slaen

Hurricane status update

Thanks for the support everyone!  I really appreciate it.  

It's going to be at least another few days before the hurricane clears up enough for me to head home and be able to run the build.  I'm also not certain if I'm going to have electricity or internet access once I get home.  So I've paused payment processing for Oct. 1st.  Once I get home I'll post an update and let everyone know what's going on.  

One note to anyone that is 2022-09-29 18:37:11 +0000 UTC View Post

Good news and bad news...

The good news is everything is ready to actually run the build and it's just a matter of watching some progress bars and then uploading things... the bad news... there's this hurricane that I had to evacuate for and I'm currently a long ways away from the computer I need in order to run the build.  

The plan... I'm hoping to be back at my computer after the hurricane passes through in a few days and then get the build out.  If...

2 more...

There's just 2 major bugs left with the Incubus then I'll be able to run the build.  My goal is to get it out before next Tuesday.  Let's see how this goes!

Still fixing bugs...

Just a quick progress update this week.  Steadily chipping away at the major bugs associated with the new quest systems.  Hopefully the build won't be too much longer!

Bug fixing

The fun part of getting any build together.  

Fixed the skills / attribute page so that the UI will update correctly as well as display correctly after exiting and re-opening the UI.

Fixed goblin grappling bugs.  Grapples can be stopped before they start by dealing damage or by blocking the incoming grappler.  There were a number of bugs around this where the goblin's grapples would be blocked, they would land at the player's feet, pause for a moment, and then grapp...

Things have been hectic recently

But, the new build is on track for next month.  I'll also get back to regular progress updates very soon.  Life things have been keeping me super busy and distracted but those will also all settle down next month.  Thanks for bearing with me!  

Dialogues are done!

There's still a ton of polish and all of the branching to implement still but the base dialogue trees are in and ready to go.  I've tested the majority of the quest logic and there's only two more events that I need to script out.

A quick list of questlines:  Reeve, tavern owner, farm boy, farm girl, goblin alchemist, trapped slime, guard tower, imp cave, temptation scenes goblin/ slime, goblin random night encounter, tavern random encounters.  

Some of the quests e...

Goblin Behavior tree updates

Still getting all of the pieces put back together for the next build.  Which will have some new AI behaviors for the generic goblin encounters.  

I've broken encounters down by distance to the target.  The distances can also be customized per behavior tree or on the fly by a set of variables.  For this initial pass there's long, medium, and close ranges.  Long range will just trigger the goblins to run towards their target.  Once they reach medium range the...

{Insert Pepe Silvia Meme here}

So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole the other day.  I was going through gameplay loops from other games and really trying to break things down into simple discreet chunks.  Like take Skyrim, the player goes into town for buying/selling, quests, crafting, and item storage.  Then they leave town, go to the quest target, which is usually a dungeon type area, run the dungeon, kill everything, collect all the loot, and the crafting resources.  Then go back to town to do it al...

Mining and lockpicking WIPs

While I'm testing quest triggers and dialogues I've been running through the gameplay loop and I'm slowly filling in the holes to smooth things out.  

Some of those holes have been concerning non-combat related activities.  The goal here is to make gameplay fun and rewarding even if the player wants to be a pacifist or just play Feign like a slice of life sim.  I've been looking a lot at things like Skyrim's Hearthfire expansion, Stardew Valley, Graveyard Keeper, and Anim...

Solo animation systems

I'm starting to put things back together finally and in the process I'm trying to finish and tie the different systems together.  One of those systems that's been on the back burner for forever is the lust and "solo" animation system.  This should be in the upcoming build unless something explodes on me.  

So the player will take lust damage throughout their adventures this will increase their lust meter ( the pink bar that is partially full in the left image).  If t...

A bit of female imp texturing, level system, and more scripting

I found a little bit of time to work on the female imp some more.  Her low poly meshes are done and I just finished the bakes.  The first material pass on her outfit is roughed in and needs to be properly painted still.  And her wings, tail, and horns the bakes are done but I haven't had time to start painting yet... so the in game image just has the ID bake masks as placeholders so far.  Oh, and I need to bake her fishnets out onto her skin and do her fingernails.  T...

Every RPG needs chickens

Pretty sure there's a law someplace about it.  But yeah, I quickly did the low poly and some rough textures for the chickens.  They won't be fully animated for the next build but I needed them for the farm girl's quest line.  I'll probably try and get the sheep in game soon too because those are also used in her quests.

Still chipping away at the dialogue and quests and scripting stuff.  One week closer to having this stuff done.  

So much scripting and dialogue writing

There's a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel finally.  I've been working pretty much only on the dialogue trees, event scripting, and quest bugs this week.

The Reeve's quest line only needs 2 more triggers placed and tested and then he should be done.  Meanwhile the dialogues for everyone else are at least roughed in if not fully written.  A good portion of them already have the quest hooks set up.  Now it's mostly a matter of creating the actual quest o...

Female Imp texturing - and save game woes

The outfit doesn't have a proper low poly model yet and is just there to get a sense of the color balancing and stuff.  But I was able to get some basic colors down on the female imps.  There's still a bunch of polish to do and her overall color scheme might change a bit but she's getting there.  

Other than that I've continued looking into the save game issues with sub-levels inside of Unreal.  The way that I have things set up is that things like the interiors of b...

Retopoligizing, more dialogue, and some research

Started in on the low poly for the female imp this week.  Most of her body is ready for UVs but there's a few shapes on her outfit that I think I'll tweak before doing their lows.

Still chipping away at never ending dialogue trees and quest scripting.  I'm hoping that with practice I'll get faster at this stuff.  

And also dug into a bit of the new UE5 landscape stuff in preparation for making the switch from 4.  Mostly trying to figure out the data layers stuf...

How is it Tuesday already?

Just yeah, it's such a bizarre time in the world.  Then to still sit down and try to focus on work or get into the usual groove.  Sorry, for the digression, I try to do my best to keep real world stuff off of the Patreon.  Just saying I'm a bit scattered these days.  But I really hope everyone is doing alright out there.  

Alright, so... this week I stalled out a tiny bit.  Took a day to tune out and just made a bunch of little props.  Mostly backgroun...

Still more lesser Incubus animations

Still have a few more animation cycles for this guy to work on and then I'll start setting things up in the engine for him.

Other than that I'm trying to fill in all the missing dialogue trees for current in game human NPCs.  At least giving them a tiny bit of dialogue and getting rid of all the placeholders.

There's a few quest lines that I really need to write a companion / follower system in order to do properly.  The downside is that's going to take a decent chunk of...

Doing some UE5 tests

Took a couple of days this week to see how rough the transition over to Unreal 5 would be.  The biggest hurdle so far was fixing up the C++ stuff that was changed from UE 4.26 to UE5 but that was mostly just digging through documentation to find what was changed and where it was moved to.  But so far things have been pretty smooth.

Next steps for UE5 will be converting over the static meshes to Nanite and converting the world composition over to world partition.  

I...

Incubus animations

Still chipping away at animations for the lesser incubus.  

Testing out some new animations and AI on goblins right now too.  I added in some hit reaction animations and sounds fx.  I'm going to script a mid combat temptation scene for her next.  The idea is to get a relatively polished target for how most combat encounters should flow and then use that as a starting template for the other characters.  

And the never ending work on quest scripting and bug ...

More work on the female imp sculpt

Her sculpt is almost done.  The wings need a proper detail pass and I need to add a bit something else to the shoes I think.  I'm also a bit nervous about the fishnets.  I think the best thing for performance and visuals is to bake the fishnets down onto the actual skin mesh but that might end up being a pain or require new shaders to work with the current skin shader system.  The absolute worst case is I'll end up ditching them and switching over to some sort of stockings...

Female imp sculpting

I've been working on the female imp sculpt a bit this week.  Most of her elements are roughed in and need to be detailed out.  I should be able to get that detail pass done in the next week or two.

Also fixing up bugs on the temptation / mid-combat narrative scenes.  Nothing too fancy to show just yet on this front.  

Coming up this week I'm going to hop back onto some incubus animations and see if I can get all his base anims done.  

Oh, and Unreal ...

Grapple / Temptation Scenes

More systems stuff!  This is all the backend scripting for mid combat temptations and animations or pretty much anything that the narrative scene system supports.  

So in the screen shot, during a normal encounter, if the player is grappled there's now a meter that fills up over time during the grapple (the red arrow in the middle shot).  When the meter is filled it can trigger a narrative scene (in this case all temporary placeholder stuff while I'm getting things workin...

Quick progress update

Nothing fancy to show just yet this week.  The incubus rigging is all done and everything for facial animations is ready to go.  Next it's time to get some proper scene animations started for him.  

I'm poking around with some AI tweaks right now.  Nothing that's set in stone but I have some ideas to make combat flow a little bit differently.  

I've also been going through UE5 videos and trying to get ready for making the switch to the new engine version. ...

Some more Incubus work

The first pass on his face blendshapes is ready to go.  Now to set things up and add rig controls for his face animations.  Then on to proper animations for this guy.  

I also started on his animations.  His basic walk is mostly blocked in but still a little stiff.  

Still a lot to do on him but hopefully he'll have some proper scene animations soon.

Beyond incubus work I'm still polishing up memory work and I'm play testing the quest system.  S...

Size maps and memory usage

I've been working on getting the quest systems actually working again as well as optimizations for Feign this week.  

My game development background is all on the art side of things and so when it comes to the technical stuff I'm always learning and improving.  Fortunately there's a ton of knowledge and resources out there for everyone to use that's also totally free these days.  When I'm doing something that's just sort of mindless busy work, like retopologizing a model ...

1.14.7 Build Notes!

Link to build currently unlocked for Patron tier and above 

New stuff:

• Redtree town environment polish pass
• General goods store new interior
• Crystal tower new interior
• Woods north of Redtree environment detail pass
• Polish pass on human x human animations
• New reverse cowgirl human position
• Night goblins should spawn at...
  2022-03-20 23:24:43 +0000 UTC View Post

Build 1.14.7

Grab it here! 

Quick update

Super busy this week but almost everything is done for the build!  I'll have some time this weekend to actually sit down and build the build.  

So hopefully, unless something catastrophic happens, there will be a build out this weekend!  

Why so many bugs?!

So those dialogue and scripting bugs I mentioned last week, I started fixing those, then found some bugs where those tied into the quest system.  One thing sort of led to another and I ended up rewriting a bunch of the quest system and now I'm going through and updating the current quest list.  

Hopefully I can keep from breaking anything else this week.

Thanks again for everyone's patience!  It's been a rough couple weeks of development.  Hopefully I can get t...