Melodiana (Kamidori Alchemy Meister) (Patreon)

Grab the card here!

https://mega.nz/file/4oQ1TLSB#hzOygmPDsGIUxS4GUFjhoNXZJ7rtnXtFSPxigZYa9JA

(Backup link. Be sure to copy the ENTIRE link or else it won't work!)

ATENCION!:

While HF v3.16 should cover most of the mods needed, some things are still missing from that patch. So again, I'm going to post the mods and plugins required here. 

Mods:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cx-GMDXSgzSkdXmHn-AE6nYncBpX_zYE

Notes about that mod according to it's creator: "Delete [Good] horse mod v1.0.zipmod &  horse mod v1.2...If u want to change version from 1.6 to 1.8, please delete previous mod (1.6)"

https://www.patreon.com/posts/albedo-overlord-62693074

Please delete the old version of that Albedo mod if you have it otherwise her wings will transform into a very impressive moustache.

https://files.catbox.moe/b9j6cu.zipmod

Plugins: 

https://github.com/IllusionMods/KK_Plugins/releases/tag/v228

https://github.com/IllusionMods/BepisPlugins/releases/tag/r18.2

The plugins are above are required for this thing called ClothestoAccessories. Basically it allows me to use any and all clothing in the accessory slots. So now I can mix and match clothing together without having to worry about wasting slots!

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Hey hey people, Kitbasher here. There's been quite a gap between releases, hasn't there? 

Well, it's nothing compared to the gap between this card's conception and it's creation. I have been planning on making this thing for a year. Keyword here is planning, this didn't take an year to make. What I was doing during that time was gathering material, getting references, and crossing my fingers that an armor or even a helmet that I could easily repurpose for Melodiana would just fall onto my lap. This...didn't really happen and after a year of waiting, I realized that if I wanted this to happen, I was gonna have to bite the bullet and do it myself. And so I did, cracked a tooth, but it was worth it. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself aren't I? Just who the fuck is this anyways? Well, this is a character from an eroge called "Kamidori Alchemy Meister" or in English, "God Catching Alchemy Meister" which uhh...ok like, I spent 200 hours on this game and not a single second was spent on catching anything, much less a god. So if you're expecting Pokemon but instead of Pikachu you send out Thor, sorry to break it to ya but it ain't happening. 

"How the fuck do you have 200 hours in an eroge" you might be wondering. No I didn't leave it running so that I could inflate my playtime to make it the punchline of my pithy Steam review. And of those 200 hours, I think there's like, at most an hour of H content. The rest of the 199 hours was actual gameplay and man, what a game. I have so much to talk about the game and the creation process behind Melodiana that I'm gonna make them into two separate posts. Otherwise the moment you open this post up the page is going to fucking explode. 

I'll be brief and say it's like, Recettear Lite: The Strategy RPG. The business end is nowhere near in depth or as fun as Recettear's haggling system, but on the flip side the combat sections are much better. One of the hooks about the game is acquiring materials and making new gear out of them. Kind of like Monster Hunter and even like Epic Battle Fantasy 3-5's equipment crafting loop. Or even XCOM now that I think about it. While there's no pressing time limit to blitz through the tech tree, there is a split between managing your workshop and managing your units on the field. Success in one field propels the other and vice versa. 

So like, when you're gathering materials you're like "Boy I can't wait to see what these new rocks unlock." and when you're in the workshop "Boy I can't wait to see how these new weapons I made do on the battlefield." This constant feedback loop is what made the game so addicting to me. It seemed like with each new thing I uncovered, two more things spring up and like, shit I gotta keep playing to find out what those things are. I'm easily distracted by shiny and new things. 

Speaking of which, y'know how I made Lucina not too long ago? Yeah, during that time I was supposed to be working on Melodiana but then I found a new mod that made me go "Yo this just may work for Lucina hold on..." This ended up completely sidetracking me and it almost happened again but since I was nearly done with Melodiana I managed to stay focused. 

(Slide 1) 

Oh man it's gonna be real fun breaking down her components and all the stupid bullshit that went into it. Gonna go into detail about that later but let's just say had I not enjoyed the game as much as I did and her character, I would've given up way sooner. Straight up, this was a passion project. Maximum effort, though not maximum time as otherwise this thing would never see the light of day. 

You see that fancy gloss effect on the yellow lines of her armor? Yeah that's not something I figured out on my own. It was from some other outfit that I was initially considering using it's pauldrons for her. I figured the shading was just painted on so it was bit of a surprise when upon extraction of the main texture, it was all flat colors. I was like "Where did the shading go???" and started extracting every other texture. During that time I reset the pauldron's shader to the item one since I like how it keeps colors uniform, the shading suddenly vanished. I still don't know why, but I guess using the opaque shader combined with a red detail mask gives the item a shiny effect. 

Upon that discovery I immediately copied the settings and pasted them onto the armor I was working on. Had to go back and make detail masks for them but I think it was worth the effort. Shit I should be saving this for the breakdown shouldn't I.

Okay to move on from that, let's talk helmet hair. (S2) So like, she has two hairs: one with the helmet, and one without. The reason why they look different because the hair has to be compressed to fit into the helmet. If I didn't factor that in, the helmet would reach Dark Helmet levels of proportions. (Unless you don't mind clipping.) Seems fairly obvious, right? 

Well, since her helmet is such a big part of her character's identity, I was immensely focused on that aspect. So the idea that recycling her helmet hair for her non helmet one wasn't the greatest plan ever didn't occur to me until after I was scratching my head wondering why her hair looked so shrunken compared to her skull. I even messed around with the proportions of her front bangs thinking that was the issue. I didn't want to admit it, but I had to face the fact that I was going to have to make an entirely different hair set. Nothing used for her helmet hair could be recycled it had to be done from scratch. 

Speaking of hair, I really, Really, REALLY, DESPISE HAIR VENTS AEUGH. Or whatever it's called when the hair is split in two right down the center. There's no good all purpose base for that kind of hair style. Sure there are a number of mods that have that kind of hair style but if the bangs aren't the way you want it, get fucked. I think it was worse with Kronii as I had to resort using generic shapes for her hair vents which is like, to me, using modeling clay for a wig. Here, while there was a lot of finagling, I did manage to pull it off using hair accessories. Still, a major pain in the kiester. 

Maybe whoever scanned it missed a page, but despite there being like this Kamidori Prima Strategy Guide/Artbook there's no reference sheet for Melodiana. And her hair changes quite a bit from scene to scene so trying to consolidate all the different hair variations into one Omega variant was a fun time. 

Out of left field but it's kind of odd to me that it seems like she only has a pink wife beater underneath her armor. I don't actually know her armor fits together. Like, how are the pauldrons attached to her? Are they bolted onto the main chest piece or something? I don't think they're strapped to her arms with belts or anything as far as I could tell. I decided to just slap it on and call it a day.

Major omission: She doesn't have this belt thing that has one loose strap sticking out kind of like Valentine's Lucina. I decided to forgo it because one: Koikatsu does not have that kind of belt. I had to bullshit it by using a necktie. And two: It would just clip into everything. Sure it's absence may be a bit offputting but like, it being there would end up being more distracting. I have no idea what the fuck that belt is even for. Does it hold up those dinner plates strapped to her or something? Is it meant to be a holster for her spear? Are spear holsters even a thing? 

If given infinite time I would try to make her belt, but I don't so sayonara belt. We hardly knew ye. 

(S3) 

Oh hey a slide with a different facial expression for once! Her eyebrows are actually doing something for once! #GAMECHANGER Ah just poking fun at meself. I am a bit self concious of how in most of my slides the character has the exact same expression. The reason for that is because I'm trying to make the character look good so I default to smiling. If they look grumpy or upset then that kind of puts a sour mood on things. Unless they're like kicking ass or something in which case it's cool but otherwise I try to keep things positive. That's just how muh brain works. 

While in the game only the main trio get gothic lolita outfits, in the Prima Strategy Guide(R) there's this page where Yuela and Melodiana are dressed as meidos. Why? Fetish reasons most likely. Y'know if there were support conversations in this game the two would hit it off pretty well because of how similar their character arcs are. 

(S4) 

Okay so usually I don't dedicate more than one slide for each outfit but I thought this was cute. Yes I'm aware the cuff of her sleeves are off believe me I tried to make it look right. I've spent hours searching for the right cuffs but very few billow outwards. Most of them are folded inwards. And those that do, the frills are interlinked with each other so I can't color them separately. Not even ClothestoAccessory.dll could help me on that.

What it did help me in was letting me get away with destroying an entire dress for a single button. I didn't go super crazy with it this time around as it was released real late into this card but lemme tell ya: if my name Kitbasher was appropriate now, hoo boy. Now I can pretty much use outfits like Lego pieces. Dump out all the shit I don't need save for one tiny thing. Cards in the future are gonna have outfits made up of multiple entirely different ones. Just gotta remember to disable the physics on them as otherwise it's gonna tank my FPS. Deleting the texture doesn't delete that part of the outfit, it just makes it invisible. 

Thankfully I figured that out last minute due to this very scene. Something's fishy when the 80+ accessory outfit runs at 60 and yet this basic bitch maid outfit tanks that to 20. The culprit was the goddamn frills. Disable the physics on that and bam back to 60. The frills couldn't even move in the first place so nothing of value was lost. 

(S5) 

Correct me if I'm wrong and I probably am, but doesn't she kind of look like that chocobo/bird thing girl from Shield Hero? Or maybe I'm thinking of the bajillion other "Blonde heroine that wears a primarily white outfit with pastel sky blue highlights." Y'know if you think about it, this is a lot of effort for a very generic character. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if someone one were to just reuse her design wholesale and no one would catch on. Shit I bet I could've just called this my OC and people would've been like "Cool. Really unoriginal tho" 

Then again maybe not. Might be my own bias but I wonder if the creators favor her a lot as main trio aside, she gets a lot more attention n' art than the other members of the cast. Again, may be just confirmation bias talking but iunno I think they would recognize her design and sue for plagiarism if someone were to reuse her wholesale. 

(S6) 

Again, this outfit was based off one of the drawings in the artbook. While there is a sketch of her wearing a different type of school uniform and I did have slots available, I decided not to make that one. Like this outfit already serves the function of "school uniform" adding that outfit in would just be redundant. Plus like man I just want to get this out now. 

Random word of advice: Make sure to check your shadow colors in Material Editor. Sure the outfit may look uniform in color under normal conditions but shift the light a bit and it's entirely different story. Scenes are an impromptu way of seeing how your character looks like under various lighting conditions. 

(S7)

Technically a reference to the extra episode in the DLC for the game. Surprisingly enough, the hot spring episode is more just a backdrop for challenge missions where you can only use certain characters. They don't even take place in a bathhouse it's all like, flashback episodes. 

Anyways I think it's a good idea to show these kinds of shots off. Yes it's titillating but more importantly it's a way to show off what the character looks like under the hood. I've had my fair share of cards that look great, but then you take the clothes off and it's like what the fuck did you do. 

Plus I'm using this as a segue to talk about how I forgot humans have rib cages for at least a year now. That and where you should put a human's belly button. Like, the default Koikatu character "Chikarin" has her upper torso thickness (Determines the volume of the upper torso) at like, 89. Which is pretty high. Her hips on the other hand, are set at I think 0. This is the exact same hip width as the default dude. And as we all know, women and men have the exact same hip width. 

So yeah I just assumed Chikarin was wildly off and course corrected my characters's torsos. A little too much in this case. I didn't really think too much of it until scrolling through FEH I noticed that in a lot of attack portraits (Which show off the side of the body)  they had thick ass upper torsos relatively speaking compared to mine. Y'know as they say, one's an accident, two's a coincidence, and three's a pattern. So either every single FEH artist is incompetent or I'm doing something wrong. s̶m̶h̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶l̶l̶i̶g̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶s̶y̶s̶t̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶q̶u̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶w̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶m̶i̶r̶i̶t̶e̶

As for the belly button, well, believe it or not I only thought about it during a Kronii stream of Devour. Which devolved into a podcast (Dubbed SNOT Cast. Stands for Shark Nature Owl and Time) in the latter half and belly buttons somehow ended up being a topic. For some time I've been thinking about whether or not I'm setting the position of waist correctly. I didn't have anything to back up my suspicions that I was doing something wrong until that stream. 

That's when an idea sprung to my head: Couldn't you use the belly button to determine the position of the waist?

Looked it up, found out the way to determine the position of the belly button was 3 heads down from the top of the head. (Well 2 really if you don't count the head.) Applied that to my cards and like, I guess it's not too dramatic of a difference? I went from 67 to 52-ish which doesn't seem much. But the position of the waist also determines a number of things (Such as the spine, hips, how the lower part of the back is shaped.) so even though it seems like a minor change, I think it's a big improvement.  Hopefully Melodiana's proportions are better than the previous cards.

Nah I'm fucking with you the entire reason why I included this screenshot in is to get those sick ass clicks by using a horny thumbnail. How else am I gonna get that Youtube ad revenue? 

Myeh, that said I'm not sure if that would drum up as many clicks as it would on Youtube. Like, if you're scrolling through the Koikatsu tag you've probably seen a fair amount of TnA that it's kind of numbing at that point. So something that's not TnA would stand out more. Or so I think. 

Hm, maybe one day I'll experiment with that. See which thumbnail works better: Horny or not horny. 

Okay  I know I said I was going to keep this brief and in hindsight, maybe I should've done the two longposts first to get it all out of my system. I'm sorry it's just that I have a lot of things I want to talk about.  

Speaking of keeping things brief and light, next card is going to be something that I could bash out in a few weeks without 1 year prep time. I owe y'all two cards this month after all and I really don't want to make yet another "OOPS MISSED DEADLINE AGAIN LOL SEE YA NEXT MONTH" so yeah hope to see y'all again real soon!