Nanney Teasford
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Plan Overview
🕑 Added 2024-06-30 11:06:16 +0000 UTCHi people ! It seems my schedule has improved and I have completed work on the update, which solves most of the problems associated with the transition to the 0.6 branch, now it’s time to get down to business and talk about future development plans, and I will also tell you about my thoughts on the complexities of the project and what I have to work with ...
I’ll say right away that this is not a review of the next update, but rather my thoughts about working on the project and key development plans.
About the current system of bondage poses:
To move to a new development branch, I decided to write a significantly complex system with a bunch of state machines, which would make it possible to determine what position a tied girl is in and could provide a set of animations for transitions from one position to another, enable or disable controls, the ability to release body parts, provide up-to-date input tips, and also provided an animated machine for moving, since all characters move based on rootmotion. Calling animation allows you to move and rotate the character quite believably, while making a minimum of changes, because all this is done at the animation creation stage. It was an experiment and the experiment was obviously unsuccessful.
The main reason is that I initially rely on complexity in everything and I would like to leave the opportunity to untie the body parts separately, but with their own nuances. The current system differs from the previous one in that the animations you see when you try to free yourself are called on separate layers and override individual body parts in the current static animation. It sounds simple enough and it allows you to extend the logic and mix multiple animations, but it results in a lot of work with assets. Previously, resistance animations were designed to specifically animate the pose you were in, which allowed these animations to be authentic because they were created from scratch. Now we have to do separate animations for each pose so that they look at least normal... Can you tell - what's the problem? just create enough assets! Yes, but I'm going to expand the variations of bondage for both arms and legs, which in the long run will lead to a lot of work matching one animation to another, and that's a lot of monotonous work that I'd like to avoid. This is why you may notice that in some positions you cannot attempt to remove the gag or hands, or cannot invoke these functions at all.
The second problem is closely related to the first. When your hands are tied, the manager binds an animation node based on the destination tag in the item. For example, when choosing a boxtie technique, a node containing all the logic and animations is attached, when choosing a crosstie technique, another one is attached, and so on... This logic works for all items that can be put on you and they are all based on four classes (Arms, Legs , head, body). The arms, head and body work on the same principle, the leg node redefines the movement component, and also creates an external state machine to control the change of poses. All 4 nodes turn on and off independently of each other, which allows you to separate the logic and this is great... But there is a problem, all 4 nodes cannot interact with each other and receive information about each other. What this means is that when you are standing, you can call the resistance function for the arms, the arm node causes an animation and it plays for all the bones starting from the lowest back bone. Very convenient, but if you are lying on your back or stomach, the animation is played according to the same principle and cannot be overridden or changed, which leads to the fact that part of the body goes to the floor or hangs in the air and it looks very ridiculous.
All this leads to the fact that supporting this system, namely the introduction of new poses and techniques, will become real hell for me. Therefore, I decided to stop supporting this system and start working on a new one, which I will talk about later.
About plans to work on AI:
If you've been following the project's public roadmap, you may have noticed that several enemy classes are being prioritized. They are divided by character and have individual behavior. It's been half a year since the first public build appeared, and since then the AI has remained virtually unchanged. This is probably the most painful part for me, because the AI is difficult to adapt to an open world, especially if you have never worked with an open world game.
Regarding AI, I'm going to make some changes to the roadmap and the project. We are talking about a single behavior tree for all enemy AI. I'm not going to abandon the concept of classes, just some behavior related to a specific class will be called within a single controller, which I think will allow us to expand the capabilities of AI without affecting the logic of other classes.
I'm also thinking about adding a few concepts to the plan that were originally planned, but were not implemented due to compatibility limitations. All the AI is doing at the moment is just patrolling the area. I would like to add some variety to their routine, such as dynamically changing routes, giving them the ability to set traps, and also changing the location of the hostages from time to time.
About the concept of a new bondage system:
Making my work easier so I can have more time for content is what I strive for when adding new services and systems. I don't want to continue to develop the current system of bondage poses, because it turned out to be extremely mediocre in terms of adaptability. I'll try to briefly tell you what I'm going with this.
I think you all know about a game called Escape Forced Overtime, where you literally control physical processes to roll over, bend your legs, or push off a wall to move forward. I'm going to take this experience and combine 2 systems into one. The first will be normal states, where the player controls the poses, the poses control the animations, and the animations control the movement. This is what you have already seen - bunny jumps, moving or turning while sitting on the butt, but on your own initiative or due to external factors you can enter the ragdoll doll mode, which comes from a basic pose and all movement of the character is controlled by motors in physical connections on joints.
In theory, this will allow you to painlessly mix the physical position of the character with any animations, since there is no need to closely control what position the body is in and how the joints bend, because they will not fall under a collision or hang in the air. This could also be applied to places for hostages, so that they could be suspended from beams and they could swing and turn in the air.
About territory expansion:
The open world is one that needs to be explored and explored, which cannot be said about the only map in sandbox mode... In the future, I am going to significantly expand this map and want to share the plan.
Base camp : The camp itself will be doubled in size and will have more space for prisoners, as well as more verticality, allowing for more content to be added in a smaller area.
Parking lots : Some kind of checkpoints, they will be found on the road. Usually they are captured by bandits; they can be freed by immobilizing all enemies. If you are captured at this checkpoint, you will most likely be sold to the base camp of slave traders.
Prison : The personal possessions of slave traders located somewhere below their camp. Particularly important prisoners are kept there, and you can get into it, you know how.
Points of Interest : Special places on the map where you can find unique items, characters, or learn about the game world and its history in general.
Moving around the world will be done on a horse; if you are captured, the horse will be located for horse parking nearby. You can also use fast travel to already open areas.
About the dialogue system:
This should be the foundational system for interacting with all NPCs in story mode and sandbox mode.
I'm going to add functional characters based on this system who will be able to carry out some assignments, do work for money, provide their services or carry out your orders if they are tied up and helpless. Some actions that you commonly use on other NPCs will move into a dialog box, which will be more intuitive and will be accompanied by unique dialogue. This will also allow you to implement some conditions that you must fulfill in order, for example, to recruit a character, undress him, and generally do anything.
This will also allow you to introduce unique characters with their own history, from whom you can receive side tasks, after completing which they will work in the spy bureau, performing their unique functions.
Let's sum it up:
As for the new bondage system - for now I will experiment with it and share with you news about the work, for now it is just a concept in my head and I have not brought it into the main plan, so I will not talk much about what is not there.
The dialogue system should appear in one of the updates in branch 0.6 and will develop as content becomes available.
Territory expansion will be a key innovation in update 0.7.0.0
AI changes will be gradual and will be included in some updates as they become available.
I hope I explained as clearly as possible what I will be doing for the next six months, and I also hope for your support. Follow the news, as well as the tasks on the roadmap, to be aware of what I am working on at the moment. Thank you everyone, I adore you. With love, your Nanney.
