Gaze XIV - Spawn, Breed, Build

New Spawner

As mentioned in an earlier gaze; Drathek has been doing some refactoring work and improving various core mechanics (like gunplay and movement system), and they're next going to tackle the spawning system. 

Currently the spawning system works so that we have spawners (spawning spheres with specific kind of prey than can spawn) check if player is in range, and then spawn or despawn prey on the map. While the current system is passable, it's not very controllable and easily results in situations where you can travel across the map and not run into any prey at all OR if the number of spawners is increased, you'd have too many prey and that would kill the performance, and you still might only find only a hand of them. 

The core concept of the new system is being able to determine "biomes" or "sectors" of the map that basically determine the type of prey that can spawn there, some sectors being higher change for rare skins, or rare color palettes, while others more likely to spawn very common skins. And the spawner itself would be, instead of a pile of general spawners, a one, smart, spawner that is aware of the prey spawned, where they are spawned, and how many we want to spawn. The new spawner would basically attempt to spawn prey where you might be able to detect them (e.g. the old spawner would just spawn within radius, it might be behind you, while you're travelling somewhere, so you would never see the prey that would spawn, and despawn little bit after, only wasting precious processing power).

Of course the new system wouldn't mean you'll just run into prey constantly, only that you're more likely to find prey, without us having to spawn a lot of prey around you. Spawn 2 prey, you might find one, vs spawning 200 prey, and you might find one. That's the difference in a nutshell ^^

New Character Editor

This is still very barebones and we don't have anything visually to show, but Nullbunny is currently (when they have time from me asking for help or new features for the conversation system ^^') working on a new Character Editor. Basically the core idea is that you create characters independent from the scenes, and all your characters you create have the same depth as the game character does (ability to set name, pronouns, tags (backgrounds etc), and clothes and body modifications later on). While this means you can't just edit characters in Showroom, you will be able to swap characters you've build whenever you want in the Showroom, to whichever slot, or even to whatever amount you need (want to have sex with yourself? Why not!) ^^

You will also be able to share characters between other players ^^

Initially the new Character Editor will just have the same options as the Showroom/Menu customizer does, but we'll eventually expand it with more specific customization options, like customizing parts of body and face.

Future with NPCs

The idea we have with the NPCs is that we'll first build a good basic set of NPCs, maybe around 5 to 6 with acts, and small pile of non-actable minor NPCs, and then we'll start voting monthly, to see whether or not we want to add a new NPCs, or expand depth of a specific NPC. I'm hoping to do it fairly dynamically, so that you have more influence in NPCs and what you want to see ^^

I have finally figured out how to fix Unity's issue with Blendshapes (mesh adjustments, like the masculinity slider is in Customizer), I'll have to rework some bits from the meshes to circumvent the issue, which means it will take some time before we can properly customize the looks of the NPCs (and expand options in Character Editor), but all is now golden going forward for new races too! :3

New build

The next build is nearing completion. I still have one act to write (for one of the two characters coming in the build) and a few conversation options, and Hareress is adding some additional variation to act loops. We tested a >1<->2<->3< animation randomization with Pail's intro (first stage, licking) and it looks great, and feels great, so we're doing it for all the characters (though I think Pail has to wait. Sorry Pail x)) ^^

In this build we've also improved the placement of the locations in the wilderness and improved the range you can find them at, so it will be a lot easier to find act locations without running around wildly. We've also done some basic improvements to the spawner (not the new spawner!) so that it's less likely you'll wander around with nothing to hunt.

Also SuperSampling is back! <3

I dare not give a specific date for the build, but we're aiming for early next week ^^

Well! This was quite a checklist of a Gaze this time ^^' I actually wrote things down in advance this time, so I had some "possible" coherency to my rambling xD

I hope you all had a great Easter weekend! <3 

With love,
~Ruffleneck