September 2021

Disclaimer

As a reminder, devblogs will be available only for Patreon patrons until the next game update. After which, every devblog posted prior to this update release date will be publicly posted, one by one, on the game’s website.

It seems that phone web browsers cannot properly read GIFs in some cases.

Talas rendering

Tessallation gives the possibility to modify a model’s geometry, adding or removing polygons from it in real time depending on the camera’s view distance. This is a very useful system that prevents seeing said polygons in VR and helps keeping the game optimized.

Unfortunately, this sytem is not flawless and the several issues it brought with it can’t be solved in the next game’s update. On top of that, tessallation will no longer be maintained natively in Unreal Engine 5, considered deprecated.

Thus, I will not use tessallation. Instead, I simply added more polygons to the brute model.

It will be slightly more straining on a computer, but this will allow me to offer a good looking rendering and to sharpen details.

Regarding optimization, the model itself is cut into several parts with different levels of details. Said level of detail is selected depending on view distance.

I had to redo Talas’ talons’ rendering, so we can now see wrinkles appearing and disappearing as toes are folded and unfolded. It was already the case before, but not as noticeable.

Animation

I’ve mostly worked on plenty of animations this month for Talas interacting with different items, such as his couch, his bed, but also on free movement : stomping, teasing...

This month allowed me to generate plenty of exploitable content in game, but there still is plenty more to do for the numerous planned situations. I am also likely to work more on these during a rather long tweaking phase.

AI

A certain amount of edits were made to finalize my situation system, so that new implemented animations are more easily used by the game’s AI. It now can more easily choose what to use between situations and the game master has a better feedback.

Since my situation system is more or less finished, and because I now have a certain amount of exploitable animations, I added a good quantity of actions and interactions to the AI. Talas now can offer plenty of teasing with said new situations : to interact with situations next to you, to sit down and to watch you rub over his talons, to crush you if he feels playful, to check under his sole for stuck micros, and so on.

Talas house

I edited Talas’ bathroom, added a new room with a hot-water balloon, changed the kitchen’s sink and started working on the plumbing. Next month, I will start adding more elements to decorate and furnish all the rooms.