This beta has a TON of new stuff to test out in the kitchen. There will be more cooking mechanics within the next week but I need people to test out how the following new objects feel:
1.) Mortar+Pestle wheat grinding
2.) Egg cracking
3.) Filling pot with water
4.) Storing ingredients
5.) Ingredient management
PLEASE READ AND DO THE FOLLOWING:<...
2019-12-06 05:33:48 +0000 UTC View Post
I got a lot of work done this Thanksgiving vacation.
First off, VR movement has been improved to allow the player to look over ledges and tables without running into walls.
This was previously not possible without the wall pushing the player back, making it really annoying to pick up stuff that would be on a table or over a little wall.
For cooking, many new mechanics and features w...
2019-12-01 19:09:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Finally I get to start on the meaty part of v0.7, cooking. There's plenty in need to be done so let's get started.
First, some other improvements. Trees have been improved. For a long time I thought the trees I made were super ugly. The leaf texture was horrible and the distribution of geometry to look "puffy" was bad. Here's what they looked like:
The new model version now uses less poly...
2019-11-27 18:09:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Sorry for the wait I needed the extra 12 hours to add some major polishes. This Beta has a TON of stuff for you to try out.
Major Features:
1.) Chickens
2.) Chicken taming for eggs (Catch them first)
2.) Loli can chase chickens (point to a chicken with her nearby. She will chase the chickens toward you)
3.) Egg mechanics (physics based with some behavior...
2019-11-23 23:41:37 +0000 UTC View Post
I managed to finish the loli cooperation behaviors a bit earlier. And so I was able to start a little bit on the chickens.
To wrap up the cooperation behaviors, she can now properly give you her bag if you ask for it. Like so:
Also, left handed gestures are finally in meaning you can now gesture (wave, come here, give, etc.) with your left hand. I took too long to implement this and it wa...
2019-11-19 18:38:30 +0000 UTC View Post
This next piece of the development should stretch only 2 parts. When I say cooperation, I'm talking about the loli physically helping you harvest items that you can use. I got it all working for now. She can pick up the bag, put it on her shoulder, and put items in the bag. Demonstration:
The part 2 of this will be adding some polish so her movements are more natural and less jolty. It was an i...
2019-11-15 17:31:00 +0000 UTC View Post
I finished a lot of texturing and models this weekend. The kitchen is now 80% complete.
I have not yet placed in lights but it's looking very good with the PBR materials. I use substance painter for my texturing and material creation. I started using it about a year ago and it quickly became my 2nd favorite piece of software. It makes texturing super fast for models and allows for procedurally ...
2019-11-11 17:32:34 +0000 UTC View Post
I finished most of the item handling code. It's much more robust and will allow for things like the player equipping bags on his shoulder later.
Here's a video of me placing items inside the bag.
Working on the inventory made me realize how burdensome it is to pick up small objects. Especially with the bag on my left hand since it will occasionally bump into objects I'm trying to pickup. ...
2019-11-07 17:14:40 +0000 UTC View Post
I have been a bit busy doing some code refactoring for the game so I can implement the upcoming inventory system. At the moment the game cannot compile since I am rewiring and refactoring code in the game. Therefore I cannot show any videos for this devpost.
The inventory system will be used to collect and store items. I have decided to use bags to collect items in. These bags are already available to see in the latest Beta release. They don't do anything yet but you can make your loli ...
2019-11-04 07:41:15 +0000 UTC View Post
This is an addition to v0.7a. The harvesting mechanics aren't in place yet but some of the pieces are in this beta. The pieces are just new props and actualized items.
**PAUSE MENU BUTTON HAS BEEN CHANGED TO ESC**
Strawberries, blueberries, and peaches can now be grabbed off trees/bushes. You'll have to find them in the map.
Horses are more stable and sho...
2019-10-31 06:48:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Map is pretty big compared to the old one. It's also a lot prettier. I wasn't able to release Beta v0.7b last Friday due to technical reasons but it's in an almost stable place now. I'll be releasing it this Wednesday.
2019-10-28 17:36:41 +0000 UTC View Post
I haven't made a tech research post in a long time. I thought i'd make one on the tech for the cooking update, cutting fruits. These posts can get pretty technical but I hope you like reading it.
Quick demonstration:
The mission is to find all the points on the cutting plane that slices the mesh into 2 parts, the right and left parts. Then, we create the 2 meshes and fill in the interiors...
2019-10-26 01:54:43 +0000 UTC View Post
I released the first Beta v0.7a with the new horseback and map features. People seemed to like the new horseback and I received good feedback for it. I have recently been polishing and bugfixing a few things to make sure everything works better. I am gearing up for the next Beta v0.7b which will include general polishing and bugfixing. I expect to release it Friday.
Some of the new features I did not get to talk about horseback riding before releasing v0.7a is the dynamic spine logic th...
2019-10-24 15:50:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Please note that the map is about 95% complete. Still need to polish it and fix some graphical errors. However, horseback riding is completely usable for you and your loli.
To get on the horse, grab any of the horse reins near the top of the horse's neck. To control in VR, use that same hand grabbing onto the reins and press the trackpad in a direction. It will shift gears of the horse. I recommend getting used to the controls before going on higher speeds. It is in a very experimental ...
2019-10-22 09:12:27 +0000 UTC View Post
I started implementing the logic to have the loli ride a horse. In a way I've been teaching her what a horse is.
To start, when you command her to get on the horse, she needs to choose the shortest navigation path that is closest to either side of the horse. The problem is that the horse might be moving or leaning up against a wall. Therefore sometimes the navigation path had to be recalculated to adjust to a changing scenario. Sometimes the location she should mount from is being block...
2019-10-18 08:39:45 +0000 UTC View Post
I got a lot done over the weekend. Starting with the river and the new shader that accompanies it:
Water is a hard egg to crack. Especially for VR. It is so complex and noisy that it is difficult to come up with a good looking and performant solution, especially for VR. However, my profession IRL involves shaders so I managed to whip up something that looks good and is cheap to render. The shad...
2019-10-14 09:28:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Horses!
I'm a big proponent of making your own assets. I have come very far with this project without using the Unity asset store very much. However I do understand that the entire point of the Unity asset store is that you can save time in exchange of some money, and so I purchased this horse asset. It's a very good asset and it came with all the necessary animations and textures. However, lik...
2019-10-10 08:54:56 +0000 UTC View Post
I got a lot of work done with the new map overhaul. Lots of new optimized textures and models have been implemented and placed into the surrounding new and giant landscape. Let's show off some pictures of how it's turning out so far:
One of the new additions to visuals is an improved terrain shader. Un...
2019-10-06 08:30:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Now that I finished character customization, I am going back to adding behaviors and things to do in the game. This requires a new map because the current map is very old and small. As I said before this new version is huge and is about 16x bigger.
Today I started optimizing the shape of the map. The problem is that when you develop for a platform like VR, you need to take into account the potential performance of every viewpoint in the scene. As in, you don't want too many objects on y...
2019-10-02 08:23:48 +0000 UTC View Post
This update happened far faster than I thought. Usually updates take a bit over 2 months or longer. But this happened in just under 2. Anyways do enjoy the character customizer. I understand most people are not modelers so they may have difficulty creating their own but I am sure we will have people create characters (or memes) for others.
Shinobu was supposed to be removed from this version bu...
2019-09-28 23:39:50 +0000 UTC View Post
This will be the last devpost before I release v0.6 to the public. I have been busy bugfixing and adding improvements.
To start, I am doing alternative animations for the new voices because some existing animations from Shinobu do not fit the new voices. An example is when Shinobu asks you to get out. This animation was lip synched to her mouth. The new voices do not even have this line so they need proper animation assets. This is the replacement for that voice line:
2019-09-26 08:20:01 +0000 UTC
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This includes the final improvements and edits for the character editor. I did have to add one last optional info that you should provide for your character: The hat info. This is for different characters that have different size heads and hair. The old Shinobu sunhat did not fit them because they had different heads. Until now. You can now simply position the hat in your blender file, name it "CHARACTER hat" and export it. The game will save this position and always make your character wear ...
2019-09-24 08:31:22 +0000 UTC View Post
I just uploaded the latest Beta v0.6c. It took me a couple more days because of the vast amount of sound files I had to ingest into the game. That said, the 2 new character voices are now offered as an option when you create a character. Try it out in the new Beta v0.6c.
I was very busy this week getting the Beta running for tonight. I will now be switching gears to polish and bugfix everything...
2019-09-21 09:18:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Customizable character voices are here! I have implemented the 2 other character voice variations. They are ready for testing. If you aren't a modeler, you can still try out creating your own character by dragging the pre-made .viva3d file in the Cards/Starter Kit.
You can change the voice of your character with a simple button click in the new "Voice" tab. The 2 new voices have a couple missin...
2019-09-21 09:01:17 +0000 UTC View PostThis is what the completed pipeline looks like! Again if you don't do any modelling (I don't expect most people here to do so), you can always just download other people's character cards that they made.
I've also written a manual to answer most of your questions about the technical process: https://shinobuproject.itch.io/game/devlog/100331/viva-pro...
2019-09-17 19:11:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Character customization will receive a nice patch for bugfixing and improvements. Big thanks to Utata for being a guinea pig for the early versions of the character customization pipeline and Eidenz for stress testing the export tool. People have been able to add tails to their characters now (you can grab them as well like in the current version, and they have physics):
I have roughly 2 weeks to the full public release. Plenty of spit polish is being done to the system so everything is...
2019-09-15 09:36:12 +0000 UTC View Post
This beta has more bugfixes and has had clothing customization re-enabled. That said, creating clothing is temporarily disabled until Beta v0.6c. You can dress up your characters with the same cards created in older versions. Make sure you copy them into your Cards/Clothing game folder.
The new Viva Model Blender Addon is v1.5. You can now select an armature and type in "Match Viva Project Skeleton". This will match the transforms of the shinobu skeleton for bones that are named the sam...
2019-09-12 09:41:24 +0000 UTC View Post
The character customization pipeline seems very promising so far and it is slowly shaping up to be quite robust. This weekend I worked with a few members of the Discord community to improve and understand what would make the model porting process easier. Before that, let's show off some in-progress community creations:
2019-09-11 11:36:11 +0000 UTC
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At last. Here is the first test for character customization. I have included a nice tutorial below for you to try out. This tutorial does not require modeling. It is merely a way for you to test the customization station:
Start by going up to the mirror and left clicking to enter it.
2019-09-08 08:21:42 +0000 UTC
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This should be one of the last devposts for character customization because it is nearly complete and fully functional. I connected the last pipes together today and after lots of debugging and fixing, I am very proud to say that it is now complete and ready for Beta testing.
Let's talk about the final card workflow. The editor will allow you to upload, tweak, and finally create your shareable character for the game as PNG cards. I managed to optimize storage and was able to store ALL t...
2019-09-07 09:33:21 +0000 UTC View Post