State of the Game - Building Character (Patreon)

Evening all, it's time for another State of the Game! And I'm glad to say that not only is the character generation/portrait creation functionality now complete, but we've also gotten in the Schen portrait assets and those have been added in as well. At the moment only the Harian assets remain for the playable races, and I'll be returning to finish this off when those are in. If you would like a quick video preview of the available assets I have one here (fully clothed so I can keep this post public, but rest assured that the clothes do come off). I've done some counting and if my math is correct, the number of currently available visual character options is:

• Roth: 27
• Figura: 216
• Vox: 900
• Schen: 3780
• Human: 8640

Roth are at a bit of a handicap due to the lack of color in their design, which is certainly something I'll keep in mind when we're doing the designs for the new species. Overall though I think we have a fairly healthy number of options, and that's not including clothing - there will be additional outfits in the future as well. I've also gotten in a bit of new art assets relating to button icons in the romance scenes, so no worries, those aren't going to be just boring text forever.

So that's the last major bit of coding for the game's intro sequence! The next task however is also a bit of a doozy - finally doing the GUI overhaul and getting rid of all of these default Unity components. I'm certainly looking forward to no longer having to put disclaimers on all of my screenshots, that's for certain. However, my approach at the moment is a little uncertain - when I created Carnal Coup, I simply purchased a pre-made GUI asset set and plugged it in. For Carnal Voyages meanwhile I've been cursed with a bit of a design vision. Star Trek is certainly a notable influence for this game, and I would like to have a GUI design reminiscent of the LCARS system from Trek - basically, simple shapes and colors and such. Unfortunately I have not seen any pre-made assets that fit this design approach and I've decided to take the risky step of making some on my own. Risky, as I am not a graphics designer by any stretch of the imagination.

Meaning that there is a chance I might end up wasting a bit of time during this phase. I've already spent a few days on some of the basics, with some new font selections and some basic buttons and frames, and so far things seem to be working out fairly well. However, the possibility does exist that I'll get to some of the more complex components and it will look like crap. If so, then I'll fall back on Plan B of buying a kit and plugging it in instead. And of course there's more going on than just changing the images and colors, as several screens need things like more informative displays, portraits need to be plugged into many more places, text needs to be replaced with icons, etc. So schedule-wise if things go well I may be able to wrap it up this month, but if not it may go longer. Once it is done there will still be a few more tasks before the initial release (including some sex scene writing), but I'll go into that more in a later update. For now, wish me luck, thanks for your support, and I'll be back in a few weeks!