effective methods are found early, but for now it's on the back burner.

> Palworld Mods <
Project Sugar Cake 0.3 DEV

GDrive : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vYfgMom7UJs2OmJ5B4FGQTMYEOR0n9Vr
Mega : https://mega.nz/folder/9hZQ2IIR#Ou77tq4qQxw9UBQsozh6zg
Lover's Lab : https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/33158-project-sugar-cake-animation-and-stat-framework/

GDrive : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yqt2P0fu2JRsjOIcuD7kAa03JuQ3rvZw
Mega : https://mega.nz/folder/xgBQDJRQ#4ucsQDMkY1thmkfM6sjy5g
Lover's Lab : https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/6350-succubus-heart-se/

Statement : You're awesome, you're amazing, a true legend, "goated"?
Response : I don't even know what that last one is suppose to mean, but ok, I guess? Honestly I've been getting a lot of really positive feedback over the last few months and I'm really grateful for that. However, I also want to make a quick statement here as it is something I'm always concerned about. I don't want people to blindly follow what I do/say or just 'accept' anything I do. When I make changes or judgement you disagree with, I want everyone to know you can speak about your reasoning for disagreeing and we can have a discussion! One of my greatest fears in these kinds of situations is someone saying something like, "Oh, so-and-so is perfect" right before reality hits, none of us are perfect and I am prone to error just like anyone else.

Probably feels a bit weird for me to bring this up, but recently I had someone 'defending' some design decisions and some long-standing bugs within Succubus Heart. I never want to see people shut down other people's reasoning, instead I want us to all grow through discussion and reasoning, talk it through, think about what each person is saying, then make judgement based on that reasoning while keeping our responses within reason. I'll be the first to admit there are some failures in Succubus Heart that I wish I was able to fix, and while these kinds of things should never justify attacks or harassment toward creatives, that doesn't mean we should ignore the given issues. More importantly, if we start shutting down discussion that could be considered hostile by a few overly sensitive individuals, it could mean that an increasing number of people become afraid to speak up which acts to the detriment of not only that single project and the community, but to communication in general.

So in short, don't be afraid to speak up about potential issues you may have or see while displaying your reasoning. Always try to be civil and always try to be kind of course (which I know is difficult, we all falter in this aspect at times, especially if an issue goes on for too long and starts to extend beyond reason). But also acknowledge that not all disagreements are between 'right' and 'wrong', and sometimes it's just a difference in perspective. There are certainly harmful disagreements, especially when you start talking about ethics and social issues, but you won't dissuade people in a positive way by being hostile and refusing to even reason.

Sorry, end of my little rant I guess. Kind of became a bit of a soap box for a moment. >.<  

Just know, I don't want us to argue and hate one another, there's just so much of that in this world that we don't need it to infect every aspect of our lives. Instead, let's try to prop each-other up, not just by being kind but also by helping each other improve, and these kinds of discussions can help with that!

Question : Do you have a manager/organizer?
Answer : I felt like it was obvious with how often I fail to do releases properly or miss simple blog release schedules, but it was asked quite a few times. I suppose I must look much more organized from the outside looking in than internally where I'm constantly trying to wade through self-lit flames in the cramped space I call a brain. For real, I've struggled with maintaining organization for a long time but that also means I have a LOT of practice! So no, I don't have a manager/organizer/assistant/whatever.

I mean, firstly, I'm freakin' broke, so paying someone to do my sorting wouldn't really be viable, but also I'm a bit of a weirdo when it comes to self management. I have preferences to how I do things and when I work on projects I like having my own isolated systems to help since I know the ins and outs of said system. There's this issue I have where I really like to fully understand systems I work with, and if I had someone else managing things I would be missing those things, which I would really struggle with! That's not to say I haven't or can't work in teams, but it's so much different when you work in a team where you have specific aspects and duties you focus on and projects where you are the sole creative.

Another aspect is probably the writing stuffs? I was also asked by someone who asked if I had an assistant if I also wrote these articles. I've been practicing writing for a pretty long while, especially as I've done script writing for videos and technical papers, so yeah, I write these! ^-^  

For real though, I think that was a hidden compliment, even though it really just made me confused. I don't feel my writing is particularly good (especially these 1 shot blog write-ups which go out without any major editing, just spell check '@.@) but maybe it's just the quantity? In that regard, the quantity is because I just don't do editing most of the time and throw caution to the wind! (I get bitten by pigeons a lot, like a bread bit thrown off a roof >.>)

(Also available on my website : https://www.michaelpstanich.com/blogpost/2024-03-31_MarchMonthlyUpdate.html)

After 31 days of eating nothing but sugar cake, I can say that this certainly isn’t a sustainable diet! I’m been shaking non-stop, I can’t sleep, and I can see into the 9tth dimension! I’m definitely ok though, I’m sure this will all play out well into the future, just look, I can shake up a smoothy REALLY well now!~ No more tired arms, I just… shake… endlessly… (I my have a sugar overdose). BUT I MUST PREVAIL, THE POST MUST GO ON! The keys, so close together, but I have a backspace key, let’s get this going!!!

> The project of goodness that is a sugary Cake <
Project Sugar Cake 0.0.3DEV (Latest Release Links) :
GDrive : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vYfgMom7UJs2OmJ5B4FGQTMYEOR0n9Vr?usp=drive_link
LoversLab Dev Thread : https://www.loverslab.com/topic/225549-project-sugar-cake-sex-and-stat-framework-gameplay-mod/

I just couldn’t help myself spending nearly all my time on Project Sugar Cake! Well, ok, ‘most’ of my time on Sugar Cake, but still, some major progress this month! SCake saw the release of 0.0.3DEV this month which not only has the multi-actor animations from 0.0.2DEV (also new this month) but also a custom JSON parser to make importing animations easier than ever! Huge changes under the hood but finally SCake is at a point now where I can make smaller additions and fixes and after the UI base gets implemented then I can move to the smaller updates with quicker output rather than the longer drawn out update cycle we’ve had since the initial launch. Bigger news however, since SCake now has all the animation systems in place and easier importing quite a few animators (and people hoping to get into animating) have gained interest in making stuff for the project, and many of us have been collaborating over in the Discord to make it all happen! This is effectively the starting point for SCake where we’re seen animator support and the framework is properly usable, however that’s not to say SCake is even remotely close to ‘done’ as there’s still a lot of work to be done. Systems to finish, methods to polish, and an API to expand, there’s more work but now development can focus a bit more on extra features and polish since we’re past the ‘minimum viable product’ phase. Overall really excited!

(Also a huge shout out to everyone that’s been collaborating and being supportive over in our Discord! I hope we can continue to inspire more people to be creative and friendly!)

> How to make your sugar cake even more delicious <
How to set up and import animations for SCake guide) :
Website Link : https://www.michaelpstanich.com/article/SCake_HowToMakeAnimsGuide.html
GDrive Link : https://docs.google.com/document/d/19lh8IooHKKpmVTixP2scgWIVfZboUedNf2JDmJp5hsA/edit?usp=drive_link
LoversLab Link : https://www.loverslab.com/topic/228416-guide-scake-how-to-set-up-animating-and-import-animations-for-project-sugar-cake/

Although the method for importing animations for SCake has been vastly simplified with the introduction of the JSON parser (you just import your animations and montages in UE5 then use JSON to configure them, no scripting or blueprints required now!) getting everything set up and understanding how things work is still a bit of a learning curve. As such, to ensure we have a great resource to point people to (and so people that don’t want to communicate still have a resource to look to for help) I’ve created an in-depth tutorial starting from knowing nothing about Palworld modding, to importing animations for SCake and getting them going in-game! The guide in total is pretty long, however if you’re already experienced with Palworld modding a decent amount of the getting started stuff can be skipped or skimmed over. It may look long and demanding, but the processes are relatively simple, so if you’re interested I recommend giving it a look!
Additionally, this is the first article publishing to my site with the new formatting! I haven’t the generic stuff like the nav and footer, but this gives an idea of what articles will look like on the site going forward. If you get the chance to check it out on my site, please let me know your thoughts!

https://www.michaelpstanich.com/
I did a lot of research and internal development for the website (and a potential second web project, but I won’t bother talking more about that till I have something to show since it may never actually exist at this stage). Development on the site redesign for michaelpstanich.com has been a bit slower than I would have liked since I’ve been spending so much time on Project Sugar Cake, but I’m slowly nailing things down. One major leap this month was setting up format translation layers so that uploading, updating, and general maintenance of blog posts and articles is much simpler. With these new systems in place it should be a lot quicker and easier for me to start posting updates and articles over on the site without huge time investments. I still need to set up proper template systems, but I’m focusing on the main page and navigation for now. I will most likely be overhauling the main page with a temporary landing page that has links to all my modern stuffs and features a list for posts, while hosting the old site at michaelpstanich.com/old so it’s still accessible while I refresh everything and migrate any content I see desire-able. (I really want to get things set up enough that I can use my own site as a distribution source, Project Sugar Cake, several articles, and image posts do not currently meet my goal of 3 distribution platforms.)

I’ve fallen a bit behind on AI stuff lately given I’ve had my focus on much more creative projects lately, but I haven’t abandoned anything! This month I experimented more with how to continue with a custom trained model as I build a custom database for images. I.. can’t remember if I announced that project? Basically I’m still working on making AI models! Despite CivitAI staff trying to harass me and intimidate me into leaving the industry, I’ve not given into their vile behavior and still have ambitious goals! (seriously, I’ve had to block at least 30 Discord accounts from them constantly trying to harass me, it’s getting REALLY pathetic at this point.) I’ve also been making some moves to updating some existing AI models, although SD1.5 has been slowly falling out of favor with many moving to PonyXL and Animagine 3.1, many SD1.5 models still offer some incredible quality with unique styles and concepts not seen in XL models, and with my own models focusing on trying to be very different in style this holds especially true. SpiritMix - Soft and Cutesy will most likely be the next update in this regard as I’ve refined a lot of my systems since releasing that model, and have some additional mix knowledge/resources I think will improve the overall model to put it more in-line with my other output. Additionally I will be hosting my models on my own site as well, I have some concepts in my head but I’m currently investigating how to implement them before really refining the design.

Just wanted to leave a little note here about Succubus Heart! I had been planning to make some updates to Succubus Heart for a few weeks now, but I keep getting distracted and focusing on Project Sugar Cake, probably a bit too much in-fact. Just wanted to leave a note here that I’ll be pushing for an update soon and didn’t intend to go without one for so long, I know people are waiting! I’m really sorry about that! Although I do try to gauge interest for what projects I should focus on (with SCake having a huge amount of interest, especially when compared to Succubus Heart) I don’t do this with the intention of ignoring other projects. It’s really just that SCake is in early development and has a lot of fundamental features that need to be implemented, while Succubus Heart is, arguably, a fully featured mod that doesn’t ‘need’ updates to be usable. Either way, I still feel bad! >.<

> Palworld Mod : Project Sugar Cake <
Project Sugar Cake 0.0.3DEV :
 GDrive : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iAm8sPZO1t2aO2pKcBlWvxUNY1A2HsmU?usp=drive_link
LoversLab Dev Thread : https://www.loverslab.com/topic/225549-project-sugar-cake-sex-and-stat-framework-gameplay-mod

> Article : “SCake Guide : How to set up animating and import animations for Project Sugar Cake” <
Website Link : https://www.michaelpstanich.com/article/SCake_HowToMakeAnimsGuide.html
GDrive Link : https://docs.google.com/document/d/19lh8IooHKKpmVTixP2scgWIVfZboUedNf2JDmJp5hsA/edit?usp=drive_link
LoversLab Link : https://www.loverslab.com/topic/228416-guide-scake-how-to-set-up-animating-and-import-animations-for-project-sugar-cake/

Statement : Project Sugar Cake Related : “See you all in ‘5/10/15’ years when all this is actually released!”
Response : So this has been a re-occurring sentiment I’ve been seeing related to Project Sugar Cake, and it’s a bit disheartening. Now I’m not telling people to not expect long development time for stuff like this in a usual sense, and it’ll take a while to get animations rolling for all the combinations people may want, but to say we’ve made so little progress that it’ll take another 5+ years feels a bit mean spirited. SCake is released AND usable in its current form as is, and it’s been 2 months! We’re speeding through all this stuff in a VERY quick (and honestly kind of impressive) pace, and I’m very proud of the work I’ve been able to put in! I feel a lot of this feeling probably comes from people not realizing SCake is actually out however, I see a lot of comments about ‘when it releases’ or ‘whenever they finally put up the download’ but SCake has been downloadable since February? I’m wondering if people just assume it’s not available or if they’re getting projects confused? Either way, not really an ‘answer’ but more of a response so something I’ve found a bit puzzling, hopefully it’ll clear up eventually as currently it seems to be causing a lot of confusion, which could impact our appeal to animators since if they don’t think it’s available they may not be interested, when in reality SCake is functional and ready for animations!

Question : Project Sugar Cake Related : “Are you being paid to develop Project Sugar Cake?”
Answer : This question caught me off guard as I thought I was very upfront about the costs of the project, but let me re-iterate, Project Sugar Cake is supported entirely through donations (https://subscribestar.adult/michaelpstanich ^.-) and my own desire to develop the mod. I personally like taking on interesting projects and I saw Palworld as a potential candidate with “PSC” receiving the most interest out of all the projects I proposed. I also had a personal bias toward making Project Sugar Cake because I’ve been in the modding space a long time and have seen a very concerning pattern over the last couple of years where teams with ill intentions (or maybe those who are misguided) end up starting these kinds of projects but do so in a very closed off manner and end up shutting out other creatives from making similar content. The early Palworld modding scene was a disaster, quite honestly, and I saw that it was very likely the potential of Palworld modding in this category was going to be completely squandered by teams working in such a closed off and hostile manner. As such, a large part of my motivation is to offer a more open and community focused alternative, to show people that the modding scene doesn’t have to die off as some closed-off hostile wasteland, but instead we can encourage more collaboration and prop each other up to new heights!

Now, to be clear, it’s not like I wouldn’t like to receive more donations (making this kind of work my full-time job is a dream I’d love to accomplish) but I won’t push it on anyone. I put in the work to try and offer as much value as possible with the hopes that some day it may pay off, but if it doesn’t it’s not all that big of a deal. Life moves on, ya know? And if nothing else, I get some sick portfolio pieces!

Hey, as long as I get one of these out per-week, right?

I mean, that is the goal anyways, did I mention these wouldn’t be consistent? Either way, I went hard working on Project Sugar Cake and some other projects that had me feeling a bit burnt out so after SCake’s initial release I decided to force myself to take an entire day off of working on stuff, especially since I haven’t been feeling well for a few days (have a very annoying cough >.>) and I probably needed the sleep I finally got… But hey, I’m feeling better and can’t stop thinking about the next step for various projects! This week I thought I’d talk about Project Sugar Cake and the next step, since, ya know, we had an initial release version of Project Sugar Cake 0.0.1 DEV!!! I did have a big blog entry planned for this week related to recent events, but I’ve decided I’d wait on it since I already have a lot to cover today, so maybe next week? (which is only a few days away Q.Q)

I’m making some changes in how I approach model previews on various sites that host my trained / merged AI models and how I approach posting image/video related content. For models that are not explicitly for adults only concepts I am switching to not feature R18+ content in the previews directly and instead having those post separately (13+ / Suggestive content will still be actively put in previews, I just mean explicit nudity or sexual content). Future postings will also have 18+ content separated as well, which I’ve technically been doing for a bit now but that was just to test the waters and see how this new method is received. I’ll save some of the more in-depth reasons for this when I get around to doing the full blog posting related to some rather extreme behavior we’ve been seeing over the last couple of years getting increasingly worse, but I also felt it was better to approach posts this way to help better separate the duality in my content. It’s no secret that I like sexual stuffs, but separately also like cute stuffs, however these AI content sites do not provide adequate tools for users to separate these forms of content and I’ve witnessed an unfortunately large number of people try and blend them both together in an attempt to create ammunition for harassment and personal attacks. While I despise any individual that goes out of their way to target and harass individuals in this way (I hope they live the rest of their miserable lives as unloved as their comments), I also recognize some inconsistencies in how these sites deliver content could also create associations, even if unintended, and I was not really properly considering how these systems create negative impressions.

There’s still places where this kind of things still mesh in an undesirable way, like on my CivitAI profile page where if you look at ‘posts’ then R18+ content is displayed right next to cute content.

I tried to run some engagement tests and gauge how people reacted to different types of content when posted around each other, and I found that if any ‘inappropriate’ content is posted along-side ‘innocent’ content, a large number of people will associate that innocent content with inappropriate content. An example of this is if a user posts a cute chibi with a captain hat, then a user posts a sexualized image of a woman with large breasts, massive cleavage showing, and a sexual expression on her face. Before the second image is posted and seen the chibi image is well received and seen as cute, but after the second image is posted then the chibi is now seen as inappropriate content and often now sexualized by onlookers as well as any additional innocent images. I don’t personally seem to be affected by this much as I am generally able to break associations quite easily/quickly but I also notice I am in the minority here and most individuals don’t have the same kind of mental training in critique someone like myself would. Additionally I noticed people that are more interested in anime style themes also seem to be more resistant to this phenomenon and I think it’s the ability to separate reality and fantasy much easier than your average individual. Additionally I find it interesting how many communities seem to shift in this way, where sexualized content always seems to take a precedent over innocent content, even if it’s mostly innocent content the presence of any sexual content is not seen as out of place and inappropriate and instead ‘poisons’ all content posted around it. Many AI communities are currently struggling with this and it’s led to some (like CivitAI) to become incredibly hostile toward certain creators with even moderators on these platforms going out of their way to harass individuals because of this, which has nothing to do with the creators themselves but how these sites fail to separate content and properly inform their staff of these kinds of biases.

As hostile as this sounds, I also find it probably has a lot of do with general intelligence and who these people choose to surround themselves with, but I’ll save that specific discussion for when I make that blog post regarding extremist view points which we’ve seen on the rise lately. Regardless, I’ll be taking this into account more in the future, and while some will see this as my trying to adjust for idiots (which, honestly, it is) I also think being mindful and making an attempt gives a lot of counter-ammunition to these hateful cretins and makes them look even more deprived. So I guess it’s a selfish act in the end? Seriously though, fuck these people trying to harass and target others in all contexts.

This really won’t affect proper platforms I post to like Pixiv, which solved these issues ages ago and uses common sense in regards to both methods and moderation. Discord, for example, allows me to have multiple release channels which make it easy to separate these forms of content. I’d say this would be a band-aid fix until these AI platforms start enacting common sense, but they’ve all shown they are incapable of even basic understanding of social dynamics so I doubt we’ll see much, if any, positive change and instead these platforms are more likely to start banning certain types of content outright, blaming creators for the platform’s failures as usual. Some AI platforms are already taking this ban approach like PixAI banning all NSFW content and favoring innocent anime themes or CivitAI enacting the opposite and having moderators try to harass and intimidate creators of cute content off the platform with verbal abuse and excessive content removals of innocent content. (CivitAI even hosts rape and guro content, but creators are the problem for posting a cute chibi? Fuck off.)

Female solo animation test with sped up progression example at the end of the post! ^-^
(I still don't know how to put videos in the middle of a post X.x)

The initial release for SCake is finally here! Features full support for solo player animations and importing animations, also released a simple animation pack along-side the framework which currently only includes a single solo female animation but I will try and add a few more simple animations to the pack as time goes on.

Discord - https://discord.com/channels/236233595637858304/1069961251251302400/1209285311117529148
GDrive - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iAm8sPZO1t2aO2pKcBlWvxUNY1A2HsmU?usp=drive_link
LoversLab Dev Thread - https://www.loverslab.com/topic/225549-project-sugar-cake-sex-and-stat-framework-gameplay-mod

Huge progress was made this week, as Project Sugar Cake was finally able to get an initial release! While I’m quite hyped by this I also recognize just how much work is still left to do, and it’s a LOT. The initial release of SCake is very limited in functionality but it does feature the complete animation import process, which is honestly one of the biggest hurdles to getting this framework off the ground. This means anyone can make an animation and then import it into the game using SCake as the base framework for playback, but I still need to implement the full proper API and release an SDK for easy importing (while also finishing the string/json parser so importing is even easier). The big news here however, with a proper release out I can now focus on smaller updates to release more quickly and show progress much more quickly! I really hate the feeling of saying “hey, I’m working on this thing” but not having anything to really show for it, so for me personally this feels like a massive leap forward. It will also be easier to add features from here on out since I don’t have to focus on a bunch of different elements just to get things functional, instead I can just built on the foundation I spent the last few weeks building up, which will be a nice change!

First, let’s cover what actually went into getting this initial release out, then cover what comes next and how I plan to improve things in the future. The bases of Project Sugar Cake is to be a framework first that would allow other mods to add animations and hook into an API to start, modify, and react to animations played by the framework and common events. There’s other plans but this is the baseline that had to be functional before a release made any sense. So this first launch has a fully built and thought out Metadata system and animation method, an importing system for animations from external mods with API calls for when to register these animations, validation filters that check if animations are compatible or if the imported metadata is even valid, then finally we have a fully custom animation handler. The metadata system and all related data structures did have to be complete before release and that was a huge time sync, but validation and compatibility check systems are still only partially complete, though they do have methods in-place they just need to be ran through and properly tested which I didn’t have time for this time around. The animation handler is also only ‘mostly’ complete as it currently lacks position adjustment and AI systems which is why it currently only supports solo player animations in this 0.0.1 DEV version.

The custom animation handler BP, it’s only going to grow from here…

Additionally I had to break off all the rust on my 3D animation bones and quickly create a solo animation to even have something for people to properly use! While words about it have been pretty kind I’m not personally impressed by it, but hey, it’s a starting point! Hopefully we can get animators interested at some point, though this has been a rough ask lately, seems I may be making a few more animations in the future to showcase the framework’s capabilities and give users something to work with. One unfortunate aspect about the palworld modding community I, and many others, have noticed is that Palworld modding seems to be very segmented and very isolated/private. It feels rare for creators to truly collaborate in an open manner and help each other out or work together to get things moving along, and those that do seem to get into these closed off groups and shut everyone else out. It’s rather unfortunate, but I hope that I can help to open up the community more and offer a showcase for more open development while encouraging others to join the fray! (anyone interested in animating? ^.-)

But yes, what’s the next step? In the LL dev thread I posted a short road-map of sorts and am following that list for now, which when complete should have the animation side of the framework fully functional.
“
 1 ) Initial release with single player animation, animation import system functioning, triggered via hotkey
2 ) Fix validation systems to ensure compatible animations are called properly
3 ) Implement placeholder stat system without persistence to ensure climax systems work and can be used
4 ) Finish position correct system and implement Pal on Pal (or with player), triggered via hotkey
5 ) Release sample pal animation and proper SDK tutorial
6 ) Implement basic UI with some settings control
7 ) ???
 “
Step 1 is already complete, and 2/3 are partially complete as of this initial release, these 2 will be updated as required while I make my way down the rest of the list. Next I am going to be focused on the positioning and AI system to get multi-character animations working, then work on the validation processes to ensure the system takes multiple actors in-to account properly. Then it’s just releasing the SDK and tutorials for it proper, and then making a simple UI for players to start adjusting animations and settings which currently isn’t possible. Sounds simple enough but there’s a lot of work here to get done. Given how much work there is to get done still I haven’t really set down exactly what I’ll work on next but I will most likely take in feedback from the community when that time comes to figure out what’s next, since once these baseline features are complete the rest is gameplay systems that could be completed in any order without major requirements relying on these systems. The one exception here being persistence, like saving settings, animation adjustments, ect, but I will most likely tackle that when working on part 6 here. Either way, future is looking bright for the framework to be in a proper usable state sooner rather than later! Still, only major concern is getting people to actually make animations for Palworld.

I plan to take it a bit easy for the rest of this week to help prevent any burn-out, but still want to work on Project Sugar Cake and do some AI related works. Nothing really set in stone, having a bit of a late start to this week since SCake took a lot longer in places than expected so I ‘feel’ behind schedule, but also feel a bit exhausted from potentially overworking myself.

1 : Demi-God AI Pack 2
2 : Project Sugar Cake 0.0.2 DEV
3 : Succubus Heart DEV version release

Yep, it’s another week talking about Palworld modding! (Instead of talking animation, I would like to talk about why Palworld is an interesting game to mod and what gives it so much potential!)

Anyways… This week I have some more updates regarding Project Sugar Cake! Yeah, not a typo, I changed the name this week! I had plans to change the name upon proper release but hadn’t thought of anything I liked better than the cake concept so the mod is now officially known as Project Sugar Cake (SCake for short), changed with the perception of taste. Beside, the mod adds a bit more ‘sugar’ to your game, so it’s fitting!~ (Fun fact, I was naming it “sour cake” because ‘cake’ is a drop from lovander and required breeding material, while ‘sour’ refereed to the drama that was going in the Palworld modding community at the time, which acted as a motivating factor for me to make a more open framework!) Sadly though, I had some shifts in plans as well, I originally wanted to release one of my test versions with very basic animation playback and stripped features, just to get something out there for people to have and try out almost like a proof of concept mod, but honestly my test mod has become such a mess that cleaning it up and making it user friendly would have been a massive time sink. It’s only gotten worse since then too, just look at this monstrosity!

And that’s just the main blueprint and not the macros/functions and parser tests… I’ve been doing a lot of testing... >.<

Instead, I decided to start a proper Alpha version of Project Sugar Cake! At the time of writing, I’m currently working on refining the import and metadata system as well as working on data storage to ensure I can store and save animations that have already been registered and not need to register them every time the mod boots up. I also did a bit more research on AI and trying to create my own AI actions from scratch, though I got too tired and had to put that on pause for now, but I know it’s possible! I am really close to releasing something though, and I’m personally quite hype about it, just need to make sure I get import metadata right since changing it after people make import-able animation mods could be complicated. (I’d say it’ll release this week, but I’m still not sure what other hurdles I’ll run into, like yesterday I ran into a UE5 loading quirk with mods that set me behind a few hours since I had to figure out a fixed or work-around… so no promises, but I really hope it’s by the end of this next week! =^-^=)

What makes Palworld so compelling for mods, and how is all this crazy-ness possible?

It’s not uncommon for games to release these days and people ask “mods when?” right when they’ve released. I think it’s a bit difficult for the average player to understand what makes certain games mod-able and others not so much. Thankfully, Palworld is one that IS capable of hosting some fantastic mods and, as long as the devs keep up support for the game, could have a long lifespan because of it! And today, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about what makes Palworld compelling to mod, talk about some of the internal features of the game that allow more freedom than most, and talk about my own interests as well!
 
Open and Reactive Design.

The typical style of game that tends to get a thriving mod scene tends to be those with a more open and reactive design, think back to Skyrim and how there isn’t a main structure holding things in-place or forcing the game’s systems to behave a specific way; Instead systems are strung together to create an open experience where players can choose to do what they want when they want and developers use reactive design to accomplish this. As an example, let’s look at how the player progresses through Palworld, there’s a loose objective to ‘finish’ the towers, which are basically boss fights, but really the main progression loop is just the player exploring the world, catching pals, and building to their heart’s content. The game is non-linear, you can go and do whatever you’d like, and Palworld lets you do even more than most open world games! Skyrim is very similar, right from the start you can explore pretty much the entire map, explore dungeons, start quests, go swimming and drown in the cold depths of the endless seas… anything! This open design means that mods are not tied to strict game systems, structures, or design. Palworld benefits even more from this than most, the game’s design is simple but focused on making a fun experience, allowing mods the freedom to take up that torch and extend that fun to however they see fit without having to worry about restrictive systems or design. We get to create the experience we want, which is really compelling and opens a lot of doors! In contrast, this is why most linear games rarely get much mod support toward gameplay and instead focus entirely on model/texture replacements, but there’s also another reason that really helps Palworld.

Unreal Engine, and ‘blueprint editable’.

I’m sure we’ve all probably heard of Creation Engine and the accompanying mod tools, Creation Kit. Skyrim was able to excel because it basically opened up the entire game via the mod tools provided by Bethesda, they built the game in that reactive way I mentioned before where systems are not restricted or tied down and allow systems to react to each other dynamically, and although Palworld does not currently have official mod tools the developers did do us one massive favor. At release, Palworld provided a pdb file, which allowed reverse engineering of the C++ header files, and they marked nearly all their functions in-engine as “blueprint editable” which means we can use general Unreal Engine mod tools to hook into the game and use UE5 itself to mod the game! Palworld also doesn’t encrypt their files, which means a lot of the typical hurdles on breaking into the game and its systems has already been broken down for us! This is a massive plus and is why we’re able to do such crazy things with much less effort than most other games! Huge props to the devs for this, even though at the current moment they have removed the pdb file since cheaters started using that good faith to do harm… but still, I really appreciate them providing it at release!

But more on-topic, thanks to the awesome community surrounding Unreal Engine and the modding community there’s already some extremely advanced tools that allow modding UE5 games, combine that with Palworld’s open approach and we get a very rare opportunity, it’s extremely rare we get a game with this much modding potential! Since we can use UE5 to mod the game directly, and UE4SS exists (general mod loader and script extender style mod for Unreal Engine games), we can fully develop whatever we want using Blueprints, Unreal Engine 4/5’s visual scripting language as well as lua, and with some additional work we can use C++. It’s effectively like how we had Creation Kit for Skyrim, where we have the same power as the developers in making changes and content for the game with one major exception, we still need to reverse engineer the game and figure out how things work and what systems to change to get what we want. In the future I hope the devs release documentation and official mod tools to make a lot of this easier as well as maybe adjust their internal systems to better support modding, but for a game still in development and ‘Early Access’, this is all fantastic! I don’t know if I am getting my excitement across, but for those that have followed my work for a while you may remember that I have previous UE4 experience, so for me it’s almost nostalgic in a way, going back to Unreal Engine and blueprints, but it’s also been fun to learn all these new modding tools and getting to stretch my reverse engineering legs! Making cheats and hacks for games has always been fun for me, as well as creating and modding, so combining the two has been rather addicting. (Honestly, nearly all my free time has been burnt working on Project Sugar Cake, and I’m really enjoying it!)

My personal interest.

And that’s why I’ve really taken to Palworld modding, honestly. I see a lot of potential in the game not just as a game from the developers, but also as a game from the community. I’ve been in the modding scene for a very long time, starting out making UI mods for Ragnarok Online, and I’ve only seen a game with this much potential pop-up a handful of times, and unfortunately most of those times the modding scene never takes off because the game doesn’t get popular enough or just doesn’t get the support it needs to thrive. Palworld is the perfect modding storm, it’s a fun game that hit a large audience (so the net to catch potential modders is high), and it’s very open to mods. Once you combine in this potential with my personal enjoyment of tearing into game systems and making alterations, you get a very excited modder on your hands!~ It also helps that I do enjoy the game as is, I find the simplicity in the game’s mechanics enjoyable but also feel it has enough depth to keep my interest for extended periods of time. Palworld certainly needs work and has a long road till I think anyone would call it ‘complete’ but it hit it popular for a reason, it’s just a fun game. Typically, crafty survival games don’t really appeal to me much, I tend to get bored of games like Ark Survival Evolved (which has terrible devs, honestly >.>) and don’t really care for PvP focused experienced for these styles of games like Rust. Palworld has been different though, I’ve just been casually playing it solo, building bases and wondering the world catching pals and enjoying the systems, it’s refreshing, and I don’t think that’s just because you can catch monsters like a collection RPG; Palworld is just a game trying to be fun and enjoyable, no BS monetization, no abusive game mechanics, and no ‘online only’ requirements, it’s a game to be played and enjoyed, another thing becoming increasingly rare in the gaming space. (Indie games for the win, yeah?)

No releases this week, time kind of slipped away from me near the end of the week so I didn’t even get around to uploading any AI stuffs, just been so hard focused on Project Sugar Cake.. Q.Q

And that’s the work progress stuff, been working on Project Sugar Cake! I ‘think’ I have tested nearly everything required for the proper alpha release which I hope to get out this week, still need to test imports from a project set-up separate from my own to ensure imports work as expected and I would like to do more testing for collision and positioning regarding animations since I’ve changed how I handle animations since I tested slots and collision off functions (basically need to re-test, will probably do this when I have the proper system build for animation loading). Regarding work on the alpha, I’ve been working on refining the Metadata system for importing animations a ton, my goal is to only require animators to provide their animations as a requirement, then make all the extra metadata optional. Currently, the system requires paths to the animation montage assets themselves for each actor, then an intended compatibility list, which is massively trimmed down from when I first started working on metadata which had a ton of requirements I had to find fixes and automatic systems for. If you’re curious about the metadata I’ve uploaded a .txt that explains SCake’s animation system and shows metadata. If you’re curious on what metadata can be entered when importing animations, or just want to know how the system works I recommend checking it out!

Keep in mind, all this information could change before release! I am still actively updating this doc!
Sugar Cake – Metadata.txt in in my R18+ Palworld Mods folder - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iAm8sPZO1t2aO2pKcBlWvxUNY1A2HsmU?usp=drive_link

Note, it doesn’t display in monospace properly so the animation examples look strange, here’s a quick screenshot of the guide formatted correctly.

Oh, right, that’s also something I did this week, I completely overhauled how I was handling animations. Man, it’s been a busy week! >.<

I’m no longer planning to hijack or integrate with the game’s internal systems and instead am building my own animation system, which is probably for the best anyways since it should stay functional (outside workaround methods) between game updates. I’ve already tested a 3 path animation progression system but I haven’t written the alpha version’s handling yet. I think the design itself is rather sound, and better yet it’s very flexible and open to user configuration! I plan to allow users to alter all the metadata an behavior of animations though an integrated UI. More major is how SCake loads and presents animations, SCake is designed around the idea of “Animation Events” where users can select various animations and string them together through “stages” with configurable elements. Not only can animators implement their own Animation Events, but users will also be able to use animations imported into the game through the framework to create their own! There’s a lot of automation behind the scenes to get this all working, it takes all the customized input from the animation to string things together automatically without the need for additional user input. I also hope to implement a string-parser that I originally built for Project Akita (Aki-bashi) a while back so users could share animation events with just a simple copy-paste! Initially however I’ll only be supporting BP implemented integration just to limit potential issues for the first alpha release, then use the parser in the next major release.

Yeah, it’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s getting done and at a pretty smooth pace! Just have to be careful not to burn myself out, that would suck. >.<

Ok, figured out how I’m going to approach this section, I’m going to talk about my plans for the week, then present projects that are currently at the top of my “to-do” list in order of severity, only showing 3 entries not to get people’s hopes up if I don’t get to something lower on the list.

This week I hope plan to work mostly on Project Sugar Cake and try to get a release out as soon as possible. I feel I’m really close to said alpha release but there’s still a lot of work to be done so it could end up taking the whole week, but I hope things go smoothly so it’s less “I found another issue that breaks everything and needs fixing” and more “I wanted to polish this aspect and add this feature.” I also have a Demi-God pack planned already, I just didn’t produce the preview image stuff and package it for release since time slipped away from me as I got distracted with SCake. If I get time there’s some testing I’d like to do for Succubus Heart, a community member let me know of some potential issues regarding the Succubus Realm’s name which messes up save metadata (no effect on actual save data) and I think we have some good leads on another bug that’s been causing a rare few users some major issues (I’d really like to finally fix that bug >.<).

2 : Demi-God AI Pack 2

3 : Succubus Heart DEV version release

I got distracted.

No, like really REALLY distracted! It was Palworld’s fault! Or, more accurately, modding palworld’s fault. So last week I had a couple of plans with an article to finish, some writing to do, maybe release a Demi-God pack. But, alas, after I got feedback and suggestions on what to work on for a Palworld mod I got inspired and motivated, and by motivated I mean “a bit obsessed.” Anyways, got a write up of my modding experience with Palworld, announcing a new project and some really interesting tidbits about my progress!

I guess this is somewhat of a bit announcement? Last week I asked for feedback both from our Discord community and over on Lover’s Lab, while also patrolling the internet looking for suggestions on what kind of project I should work on for Palworld. And, well, it’s a bit of a big one with a rather interesting reason behind it. Project Sour Cake is a work-in-progress Sex and Stats Framework for Palworld! Yeah, I know, sounds like a lot of work, and yeah, it will be! But I’m determined, now even more than ever, and let me explain a bit. The modern creatives scene is in a very poor spot right now, there’s constantly people chasing that next thing for clout, money, and status, and we saw it hit really hard and fast with Palworld. Within’ a day of release there were people already making large promises for walled off mods of grand scale. I was a bit late to the scene, I was skeptical if Palworld would even be any good, but when I did jump in I got to see the heat of this drama at its peak. I’ve now seen 4 other ‘animation frameworks’ be promised, however, unlike the open and caring types of modders we’ve seen in the past who are open about their project and collaborating with the community. All 4 of these projects are closed off with creators either being secretive or just outright refusing to speak about it, and they won’t collaborate with the community, both in terms of sharing information but also taking in feedback and ideas. So, that’s where I come in, I am going to be developing Project Sour Cake as a more open and friendly project, one where I both take feedback from the community, and collaborate with the community, so we end up with not just a framework, but a better modding scene overall. Of course, at this moment there’s no actual framework out yet, and it’s possible one of these more closed off sources provides a better experience right away, but I’m confident that if I get the chance to really develop Project Sour Cake, we can make something unlike the rest.

Interest Gauge Thread on LL - https://www.loverslab.com/topic/225286-modding-palworld-ideas-and-proposal-direction-decided-still-taking-suggestionsfeedback/
Project Announcement Thread on LL - https://www.loverslab.com/topic/225549-project-sour-cake-sex-and-stat-framework-gameplay-mod/

Sounds all peachy right? Unfortunately it’s not always so bright, I have made major progress but that doesn’t mean getting a framework going is going to be easy! I have a bit of a story to tell here, with some good news, and some bad. This round of news is about importing custom/unique animations! (Looking for animators by the way, if you’re interested please contact me!)

The good news? I got custom animations imported into the game without major issues!~
[Example video of an Arm-Wave test at the bottom of the post, couldn't figure out how to move it in the blog >.<]

The bad news? It’s a massive pain to set up manually, and will continue to be a thorn in our sides until mod tools improve.

Let me start with where my issues started and we’ll work through it. There’s a couple of warnings you get when you start modding certain parts of Palworld, and a rather prevalent one here is “don’t edit the Skeleton, and don’t include a Skeleton with your mod.” This is a pretty big deal, we know custom skeletons are important for the future of great animations and frameworks, so what’s the hold up? Unfortunately, it has to do with some very deeply ingrained choices from PocketPair (the devs of Palworld) and how UE5 works. We, as modders, do not currently have the tools to export the fully compressed Skeleton created within UE5 from the devs, I’ll touch on this in a second, but instead we just have to extract a skeleton from another asset, specifically a Skeleton Mesh. These skeletons seem alright at first glance, as they are specifically designed for the mesh they are attached to, so you can extract it and get your mesh animating just fine, but unfortunately once you try to import it into the game, things go wrong. You’ll start seeing your character spin and deform in ways you never thought imaginable, corrupted and bugginess that would make the OG Skyrim devs blush! It’s not a good time, and the solution is hard to find.

What was the choice that caused this ruckus? UE5 has a feature where it compresses Skeleton and Animation data into simplified data for the sake of memory and performance. It’s a great feature, it means you can have really complex objects with tons of animation bones without massive performance issues! The problem? The devs abused the HELL out of it. How does it work and why is it a problem here? Since we can’t actually extract this compressed skeleton, it means we can’t get the proper indexing order of different bones, and it just so happens that UE4/5 uses that indexing to reference animations and skeleton bones once you’re actually in-game. This means you could load up an animation and it’ll reference bones as normal in the editor, but once you load it in-game it breaks because the index order of the bones has changed. This doesn’t affect every character in the game mind you, but it does affect a rather large number and gets worse the deeper you look. An additional feature that this compression feature allows is shared skeleton data across similar meshes, typically using re-targeted animations. Palworld uses a ton of these for the “human” type characters, meaning there are 1211 bones in the ‘human’ skeleton! Now, to the Dev’s credit, that must have been no small feat putting bones in for literally anything that could move, but damn is this going to make our lives harder.

So why does this happen? When you are working on these kinds of projects you typically have a starting point and then build on that starting point. Standard stuff, right? But here’s the problem, since the developers were going to be updating things as development went along it also meant that as new characters/objects/needs arised through development they had to add additional bones to the compressed skeleton. Every time they needed to add a new character, boom, new bones! New hair shape, new back pack with an extra flap to apply physics too? Oh, but what about that cap on the merchant, that needs to wave! All honorable additions, however ever time they made those additions, if the devs didn’t completely re-import all their skeletons then they would have a mis-match of the index order I mentioned earlier and their animations would break! To fix this, UE5 automatically puts the new bones at the bottom of the indexing order, pre-baked animations outside of the game will still reference specific bones, but UE5 notes that new order when cooking/packaging a game project. This means the indexing order is no longer based on bone hierarchy, but instead arbitrary based on whatever order the developer’s added things. Since we don’t have access to those original skeleton assets, and we can’t directly export the hierarchy with proper indexing, it means our exports of that skeleton data mis-match. With meshes we can just exclude the skeleton and never have to worry about it, remember, before things are baked/packaged into a game everything is still referenced by name instead, so it all works great, but in-game we’re working with assets out of our control. This also affects our ability to add new bones to meshes as well, but that’s unfortunately outside my wheelhouse at the moment, but we (the modding community) are starting to look for solutions and making progress!

Ok, but how do we fix it? The short answer? We don’t. Sound grim, but let me explain, because we don’t have to actually fix it. There’s 3 solutions currently for animations, first is find a way to export and use those compressed skeletons. With those skeletons we’d have the proper index and access to all the bones without any tricks or foolery. Second, we bake every model with a new skeleton and export+import every base game animation for our new skeleton overloard. Or, and this is my solution, we create re-sorted versions of these skeletons with mesh set-ups using a variety of tricks. This is the preferred method as it doesn’t conflict with the game and allows the best compatibility with future mods! However, it’s not exactly ‘easy’ to get going, to do this you need to extract the proper bone index order from the original skeleton file, then replicate that order within every exported mesh you work with in regards to animations. For the human model most things can be animated from a single skeleton, so although it has 1211 bones, most are not actually related to the body at all, so we just fill in the gaps and re-parent bones until the index matches. It’s tedious, but it works! The major drawback here is that there are over 100 individual meshes with different skeletons, so that’s going to take a long while to get set-up. There’s also another minor issue, the exporter which we typically use, Fmodel, interprets UE5 ‘sockets’ as bones as well, so those need to be removed since they are not part of the bone index order. Oh, and one last thing, we want to avoid editing those gap-filling bones and leave them without animation data unless you want to go through and mesh+weight paint for it on every model that lacks them. Yeah, fun stuff. (If you need help or want to know my method, feel free to contact me on Discord ^-^)

Plan, got one? For now, I want to see what the community comes up with while I manually work out some of these models into animate-able .blend files and collaborate with interested animators. (which, if you are someone that would like to animate scenes for Palworld, I would appreciate the help! ^-^) The collaborative members of the Palworld modding community have made modding for the game speed at an insane pace, so I’m sure we’ll have a solution eventually, but for me I will move my focus onto actually getting the framework up-and-going to get more animators interested and start putting more focus on the issue. Hopefully, with those efforts, we can get something that works for everyone! I will, however, be making an animator’s guide and publishing it, preferably on the Palworld modding wiki, to help future Palworld explorers!

Short story, how did I find it? Was rather silly actually. When I started modding Palworld I jumped right into the coding aspect, I had already gauged interest on what people wanted to I had a goal, but this meant I did skip some of the basic steps other people were taking. This meant when I tried to get animations going I had to then go back and fix a ton of things with just exporting/importing content to/from the game. But ultimately what tipped me off was noticing that when I did a wave-arm test (T-pose character with arms moving up and down, easy animation test to do quickly) the left arm was animating correctly even after the rest of the mesh exploded and went terribly wrong. This told me the front order was correct, and it wasn’t long before I noticed in the UE5 editor that the bone index order was incorrect. This lead me to doing research on UE5 and its handling, I also remembered a user on the modding discord, who goes by the name “Shifty” had mentioned something about bone index when adding bones to meshes. Their information helped accelerate my own research and I found the solution after some more digging into the game-files and understanding more about UE5 animations.

Anyways, write up over, quite the story, but now we have working animations! My next goal is to get some basic AI stuff working and to create a ‘solo player’ animation to have something to actually release and get public! (hopefully I can get this done by the end of the week?)

> Succubus Heart 5.3.1 Release
Just a bug-fix update, fixed a menu error and BDSM Rating being calculated incorrectly. It was requested so I took time between Palworld modding to get out an update. Still would have liked to work on some other bugs but didn’t make much progress on my little time working on it. (oh well >.<)
Download Link : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yqt2P0fu2JRsjOIcuD7kAa03JuQ3rvZw?usp=drive_link

I did a huge write up above, so I’ll be brief here. Basically just worked on Palworld modding the whole week after starting mid-tuesday, have had a LOT of progress. Basically been reverse-engineering the game, finding functions for the framework and learning a lot about the internals of the game. Honestly, with my current knowledge we could get a basic framework up and going, it’s just going to take time to build it, and of course we’re going to run into bugs/issues along the way for sure.

I was using this section to talk about what I planned for the week, but I think I’m just going to list projects I am actively working on in-order of things I intend them to release in? I don’t really know how to do this section well yet. >.<
1 : Release a very stripped-down and basic version of Project Sour Cake. (hopefully to start some interested from animators)
2 : Release a dang Demi-God pack.
3 : Finish AI Merge Disclosure article
4 : Work on Update for Succubus Heart
5 : Begin the CivitAI follow-up article
5 seems like a lot, but I never followed the weekly plan anyways... >.>