Growth RPG V0.1.6 (Patreon)
Content
A bit of a small update this time. The big changes are unlocking the camera, adding more to the starting town, updating some menu graphics, and implementing the new character models.
The new character models took way longer than expected so it ate up a lot of time this month. The big problem was that I needed to redo the hands/feet placement for every animation. Something about slightly changing the positions in the rig completely broke it. But this should be the last time I should have to do that. I don't plan on changing anything with the hands/feet any time soon. If you come across any broken/funny looking animations be sure to tell me.
There should no longer be any seam issues with the new model, no see-through armpits, if you see any discrepancies please let me know, and include what your characters stats are. The new model also starts with smaller breasts so every female character wont have huge boobs to start with. Also the thighs hips will no longer become gigantic for nearly every build. I haven't included any shapekeys for big hips, but it should be something I could easily implement in the future. There is one issue where you can see seams where the crotch and around the mouth are visible. I think this has to do with the exporter messing with the normals, because I can make them match in blender but when they move over to unreal it reverts to the old normals. The new model should be much more malleable than the last, so I can make a bunch of bodyparts fit together. All in all I would say that the new workflow was a success, and it will be way faster/easier in the future to both animate and model characters.
I did try a different rigging for the face so it would be easily editable for things like eye size and shape, but I don't think its possible with the way unreal handles bone scaling. So my plan in the future is to remove all the bones that are controlling the lips and instead use shapekeys for emotions. This does however mean I will have to make a system for emotions.
I would also like people's opinion on the new menu. Again didn't have time to completely finish it, but I like the idea of having elements like buttons, bars, and scroll arrows on the border, I want to know if its too hard to red though. I can always get the border redesigned if it is. Personally I like it, clears a lot of free space.
I added on to some of the areas, mainly the starting town, but because of the new camera you may be able to see into the void. I would have liked to work on them more but the animations took up a lot of time, I just finished re-importing the animations yesterday. Sadly that means I didn't get to polish the game any besides crushing a few bugs. But I also didn't change much with the game mechanically so hopefully there won't be any new bugs