Today’s update is mostly about clothes. Or, more accurately, skin. For a long time the game has abstracted the amount of coverage clothes you give into State of dress, which was a bit of a vague figure and easy to manipulate into some weird combinations of clothes that somehow gave you a decent number. It was also getting less and less useful when it came to the introduction of more detailed mechanics, such as tattoos and underwear.
This new mechanic has been a long time in the works and introduces a whole new and more realistic system under the hood. Each piece of clothing now specifies which parts of your body it covers, and by how much. This is broken down into 18 areas – neck, shoulders, upper arms, forearms, etc. State of dress, and several other things, is then calculated on the fly – not just how much is covered, but specifically which parts.
For many outfits this won’t make any difference at all (e.g. if you’re wearing coveralls and a hat or jeans and a top), but it’ll make all the difference for more weird and wonderful clothing combinations (and will also allow the addition of more weird and wonderful clothes). It also allows for more clothing effects and tweaks. Overall, although more complex to implement, it gives a much smoother and more satisfying experience with outfits overall.
Effects & tweaks
There are a variety of new tweaks you can make to your outfit now, such as wearing your jeans low or jacket open, and there are additional effects for things such as showing some (or all) of your underwear or not wearing a bra. We’ve also got new clothing combos for Absolutely styling, and altogether new combo effects such as Dressed to kill and Kitted out.
But the most obvious change at this point is with the skin slot. Now that the system knows which parts of your skin are and aren’t showing, it knows which tattoos you have showing too (plus the same with other things, such as cybernetics). Now, if you’ve got enough ink showing, there’ll be a new skin slot item available, matched to the tattoo style you originally chose – but it does have to be quite a lot of ink to get to this point.
Mutants
One of the most noticeable changes is for mutants with obvious mutations. It’s no longer enough to have enough generic State of dress to hide your bits. You’ll now need to make sure that the specific areas are well enough covered. The game shows you if you’ve got anything on display in the changing room, so you’ll be able to make adjustments as you see fit. But beware – if you do something like take off your coat later, what was hidden might now be revealed.
The process of getting changed is also a bit smoother for mutants now. If everything is well enough hidden, you’ll be able to check out just like a “normal” person: no extra step.
More to come
Although this is a lot, it’s not absolutely everything that’s planned. There will be more different clothing tweaks and effects in future, more clothing combos, combos between physical quirks and clothing, and, of course, many more clothes.
Other stuff
Although the big thing in this update is the clothing, there’s a lot more besides. Plenty of tweaks to mechanics and some quality of life changes, but the majority of the work went into revamping Dusty’s content. There’s now a lot more to do at The chop shop, amongst other things. There’s also a new tranche of content for Zara.
There's also a poll running in our Discord server right now for future content priorities. Check it out of you want to have your say.
Read the full changelog below:
Clothing system overhaul.
- The game now knows specifically which parts of your body are and aren't covered,
- Various new clothing effects and controls.
- There's a new system for when Clothing wear kicks in.
- Various items have had their properties tweaked.
- Tattoos now show in your Skin slot if you're showing enough.
- Any obvious mutations you've got will be auto-hidden just once on game load, just in case.
Smith now has a schedule.
Dusty now has a schedule.
The chop shop has had a load of work.
More Zara content.
More Dusty content.
- Your contact with hir might drop at this point.
Around 20 new items of clothing.
- Many new, some already previewed.
Ammo is now more expensive
Renamed Separated hemispheres to Dolphine chimerism.
You can now pick only one animal chimerism mutation.
- 11 new mutations on the way.
- Extra content for chimeric mutants on the way.
There's some more content on Differences.
Condensed the various pinned Jettel cards into one if you have more than one.
You can no longer use positive moods when you're in a lot of pain, have a comedown, etc.
New consequence for high Target/Street crime.
The Target/Street crime calculation has been altered slightly.
There's a new control in Outfit & weapon controls for unplugging spikes.
Added some new slums side alley events.
Made dumping stash a bit smoother.
The Fire axe is now accessed via Heavier equipment instead of the weapons locker.
New artwork.
Fixed another problem with progression of Pimps and prostitutes/Aftermath.
Fixed Bad shipment not clearing after it's triggered.
Fixed a problem with the Kettec KSG's ammo feeds.
Fixed a possible problem with character progression if you chose mutations early.
Fixed some typos and other smaller bugs; thanks for the reports!