I've been very quiet the last month, and those who know me by now will know this means I'm doing a lot of work for a big update. So it's about time I told you all what is coming next.
I'm finally integrating all the character art that my freelance team of master artists has been working on for the last 9 months or so.
The male base model has been totally replaced.
The character editor now has facial editing features
Characters can now have hair. The range of choices will increase over time
All clothing and armour is being replaced, and with it all the factions are being overhauled.
High priority for following updates:
Female characters
Beards
Armour crafting
Female characters take time to add, because it requires all the clothing and armour to be adjusted or re-modelled to fit them. That's why I'm getting all the male character models and stuff in place first, it makes things easier for me.
All these changing models are going to be quite a shake-up for your existing save games. You may find a lot of your old clothing and armour doesn't fit your characters anymore. It's being phased out, and in future updates it will vanish completely so I suggest you sell it after the next update.
There will also be "Plastic Surgeon" NPCs in bars, these guys will re-activate the character editor for you so you can modify your existing squad of clones.
I'm also looking at tagging certain gear as "Uniforms". Meaning if you loot a samurai for his armour, and get seen walking around wearing it, then other guys from that faction will be all like "Oi! Where did you get that armour?" which will damage your relations with that faction. In a future update I'll also make it possible to use as a disguise to infiltrate faction bases and stuff. Looted uniforms will also have a lower re-sale value.
The main benefit to doing this is that it puts more emphasis on purchasing or researching and crafting your own armour in order to get the good stuff and catch up with the rest of the world.
Also, for those who haven't seen it I now have a sound designer lined up. He made this preview video to get the job:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgz-89c8fXI&feature=player_embedded
Note that that is simply a dubbed video, there is no sound in the actual game yet, it will still take some time.
Update ETA: a few weeks or so.