Debugging And Preparing For Clothing Customization (Patreon)

I hope you liked the Bathing teaser. It is a small part for what is to come in the v0.5 update. Before I start the clothing customization, I need to clean up some code and ensure bathing is in a good spot. Speaking of, I covered the majority of the towel mechanics that I mentioned in the previous post. Again, the player will give her a towel to signal that bathing is over.

This brings us to today's devpost. The towel:

The prop has dynamic bones like Shinobu's hair so it wiggles and bends as you move it around, like a towel. You can also clip it to wall hangers. I will be improving identifying wall clips with the new pick up item system. You may have caught a glimpse of it in the Bathing YouTube video. Essentially, items can now override and display special icons to tell the player that they do something in particular. For example:

Doors will have a locked and unlocked icon. (Locked mechanics for the future).

Hot and cold valves will have corresponding icons.

But back to the towel, approaching Shinobu with the towel in your hand will trigger a begging behavior. Shinobu will stand on her knees and ask for your item. Like so:

It is still WIP as there were some arm glitches here and there. But by next devpost I should finalize this along with the reused "Get out" animations. Then you get out of the bathroom, and then the clothing customization begins.

Now for good news, bad news, and a pie in the sky:

Bad news:

In the beginning of March, as I began the v0.5 update, the pelvis remodeling and rerigging took quiet a bit longer than expected. Therefore am in hot water trying to complete clothing and sleeping in under 1 month. That said, I may release v0.5 in 2 parts. v0.50 which will for sure include bathing and clothing for June 22nd, and then after 2~3 weeks, I will release v0.55 which will include sleeping. I don't like rushing updates since I like to get in as much necessary detail into her animations and logic. Deadlines just help me work faster.

Good news:

The tech behind customized clothing is going very well. I have succeeded in my tests to pack an image within an image. The range of clothing models will be set to built in only (for now). In other words, you will only be able to customize what clothing pieces the game has to offer. And thus:

Shinobu Project is now hiring!

I will be using the Patreon funds to hire freelancers to model clothing pieces for me. This will greatly offload the amount of work that I have to deal with which will allow me to work more on animations and behavior logic. Check out the front page there is now a NOW HIRING section.

Pie in the sky:

Greatly depending on how the modeling pipeline and freelancers work, I will consider the big question that everyone asks me: Full character customization, as in, not just Shinobu, could be your waifu. I will write a devpost on the massive technical implications and restrictions of implementing this but it is definitely possible provided work is offloaded from me. We will see.

Right now I gotta fix Unity being stupid with mirrored eyeball animations:

Stay tuned.