Lil progress report coming up! Been a while since the last Snippet, not because work isn’t done or that development isn’t progressing, but because “end stages” of each build is largely just setting things up and it’s not a very visual process. So there isn’t much visibly new to show and screenshots would be about things already shown which would be a bit boring I think ^^

First up is work on modding front; Here you can see sample screens related to replacing existing conversations in-game.

Above is a screenshot showing a conversation definition to replace Bosun’s dialogue (though currently it is “replacing” Bosun as a character basically, but we’re changing that part to replacing a conversation node instead of basically a character) ^^

Example of overridden dialogue.

And end result of same part ^^

More Mod uploader in action;

And showing uploaded mods (though they’re all tests basically, and will be cleaned up prior release xD)

Below is some character optimizations we’re working on;

The gif shows basically a harsher “view culling” of character fur when outside of view. Prior this they were basically “level of detail” optimized at range, but not per se disabled when not in view.

On right of the gif you can see the character furs are basically removed when they’re outside of the view ^^

On left side you can see performance prior, and on right after. While it doesn’t affect performance when on screen, it does have a huge benefit on characters that you can’t currently directly see (the extreme test case has 35 characters on screen, normally you’d have ~6-12 active characters only, with less on screen and more outside of view) ^^

Another example showing optimization. You can see “white lines” pop up on the other characters on right side of the screen. These are dynamic/jiggle bones that are optimized in similar fashion to fur; If character is too far away (for the jiggle to be visible), it’s disabled, and if too close then it’s active ^^

Now; about the build; Our current plan is to release the build in “two parts” like few times in the past, first as a preview build that has most features, and then as a full release afterwards with more content and more stuff in it. The build has most of the stuff in already, but we still want to add more things to it and it’s going to take a while longer to finish up, so we decided to split it up to get more stuff to play and earlier, and more for us to test and see if everything works up before the full release ^^

The things that won’t be in the preview build are species specific vaginas (the new “smooth” -type mesh is in however, only the species specific isn’t), Compass and Clock (ui stuff), Intro (most likely not), and Ful subspecies morpher. The Ful morpher will LIKELY be in for Sinnae, Maas, and one new character who are fuls, but not for player yet. Everything else is going to be in the preview build ^^

Kizan is largely just for hunting for now, but that’s how it was planned originally too; Roll out it faster, and then start filling it up. Though it’ll have few NPCs to meet too, but there won’t be any loot there because long term I want to create custom Kizan specific loot and not just recycle all the same things from Skiia ^^

Now; Some screenshots of new shinies;

The mountain texturing is improved so it no longer looks smudgy and boring in distance.

Also, spooky darkness! Skiir’s Wrath needed more love, and there will be plenty <3

Some quality of life improvements; Someone told me that captains shouldn’t have to swim to shore, and I wondered why because large cats, dogs, and some lizards really love water and would gladly swim there, but then I realized all the citizens on Skiir are civilized. So, you won’t have to swim back now if you don’t want to x)

Don’t worry! You can still propel yourself over the board and splash down like before!

Kizan also has the option to take a boat to shore, and it’s more important there because the ship is really far from the perilous shores!

Just random screenshot of Selis watching Kizan because I liked the screenshot ^^’

Kizan’s tavern/inn. A bit more homey than The Cotton Ball ^^

Galaxy is purpler, and stars are closer, on Kizan. Moooody!

More update info soon!

With luv <3
Ruffle