Who Trashed My Baby's Grave??? (Patreon)
Content
I like how I pinned a post saying nonsensical titles = bonus content...only to make titles that are completely understandable. From now on, titles will be utter bonkers nonsense, the first sentence will be the actual title.
In this instance it would be Bonus: Mod Upgrades to Old Cards.
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https://files.catbox.moe/3wkaxy.zipmod
https://files.catbox.moe/81kqxk.png
The mod for Mio and her card respectively.
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https://files.catbox.moe/656h6y.zipmod
https://files.catbox.moe/t7z6up.png
Likewise, here's the mod for Kronii and her card.
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YIIK man here serves as a spoiler foiler. See, posts with images get this faded out filter to tease people into becoming a Patron to see what the hell it is. Which is the exact opposite goal I'm trying to accomplish here. I'm not trying to fish for patrons, hell if I could make patron posts completely invisible to non patrons I would do that. But I don't think that's a feature so for now, Alex YIIK is here to discourage the curious.
The Patron exclusive content is a way to allow me to go back to how I used to release shit. Which is just upload whatever it is because I think it's neat with no concern over the quality standards or if it's an improvement over the last version yada yada. I like making stuff, sometimes polishing them to a mirror sheen but other times I just get bored and move onto something else. Having them gather dust though feels like a waste so uploading them as Patreon exclusive content makes it so that at least they'll see the light of day without bringing down the quality n' reputation of the public brand.
Which is why I take such efforts to ensure that I don't bait people into thinking "Wow if the free stuff is this good, surely the paid stuff will be even better!" only for them to discover the paid stuff is just me offloading unpolished gems. That would be rather disappointing and I don't want that to happen.
So for the guys reuploading my stuff, that's what's up. Yeah that's been happening for some time now and frankly? Well, y'know as they say, what comes around, goes around! So I'm not mad about that, hell, it's kind of an honor to have my stuff get pirated. Like I said with Nabito, just means my shit is worth stealing! Plus hey, in case my Patreon gets nuked, there's backups of my posts.
All I ask is of them is to understand that these are beta builds so don't get disappointed with the quality, don't try to sell them as if you made it, (Or the more bizarre alternative: pretend to be a middle man for me selling my stuff.) and don't reupload them onto the public boorus, Pixiv, n' other such sites. You can totally use them in scenes and screenshots tho and if someone asks for the card, go ahead n' share it with them. Don't forget to credit me!
Never before has piracy been more justified pertaining to my Patreon because due to my boneheaded decision to change how payment works, you cannot sign up to be a Patron if I set charging to inactive. You can't see the posts even if you're absolutely willing to shell out the loonies for them so really, in this case, piracy is a legitimate option due to the (temporary) lack of any legal ways of obtaining my content. So again, not upset, totally understand the situation.
Not going to do anything stupid like putting in DRM, tagging my cards, paying a programmer to ship cards with dlls that'll track your PC or whatever the fuck that was about. Why waste time with that crap when I can be spending that time doing something actually fun? This Patreon runs entirely off of good will and I quite like the vibe that brings.
Anywho, so what about the cards themselves?
Well, I've been digging around in the Bleeding Edge modpack. More often than not, I end up with garbage that just takes up storage space and increases my load times, but on occasions like these I strike gold like with these character mods.
Not all character mods are created equal. They've got issues that you don't see from preview images alone as it pertains to under the hood stuff e.g: horrible optimization, (300+ bones for some hair that barely moves but WILL tank your computer like nothing else.) clothes that flip the fuck out upon the slightest movement, shit lighting resulting in bizarre shadows (Triangles on everything.) or no lighting at all. These are flaws that with beer goggles strapped on, you won't notice, but the post nut clarity makes the mistakes startingly clear.
Some are so awful that I can't make any use of them, but more often than not, there are workarounds or the issues are minor enough to be looked over if it comes to that. These mods do have their issues and I haven't entirely worked out all the kinks. It's possible they can be improved but as of right the cards in a state of "good enough".
None of these use the head mods that come with the mods because of how it fucks up in the main game. We Happy Few guy is not a spoiler foiler: It's a disturbingly close approximation of what (literally) fucking Kronii looks like with the head mod on. She can close her eyes, but other than that no other expression but that fucking look. It's creepy as hell.
Refinements to be made:
Mio -
I've been planning on cutting off the front bangs of Mio's mod hair and then strapping a better ponytail to her as a replacement for all the alts with a ponytail. (So her swimsuit, the gym outfit, and the sleeping over outfit.) I've been thinking of making her recent alts the one with the twintails, but I've also got my eyes on her witch outfit alt that originated from some game or thing iunno it looks neat tho.
Honestly, it's a look distinctive enough to make me consider making Witch Mio her own separate character model. May be too much effort for something most people don't want. Mayhaps I'll make a poll asking which alts I should work on for Mio.
The tail of the main Mio hair has a bad habit of desyncing with the rest of the hair when in motion. The hair itself is not very flexible. In this instance, more bones would've been nice so that it could bend so that it wrap over the back when say, she lifts her head up instead of just clipping right through. I think I've adjusted the hitbox of her hair to try and prevent that but that causes the hair to warp in a weird way. The desync also gets worse but like, hey at least you can see her body from the neck down instead of it looking like Mio's head has been speared on top of a Christmas tree.
If this sounds bad, it probably isn't. I'm hoping. I was deliberately stress testing the hair to achieve these results but unless there's an Exorcist crossover DLC where characters can be possessed by demons, I don't think this shit will happen/will be minor in comparison to the stress tests.
Frankly, if I did get around to updating her ponytail alts by fusing them with the new mods, I probably could have made Mio a public release...ehh I didn't give her a new outfit. Not sure if the lack of new content made by me would disqualify it from getting an official release. I did that with Aigis but like, that was a total body overhaul even tho I didn't make the body mod that's a huge difference! Meanwhile, this is just me slapping on a hair mod and calling it a day. Unless y'all are happy with being charged for that iunno.
Kronii -
Kronii is kind of a mess. The bones are terribly unoptimized, tanking performance, not to mention their default settings makes her hair lose most of it's structure. Like imagine throwing a bucket of water onto her face. That's what her hair n' veil look like with default settings. Even with the weight decreased to give it some structure, it causes performance issues so I just froze them.
Her back ribbon is fucked up due to it being made out of her hair which is not fucking canon. I can't remove the back hair ribbon without peeling off the back of her hair (Hooray for separate yet inexplicably dependent parts!) so for the alts where she's Kronii: Unchained, there'll be this back ribbon thing. Technically two as I used two back hairs: One for the outer layer, and one for the inner filler layer due to me cutting up her hair into several pieces to adjust their sizes n' positions individually. This causes a gap between the back and front hair, hence the second back hair. You wouldn't notice that if it wasn't for that fucking ribbon.
Speaking of ribbons, her two greatest assets are not taken advantage of and instead have a plastic wedge shoved in between them. Why? Fuck if I know, took them off, tried to squeeze the breasts together to be more in line with her Live2D model, doesn't work without sacrifices to other areas. (e.g breasts clipping through clothes, the zipper becoming nonexistent which ruins the look, huge honkers are quite the difficult thing to model around I've heard.) So for now, this is as close as it gets. I may end up putting like a fucking jpg in her underboob to fake the look or some other clownery. Hey, as long as it works right?
I feel like the inner bra should be shortened more and I plan on trying to give her an alt that's just her default but with only the inner clothes. Speaking of alts: Been considering on whether or not I should do her kimono which design wise, if I want to do it legit, looks very complex to put together. Doable, but highly tedious. Or to go for her suit look/the Mafia girlboss design by Quasarcake. Might put it to a vote to see which design the people prefer. Personally, I'm leery of the suit simply because it's not an official canon look. I have a sinking feeling it'll eventually become canon but be different enough it'll require touchups by me so I'm REALLY hesitant on doing it.
With that said, I also want to do it because I feel like I could repurpose Chloe's coat and just paint it blue, give her a suit, change her hair up, blammo, Suiteronii. The way I see it I've got two challenges: The kimono looks doable, but tedious. The challenge is tracing all the shit and finding the right kimono to glue the shit on. The suit's challenge is seeing if I can repurpose existing assets and finagle them to make something new. Something to chew on for later, but not now.
Using IBL shader Alpha fixes the repeating triangle issue that's probably caused by improper lighting/shadowing. However this causes the object to double as X-ray vision meaning that with the veil, you can see the back of her head. With the skirt, you can see her naked at certain angles which isn't what an X-ray does. It's supposed to show bones, dammit these goggles are garbage! Straight into the trash!
The skirt folds in on itself when moving, her pants are tied to her top so if she's topless, there's suddenly a blank square on the hem of her pants. I don't think the pants are even in a closed loop there's just this gap in between them. The skirt also clip right through the pants too. Or is it the opposite?
I did remove the baked in shading for the hair on alts that don't use the veil. (Without doing that, removing the chains reveal that they've somehow burned their pattern onto her hair.) If it looks like a mess, believe me the hair texture already kinda did to begin with. Yeah I'm surprised too honestly when I removed the shadows I was like "Wow this is gonna stick out badly" but it didn't because as rough as the edit was, the texture was rough as is so it blended right in!
The shoes require stilleto but myehh will work on later/that shit stops working the moment the feet move to a different position anyways so honestly is it worth the effort? I vaguely recall needing to save settings for every possible pose or some crap. Maybe I'll just do it for the default idle pose to give the illusion that it totally works in motion just trust me on this bro.
The clock is fine. And so is Tick and Tock. NGL I didn't pay much attention to them so who knows maybe they're secretly hiding some eldritch horror that should not have been uncovered by man.
I feel as if there's more ground to cover but I'm just saying that because I'm very tired right now so I'm doubtful about my brain telling me that's all the issues I came across. If I was more awake I'm sure I could relay more but as it is, that's all I've got.
As you can see, these problems are something I rather avoid in an official release...but these Patreon exclusive posts are specifically for beta builds/"good enough" cards that, while not polished to a mirror sheen, will function within normal parameters.
Anyways, I'm juggling between making something entirely new, making something out of parts I've found, trying to figure out how to revamp an old design, and my new obligations. Bluh, I thought I had more free time then they sprung this crap on me the day of. Gee, thanks gang.
So yeah, hence this post to tide y'all over. Fingers crossed for an official release this December!
Til then, byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
ADDENDUM:
Oh right the Melty outfit for Kronii is gone. I'm going to replace it with a different outfit.