(entry also available on my personal site : https://www.michaelpstanich.com//blogpost/2024-03-21_Project_Sugar_Cake_0.0.3_DEV_Released.html )
It’s been a good while since I’d made a string parser, but I’m glad I at least had some sort of previous experience! Would have certainly taken longer if I hadn’t (manually managing search depth is a pain >.<) even if it still took longer than expected. What am I referring too? Project Sugar Cake can now register animations through .json files! I’ve added a quick how-to to the ReadMe and placed templates in “~mods/AnimJSON” within the mod’s release package and install. Now SCake comes with the previously mentioned AnimJSON folder where these register .json files will be placed, any .json files you wish to have load in-game must be added to the new “_LoadList.json” file, then when SCake loads in-game it will use that load list to pull the appropriate .json files, parse the .json as a string and properly pass that string to the register to parse and convert into animation data. I won’t go over all the metadata stuff here (there’s a lot) but one of the templates explains each parameter and those templates show how to format things, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get started! I recommend using a JSON editor with auto-correction and error checking, I used the online editor https://jsoneditoronline.org/ to help speed up the process, and I recommend it! (Easy to understand interface and has both a raw text mode as well as a ‘tree’ mode with more intuitive visuals).

What’s really exciting about this is that .json import options are not just for animators, but users as well! Users can edit or create their own .json metadata files to customize existing animations, create alternate versions, and make their own full events using any combination of animations they like! In the future I’d like to have a UI for this, but that’s still quite far off, but the .json importer does have support within the API so once a UI is up we can implement a ‘refresh .json import’ option or something so you can edit .json files and have them re-import without having to reload your game!

I also updated the Scake_BasicsAnimPak to be compatible with the new version and now supports .json import options. SCake SDK got updated to the new version with the new API call for .json imports.

Download Links!
GDrive Folder - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vYfgMom7UJs2OmJ5B4FGQTMYEOR0n9Vr?usp=drive_link
Mega Folder - https://mega.nz/folder/9hZQ2IIR#Ou77tq4qQxw9UBQsozh6zg

- Project Sugar Cake -
- Full Change Log -
SCake Version 0.0.3 DEV
Note : Data structure had changes this update, BP mods will need to be recompiled with the newest SDK release

Added : JSON string and data parser for registering animations, now you can create JSON files and place them in the ~mods/AnimJSON then add the file name to the "_LoadList.json"
 - - - - - If any errors are in the JSON file's formating it will fail to load (BP limitation)
 - - - - - Animations no longer need to be LogicMods and can be installed like any replacer mod, though BP registeration is still available
 - - - - - Users can create their own JSON files or edit existing ones to create their own events or customize animations
 - - - - - Templates are now included with SCake's main installation
 - - - - - "_LoadList.json" is required, however it is split up in distribution to prevent overwritting player's customized json when updating the mod
Added : SCake_RegisterAllJSON to the API, call this to re-register all JSON animations listed in the _LoadList
Added : "Speed Default" in registered animations now functional
Added : "StartTime" in registered animations now functional
Added : "Speed Mod" in Stages now functional
Added : Keybind K (Start animation between 2 targets) will now try to start a solo animation if the same character is selected twice
Added : "AddTags" in AnimEvent now functional (Appends additional tags to the event in addition to those added in the animations)
Added : Animation Register now sends a total successful registered count whenever there is a pause while registering

Changed : Simplified "Act Types" and introduced "Act Location" to make registering animations easier and allow easier future additions
Changed : "HasPostClimax" for registering events is now set to false by default
Changed : "EquipLocation" is now a 'name' variable type to support socket/bone names and not just presets (Equip system is still non-functional)
Changed : When characters path to animate, even a failed move (When 'Move Failed' would display) will still trigger the animation (characters will just teleport, helps the mod feel less inconsistent and buggy. This issue isn't really with the framework, it's just the quick and dirty AI which bugs out a lot.)

Removed : Anim and AnimEvent Registered messages from showing in ReportUI (Still shows failed registers with error codes)
Removed : Equip Location enum is removed and now invalid (we parse a name variable now instead to allow custom bone/slot names)

Fixed : Sexual Pleasure going into the negatives after an animation (accidentally shipped the wrong build which had this bug >.<)
Fixed : Register component not automatically starting after a game load if a register API function is never called
Fixed : "Stage Order" being ignored and erroring out if the animation playing didn't play through stages linearly
- - - - - Note : This Stage Order bug also broke things like play-time, animaiton playback, post-climax anims, all should hopefully be fixed now
Fixed : Stage Duration for non-looping animations setting to 0 seconds when the number of stages exceeded actor count (Was a very silly mistake X.x)
Fixed : AnimVersion number not working properly (Technically also fixed the internal version number not working correctly, but this means nothing front-end)

- SCake SDK -
- Full Change Log -
0.0.3
Updated for Data Structure changes in SCake 0.0.3
Removed "EquipLocation" Enum as it's no longer used by SCake
Added SCake_RegisterAllJSON function
Added missing register functions to the example mod
Updated ReadMe with variable types

- SCake_BasicAnimPak -
- Full Change Log -
BasicsAnimPack 0.0.3
Added : Now includes SCake_BasicAnimPak.json for installing with SCake's json importer
Changed : Recompiled for SCake 0.0.3 DEV
Changed : UniqueAnimID and name information
Changed : Updated Climax metadata

There’s some limitations to JSON handling in regards to mods, in a normal game project you would just create your own tools and custom nodes to handle this kind of thing or import a plugin but when working with Palworld modding I’ve decided to stick entirely to BP mods to ensure maximum compatibility and hopefully ensure better future support. This leads to some problems, because UE5’s file handling blueprints for files outside the typical asset register (which would require packaging then assets to pull from) is extremely limited, we have to use UE5’s native JSON importer. “So what’s the big deal, doesn’t UE5 have JSON parser nodes already?” Why yes, it does, except they don’t actually function properly! UE5’s native JSON support is abysmal, so instead I use it only to load the JSON and convert it into a string, then I built a fully custom string parser that searches through the string and pulls the data into a data map, which we can then search and use. I take advantage of search depth (tracking start and end points of datasets to separate them) and any with a depth above 0 would be parsed as a JSON string, then I parse those strings whenever the data needs to be pulled and put it into its own datamap. As this process goes on, I store the data pass it into the Animation Register. Well, technically I pull the full JSON string and pass that to the register, then the register calls the parser functions, but you get the idea! (probably?)

Either way, I’m super happy with this method as it’s very flexible and surprisingly fast, and it’s not even had an optimization pass yet! (I need to re-sort fail states so things fail faster if they are going to at all, add null checks to skip logic, and use more skips in places so repetition isn’t required and we don’t process unneeded variables.) Because we parse things into a data map, we can even ignore arbitrary data left in the .json so people can leave comments in there if it helps, similar to how I have the description template set up, though I recommend keeping them to a minimum or remove them before distribution to reduce memory overhead. I also have it planned to process them in batches, currently it just tries to load them all at once which isn’t that great memory wise, but given we’re still lacking animations that can come in a later update!

But there are limitations.

Most of UE5’s file tools for blueprints is actually a plugin, and palworld doesn’t include it! This means we’re very limited on what we can do via blueprints (and I am still not confident C++ mod support will uphold compatibility, especially since SCake needs to have the SDK easily accessible/usable). This has 2 major effects, first we can’t dynamically pull arbitrary assets that are not within pak files and part of the regular asset registry so we have to put the .json into the provided _LoadList.json file so we know which files to pull. We can define a custom path to load from, but we can’t efficiently search a directory without either C++ or plugins (we can technically do it through manual crawling, but by doing so many search calls we could trigger anti-virus safety protocols, it’s also extremely slow). The second issue is when getting the strings themselves. When loading assets it needs to be a defined type, in C++ we just define the type but this isn’t exposed to blueprints without the optional plugin which we can’t use, so this is why I use the JSON function within UE5 to pull the asset itself. This means we have to follow UE5’s JSON import rules, which are very strict and it means JSON files can’t have any formatting errors at all or else it will fail to import. If I could pull the asset directly I could just pull it as a string and try to auto-correct small errors (I already do this to a certain extent with how my parser is built) but I don’t currently know a method within my current scope and limitations. Hopefully we can get around these 2 hurdles at some point, maybe I’ll cave and finally do some C++ stuff while keeping this fallback in-case things break in the future, but for now I think these 2 issues are ones we can live with and things are more than usable! (I just like to make things the best they can be >.< Why do I have to care so much Q.Q)

I’m still following the same plan, but will most likely work on the next few steps in a more free-flow fashion. I want to start implementing very basic versions of various functions to try and get more of the framework filled out and create the baseline, as shown here with how much sooner this update released compared to the last version change, once the base structure is built and complete it becomes much easier to put out new additions and modifications. While making the parser and researching how UE5 handles files via blueprints I found some major leads toward what I could do about persistence and this could pave the way for the rest of the framework to truly be out of Alpha! Though, I shouldn’t understate how much work is really still left to do, I have a feeling a lot of the other parts of the framework will still need to be entirely custom and there’s still planned features for the animation player that isn’t complete yet, there’s also gender swapping systems that could help (it was believed the OK Framework was going to be the solution, but it requires more manual work and isn’t all that flexible so a new solution may still be required. Having it built into the framework also isn’t a bad idea.)

Oh, I got completely side tracked, the actual next step, like, right after I make this release, is to work on tutorials for importing animations into Palworld and how to integrate them with SCake! There’s still not really any good resources for this, so it look like it’s my time to step up and take the torch. Let’s burn some stuffs!~ ^-^ (Fire is pretty.. what were we talking about again?)

Current Road Map
1 ) Create basic tutorials for importing animations and registering them with SCake
2 ) Investigate / implement equipment altering system (for unequipping weapons/armor)
3 ) Implement a basic UI with settings control (including position adjustments for anims)
4 ) Investigate persistence more and try to get stat persistence between save/loads
5 ) Investigate multiplayer compatibility

? ) Work on building new animations

Finally got things done and stable? I think? Multi-character animations are now fully functional! Did a ton for this update, including the API system, new backend structures to make future additions much easier, the framework for a cache system to speed things up once we have thousands of animations, new validation systems for animation gathering/searches/playback, new complex climax animation handling, maybe more things? (Changelog a bit below ^-^)

Changed the default hotkeys for the temporary gameplay module integrated into SCake as well for triggering anims and such.

Input Definitions
- L : Start solo player anim event
- O : Stop any anim event involving player
- U : Show player sexual pleasure in reportUI
- K : Start anim event between player and target
- J : Select 2 targets and start an anim event between them
- I : Stop any anim event involving the target
In the future, once we have a UI and persistence these will be configurable. ^-^ (hopefully these work for now >.<)

Download Links!
GDrive Folder - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vYfgMom7UJs2OmJ5B4FGQTMYEOR0n9Vr?usp=drive_link
Mega Folder - https://mega.nz/folder/9hZQ2IIR#Ou77tq4qQxw9UBQsozh6zg

- Full Change Log -
~ SCake Version 0.0.2 DEV ~
Note : Essentially Rebuilt the entire animation player and added the API systems, not everything is accessible yet but adding things in the future will be much easier once we know what to add

 Added : Animator now supports multiple characters at once (can play Human X Human, Pal X Human, Pal X Pal, whatever!)
Added : AI Handler to animator to help prevent AI breaking animations / conflicting (still has minor issues)
Added : Position handling to animator, should keep animation in the same place even if characters are pushed or pulled
Added : New validator should auto-sort and organize animating characters
Added : Additional validation for incompatible animations, should prevent any non-compatible animation (that have proper metadata) from playing
Added : More advanced climax handler, now supports specific slots orgasming to trigger specified animations within a registered animation event
Added : Pleasure gain for all characters in animations (was just the host player previously)
Added : Support for Post Climax animation playback after climax animations, skips and just ends if no post anim is found
Added : Support for 'included tags' and optionally requiring those tags when starting animations
Added : Basic stat tracking for characters where it's neccesary (no persistence between save loads yet >.<)
Added : Optimization systems to stat tracking so we only track what's needed (Basic so far, needs more advanced systems in the future)
Added : API Base for other mods to call and use SCake functions (such as starting/stopping animations, needs to be expanded on)
Added : API Call "SCake_StartAnimEvent_Basic" - Starts an animation between the supplied characters with minimal information
Added : API Call "SCake_StartAnimEvent_Advanced" - Starts an animations between the supplied characters with more advanced information
Added : API Call "SCake_StopAnim_PalTarget" - Stops any animation event the target character is involved in
Added : API Call "SCake_SendReportMessage" - Sends a report message to SCake's report UI, visible to the player
Added : API Call "SCake_CheckStat_Pleasure" - Returns the current Sexual Pleasure of the sent character
Added : API Call "SCake_Stat_AddPleasure" - Adds the specified amount to the target's Sexual Pleasure
Added : "Start animation between player and target" with default key "K"
Added : "Start animation between 2 targets" with default key "J"
Added : "Stop animation target is involved in" with default key "I"
Added : Pals play their "Happy" emote/action when animation events end (more advanced emotion handling could be added in the future)

Changed : "Start solo player animation" default key changed to "L"
Changed : "Stop player involved animation" default key changed to "O"
Changed : "Report player's sexual pleasure" default key changed to "U"
Changed : SyncPosition animation setting now defaults to disabled
Changed : Animation player was re-built and has much more advanced functions now with better duration tracking
Changed : Orgasms now add additional animation time so they don't conflict with normal stage progression
Changed : Reduced how quickly Sexual Pleasure decays when outside an animation event

Removed : A lot of debug notifications should no longer show up in the release build (sorry if I missed any >.<)

Fixed : Fixed animations only ever registering as "female solo human" animations
Fixed : Animation player getting stuck and freezing indefinately if cancelled improperly
Fixed : "Pals in Animation" tracker getting stuck if animation event was cancelled improperly
Fixed : Animating characters getting pushed/pulled or continueing movement if already in motion when animation starts
Fixed : Typos/misspellings in data structure

With this update came the SCake SDK! This SDK makes it very easy for other modders to access SCake’s API to trigger animations, stop them, or pull/modify data related to SCake! The API is a bit more limited for now, but the main functions (starting/stopping animations) is there, so if you’re a modder that’s interested it may be worth looking into.

To use the SDK, you’ll still need to set-up a modding environment for Palworld with UE5, but once that’s out of the way you just download the newest SCake SDK version, then extract the “mod” folder into your environment’s “Content” folder. Inside is a small example mod along with the “ProjectSugarCake” folder, which you do NOT want to include with your mod when you export your mod. The SDK functions by creating “dummy” assets where you can call within your blueprints/c++ mods, then when you run your mod in a game with SCake installed it will access the SCake API and run the required logic. It’s a fairly simple processes once you’re familiar with UE5, but if you ever need help don’t be afraid to reach out or post for help over in our discord! ^-^

Here’s some examples of how to use the API (check the SDK Readme or the SDK itself for more API calls and specifics)

I’ve been modifying my road map a bit, so things are in a bit of a different spot than before, primarily I want to try focusing on getting more animations onto the framework and getting the mod noticed a bit more. I need to contact a mod on Nexus Mods and see if the mod would be allowed over there (there’s some restrictions on Palworld mods and I’m not sure if Sugar Cake runs afoul to these) and will start making proper download pages on places like LoversLab since the mod is now properly usable, with one exception… That exception being animations. Currently we’ve still not had any animators output any animations for the framework, but in order for things to really get going we are going to need those, so we’re a bit stuck. It’s a 2 way issue, you need the framework for proper animations, but you need animations for the framework to be meaningful. So, I’ve shifted focus slightly to try and account for this and will most likely be making a few of my own animations (though I am very slow at it Q.Q).
 
Current road map
1 ) Create string parser for registering animations without BP modding
2 ) Investigate / implement equipment altering system (for unequiping weapons/armor)
3 ) Implement a basic UI with settings control (including position adjustments for anims)
4 ) Investigate persistence more and try to get stat persistence between save/loads
5 ) Investigate multiplayer compatibility

? ) Work on building new animations and tutorials for it

Not sure exactly what I’ll focus on after that, but we’ll see how things go over the next couple weeks and see what people request the most! If you have suggestions, please send them my way!

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