Please forgive me for this silly pun. At least I went with a stripper pole instead of another type of pole...
I've been hard at work on version 0.26, and I'm happy to say that with the exception of some extra testing and cleanup, the female start prologue is complete. I'll begin work on wrapping up the male start prologue in the next couple of days. (I'm going to take a brief break to work on some other tasks to change things up.) Thousands of words of new story content along with new writing for the job fair, a new science aptitude challenge, some light sadism, and more.
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| The Organ Donor setting finally has an ad |
Besty has been working hard as well, and he has got the nutrition/fitness system running along with custom tattoos that allow you to upload your own tattoo images in-game. There's also several other minor things he has been working on, with more planned. There will be several cool things ready for 0.26!
The Poll!
One of the things I've been investigating lately is another option for creating character body portraits. The difficulty of getting it right has kept it on the back burner thus far, but I've still been investigating possibilities when I become aware of them. I'm still going to be focusing primarily on written content over the next few months, but I thought I'd see what everyone thought of some new possibilities.
While it would be nice to get some custom art made if we can both find an artist willing to do the work and get together enough money to pay them well... the amount of variables we can reasonably represent in drawn work is low. One of the things I like about AW and several other games is the level of customization you can have over the player and NPC characters. With hand-drawn art, it's going to be very difficult to show that level of customization in the body portrait.
That's also what makes certain options appealing; some options would allow for more details to make it into the body portraits. For those who are newer to following AW, we did experiment for a while with the Dynamic Avatar Drawer. While it did allow for comparatively easy compatibility with game data, the appearance of the avatars was largely subpar.
Some of the most recent options I've explored are established character/body creation tools. Japan has developed some pretty neat tools to build your own waifu, and they have the kind of detail needed to represent a lot of body variables, while still looking pretty nice. It would still take some dedication and some technical work to make these solutions viable, but the results could be well worth the effort.
Options
I'm presenting three options for the poll. Characters created using Koikatsu (A), Honey Select (B), and BodySlide (C) as a generic option. Option (D) will be to wait for hand-drawn body portraits. My personal favorite right now is Koikatsu. I'd like to see what all of you think. Please don't base your decision on the actual body type shown, these are just some samples I threw together.
Koikatsu
This character creator has by far the most customization options. There are also numerous shading, lighting, and line options to further customize the appearance. This is a 3d model projected into a 2d drawing style. It has the advantage of having some extra mods allowing easier export and should be easier to take a layering approach with. The main downside is the anime/drawing style, which some people may not care for.
Honey Select
This character creator has a lot of customization options, though not as many as option A. It's still sufficient for our purposes. This is a rendered 3d style, which has a more realistic appearance. The lighting and skin details in this look rather nice, but it also makes a layered approach nearly impossible (meaning much larger resource size). This creator isn't as easy to export from, but it's still plenty possible. Based on the timing, there may be an improved creator in a new game release in the future.
BodySlide
This is really here for comparison purposes. However, there are a lot of different 3d modeling options to render a female body. If you choose this option, you're basically saying that you like the idea of using a rendered character for the body portrait, but you don't like option A or B.
That's all for now. If you're a supporter, please be sure to vote!
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ThaumX
a
ReplyDeleteIve used C of coarse I play skyrim a lot and there's so many body types in skyrim i use clams of skyrim its very customizable but A option is my close second
ReplyDeleteOption A is good enough. More customization options than the others and the current art in-game is already animesque.
ReplyDeleteWon't there be any issues using licensed stuff though? Both A and B are character creators from japanese eroges and C is from Bethesdas creation engine.
Sorry for the ludicrously-late reply...
DeleteWhile B is a little less clear without more research, A should be absolutely fine based on the licensing given with koikatsu. Basically because we aren't distributing the software to generate characters itself, and are just using generated images, it's fine. (They actually give out free tools specifically to allow you to do this, because they're cool.)
Im gooing with option A.
ReplyDelete"B" is very nise, but for me "A" looks much better.
ReplyDeleteA looks better to me.
ReplyDeletea..,
ReplyDeletewhile some of the size of the rear seems flat due to the angle..,
a definetly is doing more than the others..,
Option A
ReplyDeleteAs someone previously mentioned, since your current in game model is anime-esque already, I doubt you'd get anymore complaints than you already have gotten. Unless the amount is worrisome, I wouldn't think it should be a problem.
And really, the smaller resource size would no doubt be more beneficial for the game in the long run.
I definitely feel that option A is the way to go.
ReplyDeleteB. Not really into anime style, and think it goes against the whole hyper-realistic simulation vibe of the game.
ReplyDelete