💻 Lustbound Jan/Feb 2024 | Customization Menu & More 🤩 (Patreon)

Hey guys!

It’s been a rollercoaster of a few months for us here working on Lustbound. We’ve faced some unexpected challenges that have slowed down our progress, but we're still pushing forward with determination and optimism.

Firstly, we want to address the elephant in the room: the delays and setbacks on the promised update, we've experienced.
Over the past five weeks, illness struck our team not once, not twice, but three times, leaving us short-handed and unable to work at full capacity. It’s been a tough time for us, but we're grateful for everyone’s patience and understanding during this period.

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On top of that, our updated Estelle character model, which everyone has been eagerly anticipating, hit some unexpected obstacles in development. Despite our best efforts, it just wasn't coming together as quickly as we had hoped. Hoping to keep you guys engaged and excited about the project, we made the decision to purchase a collection of placeholder character, hair and clothing models from an outside artist to serve as a proof of concept for the customization and character import system.

Unfortunately, what should have been a quick two to three day task turned into a time-consuming challenge. The new models had way more problems with the armature, geometry, skinning, and textures than we ever expected. Dealing with all that ate up our time and caused further delays.

In hindsight, we realize that sticking to our original plan and continuing to work on our own model probably would have been the better choice 😅.

But it's not all doom and gloom! The model looks pretty good in game and is a great test for importing alternate characters, and despite the setbacks, we’ve made significant progress behind the scenes. Most everything code-wise that we’ve worked on translates directly to our own character model and any future models.

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The customization menus are now up and running with the placeholder character, and they will integrate seamlessly with our own updated character model once it's ready!

The placeholder model will allow our testers to stress test the most crucial features of our new character system, ensuring that when our own character model is implemented, it will be in an environment that has been rigorously tested and refined.

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This has also allowed us to work on our hair card shader which can be used right out of the gate with Estelle giving her good looking hair styles once they are integrated.

And here's the cherry on top: the clothing and hair we've assembled will eventually find their way onto Estelle, offering a substantial variety of stylish outfits and hairstyles for our own character! 

We’re actually quite pleased with how quickly an external model was able to be imported and adapted to our dynamic animation system, which bodes well for when modding and importing other custom models comes down the line. (as long as the imported model doesn’t have similar issues to our placeholder character) 😅

We’ve learned some valuable lessons along the way, and we’re more committed than ever to delivering a game that meets and exceeds your expectations. Your support means the world to us, and we’re grateful to have such an amazing community backing us every step of the way ❤️.

Thank you for your patience, understanding, and unwavering support. We can’t wait to share more updates with you soon ❤️.

Stay healthy and safe! Till next time 👋