Drowning In Sand: The Character Creator’s Imminent Descent!
Hey, hey people. Development marches on! The promised day approaches! This month has been incredibly productive, so let us begin.
Scheduling
I am proud to announce, the new and improved character creator will make its debut with release of version 0.0.1-A on May 3rd 2024. Just under a few weeks from now!
I’ve now moved most resources towards Sandbox development. In the run up to release of the character creator, I will be putting the finishing touches on the build. Clean-ups to animations, widgets, tool-tips, and a little bit of tutorial guidance. Simple things which shouldn’t delay us any further, and worst case scenario can always come later. The “tutorial” element is probably the only mandatory feature, though I assure you it’s nothing fancy. It will most likely consist of a pop-up informing players “This is an alpha character creator, the rest of the game is still under development so you can’t proceed further. Have fun creating~”. Something to that effect.
The public release date is now set in stone. I now more than anything want to get it back in everyone’s hands, and following your feedback, figure out what works, what sucks, does it crash every minute? Hopefully not lol. Why aren’t pompadours priority number one!? That kind of thing. And from there I can add new content to the character creator on the side.
Today, we’re going to have a little retrospective, talk about the most recent developments, and briefly touch on where my current focus lies with the sandbox. Be sure to let me know your thoughts and feedback! I will strive to keep on doing what I’m doing, but it goes without saying, your feedback is invaluable. If you like what I’m doing, want to see me doing something better or have any thoughts in between, please be sure to leave a comment. It really does help me know whether or not you like or dislike the current direction.
A Retrospective
For those of you who are only just joining us, following the whole Unity Engine kerfuffle, I’ve put a lot of time into not only switching engines (From Unity to Unreal), but using this as an opportunity to make things better than before. The situation as a whole has certainly been far from ideal, but I do not hold any regrets given what fruits this change has already begun to bear. I’m quite pleased with how far we’ve come since just last October.
Looking back, a lot has transpired these last several months. I hit the ground running, tested like crazy, and had to completely rethink how things should look and feel. Now the dust has settled I think I can confidently say what we have now has a leg up on the previous iteration. And I’m not just saying this from an aesthetic standpoint, but also on a technical level.
Many were saddened by the change. I myself am malding to this day. I put far too many hours into bashing my head against the wall with 2D animation, planning and the whole pipeline behind it, but, after putting the time into this new system, It’s clear the style of game I’m creating benefits from the change immensely. Customization is a fundamental component to the game and with my previous workflow, I was riding up against the limitations of 2D time and time again.
Looking back, a lot has transpired these last several months. I hit the ground running, tested like crazy, and had to completely rethink how things should look and feel. Now the dust has settled I think I can confidently say what we have now has a leg up on the previous iteration. And I’m not just saying this from an aesthetic standpoint, but also on a technical level.
Many were saddened by the change. I myself am malding to this day. I put far too many hours into bashing my head against the wall with 2D animation, planning and the whole pipeline behind it, but, after putting the time into this new system, It’s clear the style of game I’m creating benefits from the change immensely. Customization is a fundamental component to the game and with my previous workflow, I was riding up against the limitations of 2D time and time again.
One might assume 3D is more work when it comes to animation, modelling etc, and while both mediums do have their own strengths and weaknesses, for my use case at least, 3D has been so much better. It’s unintuitive to think of, but 3D is better for me largely because of maintainability and raw flexibility. With 2D, when you want to change a base animation you have to update all your composite parts to match. Redo cloaks, redo hair, redo arms, legs etc, etc, and the more items your game has, the worse it gets… Whereas with 3D, if you want to change an animation, you just change it and all your composite parts will follow the rig. If you want to change an item mesh, you just change it. It’s magical.
2D did look pretty but it’d probably have added few years to development, and stolen a couple more years of my lifespan given the standard I aspire for. I may return to the style in future in some other game where ludicrous amounts of customization aren’t a main point of focus and I have more of a team behind me. Who knows~
From the get go, my aim has been to make something as good as – if not better than what we had prior. No doubt the model has room for improvement and will improve as time goes on, but as a general point of thumb, do you think we’ve landed on something as good as or better than what we had before? Is it worse? Let me know your honest thoughts.
So, here we are. The Character creator nears completion for standard functionality. We have basically every key feature of the original, and then some. The UI and aesthetic are all in keeping and consistent. I think we’re in a really solid position to move forward from. It’s as if we’re back at the latter half of last year.
I can’t say it enough but I must reiterate, thank you all so much for backing this project, subscribing, chatting on the server, commenting, and just following along. Had it not been for everyone’s support I really would not have been able to dedicate so much time and resources to the project. Now as I dive deep into sandbox development with reckless abandon, I can’t wait to see everything come together.
Men Men Men
We’ve enjoyed our time reminiscing over the past. It’s time for the present. Without further ado…
I present, Man… Well. Technically not man, but rather, Magu? Yes. Magu. Magu Magu.
The player has been updated to allow for female to male blends. There has been a slight change to the buttons on UI. Selecting “Male” under Build will now switch the appearance to male defaults while selecting “Female” under Build will switch the appearance to female defaults.
To accompany the new sex I’ve added an Outfit set called “Dapper”, which is just a more masculine variant of the “Adventurer” set. I’ve also added a male underwear I’m sure you’ll enjoy. I’ve also expanded the selection of sliders so that you may create something male, female, or anything in between. I’ve also updated the character description system with the view system so we can determine what you are based on appearance. Male, female, futa, trap, reverse trap, double reverse trap. The whole shebang.
How Did We Get Here?
One of the major challenges was figuring out how we get a 3D character which can be male, female or anything in between. On one hand, you can have separate male and female skeletons and attempt to bridge between the two bodies through sliders and bone scaling… The only problem is, that’s not seamless. You’re always going to have a snap change at certain points when swapping bases, and it doubles the mesh requirement as each base needs its own tailored outfits. And it doesn’t end there. Now you have to worry about, eyelashes, eyebrows, hair, seams, how it all fits on each skeleton. A lot of work gets doubled and we have more complexity to worry about. Now some outfits may need variants for style’s sake, but if we’re talking purely about fit, there are far more scalable solutions.
Given the relative simplicity of our art style, I’ve opted to have a single body which can morph between male and female using a mix of blending, bone scaling and bone translations. As far as I know this isn’t done all too often as texture warping can get you into trouble, but we’re cel shaded! We don’t need super high detail textures to make things pop so, what we have just works.
There’s also an added benefit. Because everything ties back to one base mesh, this means male builds have access to most of the same options as females and vice versa. We will of course have separate male and female animations. If we didn’t then things would look weird. On that note, I’m wondering how I should handle the switch between male and female animation. Should the player get to decide how they walk and run? Should it be based on archetype, or apparel? Or should it all be automated and change based on a combination of factors? Appearance, psyche, hips, body and mind. Let me know your thoughts~
Future Body Development
We definitely need more masculine hairstyles so male builds have more to work with. We can also have a think about facial hair and body hair if people really want it.
As for all around body types, currently you can only really create a slim or thicc character. Later I may add morphs for musculature and weight gain. Musculature may be more texture based given the games aesthetic. That way you could have slim lean or bulkier builds. It’s not a total certainty right now as all that adds more complexity and work than I need at this stage, but it is something I am seriously considering for later.
Booba Upgrades
This one goes out to all you booba lovers~
During the body upgrade I increased the poly density of the chest, and changed the method used for scaling. This has all been done to allow for cleaner deforms. The breast size nerf discussed in previous updates was in part due to the deform issues we saw when scaling bones. There was self-clipping at the largest scales and horrible outfit deforms at the smallest. With the new method, that’s no longer the case. We can have clean deforms all the way up to humongous sizes, and all the way down to being flat – which also happens to be key for male development. Cleaner, bigger booba and less finicky models to worry about. It’s a win win.
I also added scale based breast and butt jiggle variance. The bigger the jiggilier!.. This should also prevent men from having jiggly flat chests and butts. That would be rather odd. Would you like a firmness slider? Or, perhaps would you like to see jiggle physics tied into a boon or bane~
Face Time
While we’re still on the topic of modelling, let’s touch a little on the face. [Resting Smug Face] now changes the resting facial expression to a smug face. I’ve added a back-end system to manage expressions and reached a stage in the modelling process where we can start doing more face related things… “Such as”, you ask? Why, blinking of course!
It may be the tiniest of details, but it holds a surprising amount of weight when it comes to making a character feel alive. No more dead eye stare! Little by little, the details add up and the composition awakens.
It may be the tiniest of details, but it holds a surprising amount of weight when it comes to making a character feel alive. No more dead eye stare! Little by little, the details add up and the composition awakens.
Under The Hood
Putting everything to one side, this month I was mostly occupied with updating the Equip and Player appearance back-ends to C++. Doing this has dramatically sped up my ability to add new items. One such item is prosthesis.
The [Limbless] bane will now replace the player arms with mechanical counterparts when the respective sub-options are selected. I see prosthesis developing into something you can buy or upgrade in future. The starter prosthesis should resemble something shoddy, but perhaps not this shoddy, so the current models may be placeholder. For the next iteration I’d like to develop limbs with a finer mechanical look to them and perhaps some armor-like qualities. For lower grade variants I could then peel away the outer casing and imagine what it’d look like with exposed mechanisms, wiring and sigils.
A Splash Of Color
I’ve added new options for selecting lip color, nip color, and ear floof color.
The Kitsukana ear mesh and textures have been updated. I updated their ears to look more fox-like and less like the Nyaatsu ears. Nyaatsu ears meanwhile have received some ear upgrades of their own. I’ve made improvements to the base mesh and applied some simple textures for the inner ear. Bunnjin ears have also gotten some texture upgrades and I will probably be updating their mesh at a later date. You’ll be pleased to know all ears have received a buff to their jiggle factor. Very important. Highly immersive.
The Squid in the Room
Before I go, I should really address the squid in the room. Ikaware haven’t received a lot of development time because they require a tad more work than the other starter races. It’s tough to slot in. What are my plans for them? What sets them apart from the other races?
Their ears should be somewhat similar to the Magu. Just a bit pointier and longer. As for their hair, they’re meant to have wiggly tentacles which double as weapons they melee with. They are special snowflakes so I will need to carve out some time for them in the coming months.
Thank You For Attending My TED Talk
Tomorrow, we’re going to have an experimental release, and this weekend onward, most my free time will be spent putting together the sandbox. Up-scaling and porting the inventory is simple enough. Completing the command system which the TF item framework uses is expected to be more of a pain than anything. What I really hope to focus on is map development and combat. We should really solidify the world style and start treading new ground.
As usual, I’ll be posting as I go in the ol’ Discord. I realized it can at times be a pain to have to sift through chat history for snapshots , so I’ve added a new channel (#workshop) dedicated to pinning the little in-the-works posts and discussions related to present and future developments.
Don’t forget, public release cycle resumes in just under three weeks!
There is much work to be done, so with that said, I will bid you adieu. Once again thank you so much for joining me on this adventure! Till next time~
The 2d style of the original left a lot to the imagination. Now that we've got 3d, the models are what we get. I'm fine with that. What you've made and are making is pretty solid this early into development.
I'd personally like for there to be a system that lets you decide, in finer detail than height width and asset size, the shape of your character. A few examples explaining what I mean: maybe I'd like to change the color of the lips slightly and/or morph the shape around a bit until I see what I like. Maybe have a setting to preview expressions on your character to see how the face I've customized looks animated. Maybe I want to change the hip width or thigh gap, or decide how distended or *round* that cushion's gonna be. Maybe I'd like some hip bone or a thinner or wider body/bodyparts. I'm hestiant to even give these examples because I'm not sure what's 'feasible'. Especially since it's all sliders right now. I know some games like BnS or BDO let you hover over and highlight parts of the body that can be customized. That seems like million-dollar-company-advanced stuff though.
Well.. those are just off the top of my head, and features like that would probably be an astronomical time-sink that would further delay the transition into sandbox era. I imagine after sufficient advancement into development, and after many refinements for character modeling, adding features like what I listed would give a lot more freedom to materialize what we want in our character. Not sure if I'm talking out my ass about that btw. 😅
I like the idea of the player being able to decide the posture/femininity of their character's animations. What if I wanted my character to feel like they came straight outta jojo with incredible musculature but be doing some zesty walks and idle stances. Maybe you could add 'Bizarre' as a bane somehow; higher special enemy and event encounter rates and copious amounts of ✨style. In a game I played, 'Degrees of Lewdity', the player had the option to set what their character's preferences(psyche/mind) were like, and could set their posture to look more masculine or more feminine. So if I was to be presumptuously demanding, I'd say let the game decide what's natural from various physical factors(this can be fine tuned with feedback or testing), then have the player change it to how they like with some settings in the character profile after the fact. Of course, implementing boons and banes that affect this is something I wholeheartedly endorse.
If you like the idea of having personal skills, like acting, decide the effective charisma check that *posture*, being feminine/masculine anim settings, could have on whatever the player's interacting with, then I'd be glad I suggested. I otherwise find it hard to suggest things when I have no idea where the line is drawn. I also sort of feel as if invoking another game to communicate my idea is in poor taste, but it was the greatest example I felt could give.
I think I remember seeing you post a vidlink in the discord that showcased some amazing ass physics, will physics like these be possible? I also wonder about the shape of character model and genitals. What's the future hopin' to look like there? I know right now it's sort of just some featureless shadowed out part down there, so I'm interested in how that's going to shape up.
Male model lookin' great btw. 👌
>"I'd personally like for there to be a system that lets you decide, in finer detail than height width and asset size"
0.0.0-5E does include more customisation options. Now you can change lip color and size. There are plans to eventually increase the max size, and I wouldn’t mind adding more mouth shape options later. Face expression previews could be fun. I plan to add body pose previews so those could go hand in hand with one another quite nicely. I also plan to add teeth at some point so we will need some expressions to help show off those chompers~
Hip width has also been implemented, and when paired with the thigh size slider, you can control thigh gap. When you say cushion do you mean belly or love handles? or something more like butt shape? Please don't hesitate to give examples. I'm all for adding more points of customization. Some sliders are definitely easier to implement than others. For instance, blends (eg. breast slider) will effectively increase the amount of work that has to go into creating and maintaining each equip moving forward, whereas with bone based deforms (eg. hip width and thigh size, height), once implemented, it's unlikely to warrant later work unless we discover issues with extreme deforms. So there's no real concern as to whether or not something is feasible. If it's just something that has to be done late, I don't mind taking on ideas at a lower priority now and coming back to implementing them when the time is right.
>"BnS or BDO let you hover over and highlight parts of the body that can be customized"
The click and drag on body part feature is a tad more difficult to implement than sliders lol. I saw that feature for the first time in Sims 4. I've also played BnS. It is good, and I don’t doubt my ability to program that kind of feature. It’d just be too much of a time sink to justify at this stage. At the moment, sliders just get the job done but feel free to submit the idea in #idea-chat. It is a really cool feature and I’d be interested to see if others agree.
I don’t mind you using examples of other games. It does present a fair point of reference to help convey your message. On that note, perhaps I should try out this "Degrees of Lewdity" in the name of "research".🤭
On the topic of specialized animations, I'm probably going to implement this wacky thing: https://open.codecks.io/arkavite/decks/9-sugges...
We could for sure have some "bizarre" poses and animations if you catch my drift.
>"I remember seeing you post a vidlink in the discord that showcased some amazing ass physics, will physics like these be possible?"
I’m pretty sure the vid in question used some kind of blender soft body physics simulation. Video games tend not to use that technique for real time jiggle physics because it’s a demanding process and a little overkill (at least for my needs). I imagine It’d be difficult to maintain a regular framerate if we had something like that. I'm not sure what the future holds in terms of hardware and engine advancements, so maybe one day, but not for now. There are hacks developers implore to get “realistic enough” jiggle physics which are less performance intensive. I’ve opted for those. As I mentioned on the server, there are some additional techniques I may try which could improve the booba sim a little.
>"Character model and genitals?"
For genitals I plan to model and texture variant nether-regions for female and futa. That way the land down unda will be without seams. For fellas, I’ll be adding a peen slider and a flaccid vs erect preview button. Further into the future I may also introduce race based variants.
>"Male model lookin' great btw"
Thank you!💖
I was definitely referring to butt shape, but after a thought exercise on how 'I' could make it possible, lack of a way to do it notwithstanding, I have to change what I said. In most games, sound settings can be split up into multiple sliders, like sfx and music. The slider for butt size just changes it all bigger or smaller, kinda like a singular 'master' volume setting.
Maybe you can incrementally work towards making select bodyparts(tits, legs, hips, waist, ass) a drop-down list of sliders that change the shape of those parts in various ways. Kinda like having a width and height, (or length depending on the perspective), setting for each body part. Though I would keep a few 'master' size settings for those people who don't wanna put that much thought into it.
I also know that some characters are more soft or muscular, is that on the table? Sliders to mix and match fat/muscle and skinny/thicc to achieve different body shapes for the lewd/meme would give us a whole lot more control.
Also, I am the type of guy to want everything than to want just a few or one. So I'd ask for a lot if I didn't know better. Or maybe I still am asking for a lot with these suggestions? I have no damn clue. Lovehandles yes, belly yes. What if I want to produce the milfiest milf that ever milfed? Gotta have options. 😤 Some tastefully-placed pudge in some areas make for a delightfully lewd body.
Here's an exaggeratingly-demanding list of suggestions: face structure presets, eye shapes, eye seperation distance, eye position height, eye depth, eyelid droop, eye size width/height, similar dropdown list of sliders for forhead options, cheekbone options, cheek options, jaw options, nose options, and finally making the sliders a positive/negative value slider with 0 in the middle and max numbers on either end. Pretty much all taken from BnS and TERA lol.
That was as much satire as it was me exploring the limits. I understand that you're the single driving force making it all happen here, so common sense tells me the likelihood of any of that happening now or ever. 👌
Having the "master" sliders expand into more sliders is a great approach to nesting the complexity. I could try that out. That would at least lessen the chances of reaching true slider hell.
As for soft or muscular characters, as mentioned in the above devlog, it is something I am seriously considering for later body development. Creating more milfy types would be fun. 👌
Exaggeratingly-demanding list noted! Many potential options to explore lol