Character View and Early-Game Art Revamp (Patreon)

Greetings!

Sorry I haven't posted for a bit! I kept saying "I'll post an update as soon as I finish this character view thing I'm working on", but finishing it took longer than expected. >_>

Character View Feature

I've spent a good part of the last while working on the character view feature, and I finally got things (mostly) working. To recap, the character view feature will let you see an image of what a particular character looks like as you're playing the game. There are two ways I could have implemented this: a) as a toggle-able image of Alex you see on the game screen as you're walking around, or b) as an image you see of any party character in a special game menu. Rather than implement one or the other I decided to implement both, and here's what they look like:

Menu character view

"Game screen" character view

And here's where I'd like some feedback. 

I like the 'menu' character view feature. I think it looks nice. Not that particular render so much (I'll likely change it), but the general idea of what that menu could be. On the other hand, I'm rather ambivalent about the 'game screen' character view. After a bit of thought, I concluded I sort of didn't like it because the visual style of my renders and the game world clash.

"Ah!" you might say, "But the portraits you use during game conversations are renders. It's the same thing, isn't it?" This is a fair point, but I don't think their visual impact is quite the same. Portraits focus on the face - the most 'cartoony' part of my character designs - which I think minimizes the dissonance. Portraits are also bounded by a box, which creates a distinct visual space for them and thus helps minimize the clash.

The 'character view' thing is rather popular in Japanese H-games, which is why I think there'd been some requests for it. As most of the art in those are drawn, there usually isn't as much of a visual contrast between the character art and game world. Japanese games also often have some sort of mechanic that trashes the PC's outfit as they're attacked, so the character view feature lets you see them in various states of (un)dress. I don't really have that in my game, so perhaps 'game screen' character view is less interesting in my case.

What I want to know is this: what do you guys think about it? Do you like it? Dislike it? It's something that can be toggled on and off, so I might be willing to leave it in if enough of you do like it (even though I sort of don't.)

I'm still working some of the bugs out and doing renders for it, but as soon as I'm done I'll put a test build with it up in the Discord. Once it's up I'll add a poll so I can get some feedback from you guys in a more quantitative way, but in the meantime please let me know what you think in the comments!

Other UI Changes

I'll definitely be keeping the 'menu' variant of the character view feature. It was also the most difficult one to make, so at least that effort wasn't wasted! In order to make it I had to create my own version of the Status menu from scratch, which required another deep dive into the guts of the engine. While mucking around there I managed to figure out how I could remove level and experience info from the UI. As you're aware, TPE doesn't use levels or experience, and for a long time I've wanted to get rid of references to them to avoid confusing players. Well, now I finally have!

Now that I have a bit more experience modifying and creating game windows, I have some more ideas for things I'd like to add in future releases. First, I'll probably add a comprehensive help menu. One thing it'll cover is controls - how many people will remember the 'r' key rotates certain objects if they haven't played in a while? I'll probably also include help sections for individual areas and dungeons - and these sections won't be displayed until you've reached the relevant area.

I'm also thinking of implementing a map screen. There's a lot of stuff on the map now, and there's going to be more. It's probably starting to get hard to remember which place on the overworld map leads to which area, and what it is you're supposed to do there. My vision is to have a menu with a stylized overworld map that'll tell you what each of those areas are, and which might also interface with the quest plugin to tell you what quests are relevant to it. This menu would probably be complicated to make, but I think I have enough expertise now to do it.

Are there any other quality of life features you'd like to see in the game?

Early-game Art Revamp

I've also been playing around a bit with the reworked male Alex model to see if I really want to switch the art in the early game to my 'stylized' style in a future release. Here's a rework of the cover image:

As usual, and for some reason I don't entirely understand, it looks a bit oversaturated compared to what I made in Photoshop. For reference, here's the original:

What do you think? If you didn't know anything else about the game, which version would you be more likely to play?

I also couldn't help myself and decided to see what the new male Alex model would look like in the succubus scene from 0.7. Here's a reworked image from that scene:

And here's the original:

Personally I really like the redone one. I like the original one too, but the male model looks much better in the redone version, IMO. I did the lighting a bit differently in the redone version; I didn't accentuate the background as much, which I think draws the viewer's attention to the figures more and makes the image a little more dramatic overall. (There are also a bunch of other subtle changes.)

Anyway, you guys should expect a test version up in a few days that'll let you test out the character view feature yourself. As mentioned above, when the test build is out I'll also put up a poll.

That's all I have for now. Please let me know your thoughts, and thank you for your support!