Here we are, coming in on the end of March, and time for a bit of an update to prove we're not dead or run away.

Character Builder

The character builder has had an overhaul. Not only are the new player characters in, but we've added customisation and colour wheels so you can set hair, eyes, and flesh tones. There's now 4 player characters: Male GSD & Maned Wolf, Female Coyote & Husky. 

The female squirrel has been removed for now. She's not gone forever though. The new characters use a new and improved skeletal rig which was incompatible with the squirrel, and there was an obvious style mismatch, so one of the next jobs after the next release will be updating her model.

There's still a few bugs to work out in this though, and I noticed that the stat re-roll uses a fixed midpoint for the max/min, meaning some characters with naturally lower stats would always get a massive stat boost. This will be fixed.

Player Models

As mentioned above, we have new player models as well as enemies. Yes, we are currently very canine-skewed right now. This will be changed. As well as updating the models, this has also mean every single bloody animation no longer works. This is the main reason it is taking so long to do a new release. All characters have movement and basic actions, but takedowns/captures are in progress. Due to how long they are taking, we're scaling back both of these, so to begin with we'll only have the Seduce Takedown available, and Captures will be running the same animations but inverted. Again, this is an expediency thing, we'll add animations with subsequent updates and bulk it out again.

New Animations

So far we have a M/M animation and up to Loop A of the M/F animation.

The previous system had a few sequences put together: Capture/struggle/struggle escape/Loop A/Transition/Loop B/Orgasm/Recover. Each time an animation was needed or added, it would figure out which genders and states were involved, and the whole block of code had to be repeated for each variation with the required animation in the right position. This is shit.

The new system uses gender/state to look up a data table that stores each animation and rotation and selects then plays and rotates as needed. This means we can break down the animation sequence into a lot more segments and allow some mixing and conditional stuff to happen. Crucially, it means when we add a new animation, we add a line to the table, stick in the animations and it should just work.

Finally, the new skeletons and new animations have a Root bone, so some animations can be Root Motion. What this means, is previously the animation was fixed, so if you were on a hill, you'd either animate into the air or through the ground. Now, the root sticks to the ground and adjusts. Its not perfect yet and will need tweaking, but its an improvement. It also means if a character gets moved backwards, for example, while escaping, you regain control where you land instead of the character snapping back to the start point. It also means at the end of animations, there's no need for the animation to return to the start point, making it a lot faster to regain control.

Clothing

New models means new clothing. These are getting textures and detailing to make them look better.

We're going to do a new clothing damage system as well. Before, each item of clothing had 3 models representing the damage levels. The new system will use transparency instead to mask certain areas as transparent.

Pineridge Updates

Pineridge is my wind-down work. If I've had a busy day, I'll improve something in the town. The cliffs have mostly been redone to be more rocky. Some buildings have had details added and some blocks that were building placeholders are now full buildings. The lower town now has shops and ramps to lower levels, while there's now other ways to access the ramp to the upper town. Terrain around the upper town is improved as well. The pictures below are just a current look at whats been updated. It will continue getting tweaks until the next release.

Shops

Meanwhile, Moonbat has been working away on Shop functionality. 

Vendors have got new dialog, Buy and Sell menus have been added and all the functionality you'd expect from a shop is implemented. There's some new Shop stalls being built as well for out in the game world, so when you find a shop on the map, it might not be what you're looking for. If you need Items, there might only be a clothing shop...

Pineridge has its own unique shops as well, which will start being detailed at some point. The shops will have a sell functionality, so now all those clothes you can't actually wear have a purpose.

Tweaks

We've also fixed a pile of bugs and added some useful features:

• Bug where genitals stayed hidden when clothing removed has been fixed
• Bug where you have to wait 5min after watching couple have sex before door unlocks
• Fixed female NPCs and Enemies walking and running sideways or weird
• Fixed an invisible wall in the inn locking you inside a room
• Tweaked light levels on the minimap
• Fixed every enemy being called Shart
• Inventory prioritises gender compatible clothing first and greys out incompatible clothing

At the moment we're still a bit away from another release. The things still to do are more or less:

• Finish shops
• Character model in inventory screen
• Update all clothing & texture
• Clothing damage update
• Complete M/F animation
• F/M and F/F animations
• M and F plant trap animations

I keep saying it, but I do want to update more often, but writing a huge pile of stuff is time I could be doing other stuff. Lets see how it goes, but if you or anyone you know is into this kind of stuff and is an animator, modeller or just loves doing admin/promotion, we'd love to hear from you because holy shit we need help.