PREVIEW: Alive v72 reaction system (Patreon)

This is a quick preview of the new reaction system in Alive v72. This next update of Alive includes an upgrade in the form of a rewrite of the mechanic that controls how characters react on touch. The old system was somewhat ok, but it was very limited, focused on collision hits. I was able in the past to improvise with it things like tickling (sort of) and the idle movement of the body parts being touched. But it was not as interactive as I knew it should be possible, and there weren't many places to go from that implementation. So I tried to make it a bit better in v72.

The new system is able to work with proximity detection, not just touches, letting character react for example when your hands are close to their eyes. Because of that, it's better also at detecting actions like massages or tickling, actions that are not collision hits but continous movements, which might come useful for other features.

Body parts being touched will react in more detail in v72. The characters now 'know' that some specific part is being touched and that particular body part will react procedurally. Like the individual fingers in the video as an example.  The difference to the olders version is like 12 vs a hundred smaller body parts compoents. This makes body reactions more realistic in general. This also allowed to do new stuff like reactions that will happen in v72 when touching the character nose for example. I also reworked the hard touches reactions to be more natural as can be seen in the video, with more fluid movement and new expressions. Medium touches and soft touches reactions should follow, not sure yet if in this update or the next.