Hello fishers! :)
This devlog is quite delayed, the Steam page launch and everything surrounding it (social media, marketing) kept me really busy. Sorry for that! Most of the customization features shown here can be seen on the Steam page trailer, but there are some new things I've been working on like emotes and a new head model for the cat.
TLDR;
Added emote system and 17 emotes
New cat head model, old one available as 'Football'
Some new customization items (since the trailer two weeks ago), especially in the Eyes section and a simple bunny tail
Improved Lighting system
Painting system performance improved
Various bugfixes and polishing
Emotes
Let's start with the emotes!
I've implemented 17 different emotes, of which 3 are to play Rock, Paper, Scissors (a community suggestion!). The emote menu is a combination of an emote wheel and a more regular menu. I've chosen this layout to implement more emotes immediately instead of programming a register-to-slot system. If you have the emote unlocked, it will simply show up here. You open the emote menu by holding X. You cancel an emote by pressing X. Sitting is also bound to a normal X press when no emote is playing. You can rebind the emote menu to a different key if you prefer. Emotes work while standing or sitting, as shown with the 'Rock!' emote as part of the video:
What is currently still missing are sound effects. Only the 'Happy' emote has a short sound effect. So, I could add sounds but I need to find some good sounds, re-work them with Audacity and Metasounds etc. I also added a volume slider specific to emote sounds.
Reworked Cat Head
It was pointed out in Discord, that the cat head shape isn't super appealing. And I totally agree. I've made a lot of prototyping assets while developing the game. My focus was (and still is) getting the game systems to work properly. But here is a video of the reworked cat head model. The old cat head will still stay in the game, lovingly named 'Football'. I've also included the wolf head in the video. I do appreciate feedback on cat and wolf head very much. I'm not 100% happy with the wolf head yet.
Improved Lighting System
I've done work on this system shortly before the official announcement trailer, so you'll already see it in there. But I've also uploaded a video:
Basically, the games shading relies on Unlit materials. Which means that the materials don't receive light or shadows. My solution uses the same principle as the Rifts spawning in the world. I'm drawing a mask into the shader at the positions where lighting influences of the day/night system should be prevented (especially darkness). Like lanterns, campfires etc. This is toggled based on player position towards lights and only supports point light (spheres) for now. I need to observe the performance impact. This light gets combined with my previous light that uses a stepped gradient to color surrounding objects. In the future I would like to combine both systems. In the video you can also see that the fishing line isn't influenced yet by the light. The emote material also has this problem. Something to fix!
Customization
Currently there are these customization categories:
General
The game uses a self-built synthesized voice system. You can adjust Voice pitch and voice speed. I want to expand on this in the future by recording more sets of sound samples for different base voices.
You can adjust the general character scale, but I will explore scaling your character into all three axis separately down the line.
The last option is Liveliness. When I started developing the game I implemented a head and eye tracking system. Liveliness makes your characters eyes behave more chill or more frantic.
Face
You can choose different textures for Mouth, Nose, Eyes and Pupils. The thumbnails are RGB color-coded and you can set your own colors for each element. Not all face elements make use of all colors. A lot of eyes use only red and blue, and a lot of mouths use only blue at first glance. That's because teeth and gums / tongue use the other color channels. But this does mean you can color these elements. In case you want black teeth for whatever reason!
Additionally you can move each element up, down, left and right as well as scale them. On top of that you're able to mirror elements on X and Y axis. This creates the possibility for completely different shapes! Keep in mind that facial expressions and mouth movements or eye blinking use specific textures. And these un-mirror to look correct. I'd like to provide options to adjust these in the future, but that will be much further out.
Here is an example of a single eye shape being transformed to look like different eye textures. The shader behind this is quite complex (and took a lot of experimenting, sweat & tears!) and is occassionally still a little buggy. Especially since the pupil has to react to the eye changes. This can still lead to problems when only one element is mirrored and is challening for the eye tracking, once the eye is very offset. But the player freedom is there and I'll expand on it!
Body
The customization elements for the body are: Ears, Heads, Tails and Body Patterns.
There are 3 options for these elements: The 3D model, the pattern and the colors. For simplicity and control over the texture, 3D models and patterns are linked. That means, for example, that for the cat head there are different variants: Cat [Plain], Cat {Tuxedo], Cat[Spotted 1] etc. Over time this might lead to a really full menu, and I'll need to use sub-categories. But with the different shapes for ears, tails and heads it just didn't seem feasible to use a single UV texture for a pattern and hope it looks good. Fixing UV seams would have been a nightmare.
Similar to the face customization, you can change up to 3 colors on each element to whichever color you like!
Clothing
The elements for body are: Head, Inner wear, Outer wear, Legs and Feet.
Like the other categories, clothing allows you to change clothing colors to your preferences. There are different types for coloring. Some can be colored however you wish, others can't be colored at all or only tinted. This applies when they have specific textures (images, text) on them.
Clothing still needs more work to be honest. What I really like to add very soon is attachments for your face and body. The system will work similar to Tools customization with slots to choose from to put the attachment onto.
Tools
I've talked about Tools (like Fishing Rods) customization in the last devlog post. So, I'll just say that you can customize Spool, Bobber, add up to two physical attachments which you can customize the attachment slot, scale and offset for. Other options are Fishing line color and thickness.
Color palettes
The last section (for now) for player customization are color palettes. Here you can mix and save your own colors which you can re-use for your other customization plus the drawing feature. The RGB ink used for this system can be acquired by trading fish for ink (the amount of ink depends on size and base color of the fish) or from completing research expeditions (quests). Each palette can hold 12 colors and the amount of palettes you can create and name is not limited. When you delete a color or palette you'll get the ink back
Thank you so much for reading :)!
I'm currently working on different core systems, some bug fixing and polish in preparation for the playtest in January.
Much love <3
- Saia