Hey everyone. I'm making this post to let you all know the new build is scheduled to arrive over the weekend.

The build coming will feature the updated character body. This is a complete upgrade to the player model and how player customization is managed on the backend. This has all been done to let us to feature a higher degree of customization in a far more manageable way.

Let's take a look at what's new.

New Base Model

As mentioned earlier, we do have a new base body model. At first glance it's hard to notice the differences, but I can assure you there are a lot of differences. The new base is better proportioned, has better topology and improve rigging. Some of these improvements will translate to slightly better character animation.

You may also notice the body has a more "neutral" shape than the previous iterations. I’m employing a lot tricks to give us a body which can work for both male and female characters, and by starting from a more neutral basis, it simplifies morphing the body, outfits, and should simplify outfit creation in the long term.



Outfit Layering System

As a part of this update I’ll be introducing the all new outfit layering system. A system which uses far too many slots to create a very modular character body.

The new body is designed to be broken up into multiple slots. Each item you equip can now define a set of slots it masks, so if you put on a shirt, it can mask the body underneath. If you put on a chestplate over that, the chestplate can then mask out the shirt and everything underneath it. We had a basic prototype of this system running in previous versions, but the updated system is now formalized.

We do this masking dance for a number of reasons. It's more performant to mask off geometry the player isn't going to see, and more importantly, it lowers the chances of lower layers clipping into higher layers. Clipping is unsightly, and something which becomes more common with bodies that morph. So by using this system, outfit sets with wildly varying geometry can now fit underneath or on top of other outfit sets with no additional headache needed on the developer side. This makes creating outfit morphs and potential future outfits a lot easier. If it can be hidden by what’s on top of it, and hide the things beneath it, you don't have to worry about it.

This is one of those systems you should rarely notice in play, (assuming it's doing its job correctly), but an obvious example of it at work would be where we hide a players casual dress underneath their armor.
 
The new layering system does include a number of additional optimizations. It can handle the creation and destruction of meshes dynamically where we were previously defining all the slots before runtime. This should allow us to handle more complex equipment scenarios and make extending the system with additional slots a trivial procedure.

Morph Limits & Overrides

The equip system now features morph limits and overrides. Allow me to explain what exactly that means and what it lets us do. Morph limits allow us to define how much a piece of armor or clothing can deform. For example, if you were to wear a tight chestwrap item it would limit breast morphs to 20% of the potential maximum. The limits are set globally so if your character had the max possible breast size, and you were to wear a shirt or another piece of clothing above the chestwrap, all clothing above it would then be limited to 20% and therefore appear smaller. Limits in conjunction with overrides will enable the creation of items which can influence the visual state of other items. Padded bras or rings that shrink particular body parts in order to make them more manageable. It does have quite a lot of utility.

New Hair & Outfits & Ears & Physics Upgrades

We have new and improved hair options. Options for guys and gals. Almost all the new styles are physics enabled, which is a breath of fresh air considering the mostly static hairstyles we've had up until now (excluding ponytail attachments). New ears, ear physics and tail physics are also making an entry. This would have been very difficult to manage with the old player setup. Now we can easily apply physics to player clothing and body parts. 



We are retiring the old hair attachment system. It did have a number of issues on the backend making it difficult to scale. For now it's more manageable to stick with preset hairstyles. We may explore attachments again at a later date...

In addition to the new hair styles, we cannot forget the new outfit sets. Several new outfit sets are being introduced, along with a rework to the low tier prosthesis. 

I haven't had time to implement all the new hairstyles and outfit sets, so I will be introducing more next week and the week after, along with any I mentioned would be getting a port over to the new body.

I have teased some alternate outfit colors over on the discord. Outfit recolouring will be added to the character creator after all the currently planned outfit sets have been added to the game.

Eye Animations

New eye animations and improved blink animations. I'm not sure if anyone noticed but the character didn't blink in sandbox mode. Now they not only blink but also look around from time to time. I feel this really brings our characters to life and I will be applying facial animation to other gameplay aspects in the coming weeks. (e.g. injured, on death, hurt)


Improved first person camera

I've improved the first person camera experience. The camera is now positioned correctly at eye level. Player head and hair (and anything else that may obstruct your view) are now hidden in first person mode.

I don't think the first person cam is ideal for combat granted we don’t have dedicated first person animations. That being said, I can totally see the appeal of exploration being done in first person. To round this system off, I'll soon introduce a change which knocks you out of first person mode when in combat.

Preview Pose

This is something I’ve wanted to add for a very long time. You may now cycle between poses in the character creator. This allows you to see what your character looks like in various positions.

This also exists so that when I inevitably add a camera item with a selfie mode, you'll be able to photograph your character in-game in various poses.

The character creator idles have been updated to match the in-game character idles. This is in part a move to return to actor parity. As of the last release, the player you've seen in the character creator is not the same character as the one you've been playing as in game. The character creator player is the old version from before the great locomotion upgrade, but as of 0.14.0-A, the old character is no more... There is an additional benefit. By using the same in-game idles, you can now see the shift in stance when adjusting hip width for a masculine or feminine character.

Plans For The Week After

In the following week I'll introduce equipment stats, along with an update to the inventory interface. There are some flaws in the current layout, and it doesn't accommodate a stat display very well. There have also been requests for a larger character preview in the inventory, and with the entrance of all these new outfits, I agree. You should be able to get a good look at your character in inventory without having to flip in and out.
All that and more, next week~

That's all for now. Keep an eye out for the update this weekend. Until then~