Where we are compared to our plan, what will be released, and progress of the week

As we approach the release, and that famous 5th week of the minimum time we’d need to deliver, let’s take stock of our situation, and what is done, and what is left to do compared to what we planned a month ago.

We wrote:

If we all work at maximum capacity, we’ll need at least 5 weeks to be able to finalize the content we planned for the release. How fast we can go depends as always on the amount of support we get, so thank you for supporting us in this.

Let’s now compare the progress for each item:

The plans we had and how much we completed

Here’s the original plan, marked in bold is the current state:

• 1- Sek and his clothes 100% DONE for all directions.
• 2- Keakrix missing views The back view is missing clothes, the arms are still being adjusted.
• 3- Girls – they have to be generic for now! The base body is mostly done: the arms need to be adjusted.
• 4- Guard (in generic colors, plus clothes) Not done yet.
• 5- Golak special features Golak was replaced with Meiri. Meiri is done for front, side, back view, she is missing clothes.
• 6- Vanlen’s pretty clothes Not done yet. Will likely be cut at this point.
• 7- Recolor – high demand task The black hole that is always 90% done, yet we have so many pieces and small corrections to do so that this task alone sucked a lot of resources. All directions are 90-98% done.
• 8- 2 backgrounds in work (1 week) Done.

Animation priorities:

• Explore stealth crouching as a hunched walk Done.
• Jump in all directions Done.
• Idle, walk, run for both female and male rigs in all directions Done.
• Razorclaw males emotions, 3/4 emotions for females if possible Partially done: some emotions are available for males, 3/4 female rig is still under work.

Characters planned in the next release:

• Keakrix Almost Done.
• Sek Done.
• Vanlen Will have to be cut for now because the poor lad is still naked.
• Guard This has to be done, we just need clothes.
• Golak is now Meiri and will be done.

Story likely included in the next release:

• Wake up in bandages in Razorclaw village Done.
• Earn your keep by doing jobs/missions for the Razorclaw You can talk to Meiri, from there it's the end and enter sandbox mode and do Cooking, Gather, Loot from various containers in game.
• Get chased out of village by Kantir into deep jungle We decided to focus on developing the story better in the following releases, we need the characters first.

Milestone Goals:

• Launcher Creation – Done.
• 2D Remake – Done.
• Dialogue Changes – Done.
• Minigames – Cooking, Gather, Loot are done and playable.
• Character Customization – 90% done. (held back by missing art)
• Hunger System – Done.
• Combat – Not done - Pushed for a following release to focus on this content. Some elements done.
• Game Content – Only very initial part of the story done.

Ok, so we did a lot, but we’re not there yet, let’s list below what exactly is missing:

1. Keakrix back view clothes and arms.
2. Girls arms.
3. Guard clothes.
4. Meiri’s clothes.
5. That last 5-10% of the recolor of K.
6. Emotions (Which may be cut to release faster).

We also had to add stuff in the middle (as you could see from the previous updates, and here’s some additional items we’d like to shove in if possible, or we’ll have to push them for the next release:

1. Bandage skin for intro (already drawn by Kuja, needs rigging)
2. Vanlen clothes (need to be drawn for all directions)
3. Pilot outfit (need to be drawn for Frontside, backside, and back views)

So what will be released in the next version?

We are determined to release what we have within the next week or the one after, and we’ll resort to cutting anything that isn’t complete.

As some people seemed to be confused about it, we’d like to reiterate the goal we stated in the first Monday post we published:

We are currently focusing our efforts to recreate one of the old locations from the previous version of the game: the Razorclaw village, where you’ll be able to move around and see the various characters idling around at different times of the day.

This means the whole game is of course not ready, but a first minimal version of it will be. As you see, creating many models and a foundation requires quite some time, and we’re also limited in hiring additional help by the amount of support we get, so this is the best we can do within the current situation.

No new NSFW scenes will be added in this release, as all the effort went into making the models first, but the 4 NSFW scenes from the tech demo will be unlockable in the new Memories section of the game.

As this was asked, we’d like to clarify that we're not giving less space to the NSFW content, we're preparing the ground to move on to the spicy content.
It goes like this: to make the NSFW scenes we need to have the models, so we're making the models first.
The models happen to also need the basic animations so that they can be found around the world, and engaged with, therefore we're doing them. To recap we're following this pipeline: drawings -> rig -> meshes -> basic animations -> NSFW animations.

When will it be released?

As we still have one week to work as per original plan, we’ll take that week fully to do as much as we can. We’ll try our best to complete the missing elements, and if the elements don’t belong to the main character, we’ll cut them and release anyway. It’s reasonable to expect this release between the 18th and 31th of January.

If the main character recolor takes more time, we’ll have to stall the release because it absolutely needs to be complete. Everything else can be more or less cut, or alternative clothing can possibly be used as a temporary substitution.

We encountered a problem with the arms of the characters that required them to be redrawn for all directions for all lizardgirls which has been a bug slow down. A 3/4 face redraw of the female characters also took place slowing things down.

What we did this last week only

As usual, here’s the detailed list of what was accomplished specifically this week.

Art:

• Bandaged Outfit - Front View
• Changes to both Default and Strong Lizardgirl Back View models:
  -Separated feet into _B and _F parts
  -Separated buttocks into _L and _R parts
  -Separated v*gina into standalone part
  -Slightly retouched breasts coloring (recolor)
  -Added Butt_R Shadow and Butt_L Shadow
• Kay - Side View Model: Recolored
• Lizardgirl Default Model (All sides/views): Eyebrows and Eyelashes parts properly recolored.
• Added all breasts and breast parts (all sizes) to the Strong Lizardgirl Side View and recolored them all to match.
• Technical change - arms displaced on all model views. Please remember they're now incredible disjointed. The 3/4 f and b views looks nothing like the original now. Also, the Arm and Forearm parts had to be vertically compressed to fit the original Kay arms' size.
• Kay - 3/4 Front View - Classic Hairstyle
• Kay - 3/4 Front View Muzzle, Jaw, Eyes, Mouth - Redone. Some small parts slightly tweaked.
• Kay - 3/4 Front View: -Model completely recolored. -Artline completely remade. -White parts separated from respective parts, repainted and re-added as new objects. -Face completely changed. -Neck slightly tweaked to fit new face better. -Classic Hairstyle finished. -Nipple and Areola separated from respective breast parts. -Added hair shadow. -Added Ear_F hair shadow. -Hair pins separated from OG hairstyle front bang.
• Bandaged Suit - Back View
• Bandaged Outfit - Front View: - Slightly recolored to match other views(recolor only, no shape was changed)
• Lizardgirl Default and Strong - 3/4 Front View: Added small part on torso and torso_part for both models.

Prepping:

• Strong Lizardgirl skin has been imported into the side rig and shares Keakrix's meshes and weights perfectly.
• Made several changes to Strong Lizardgirl images in PSD to match them up with the original Keakrix images used for her skin in the side rig.
• Made a few more changes to naming to make import even smoother.
• Adjusted naming in Defualt Lizardgirl Front PSD to match LOKR_Female_Front rig for easier importing.
• Prepped Default Lizardgirl Front and Meiri Front PSD's for Spine Import
• Set up skins for both Default Lizardgirl and Meiri
• Began setting up Color Suffix to cleanly separate and organize PSD folders & layers/ Spine Slots & Placeholders
• Imported Default Lizardgirl images into Side rig. Errors on face due to skinned constraints. To be fixed later.
• Made major changes to skins names, suffixes, and PSD files to simplify & reduce clutter in the rigs and make importing more streamlined.
• Custom breast sizes for Lizardgirl Side rig now have skins.
• Created a new naming structure for outfit slots that all characters can use. Will convert all previous outfits to use those slots after demo release.
• Prepped HuntressGarb for Front, Side, & Back Rig import (Front is still incomplete)
• Prepped KayClassic for Side Rig import
• Moved new arm images into Strong Lizardgirl Back PSD
• Imported HuntressGarb into Side & Back Rigs
• Imported Strong Lizardgirl into Back Rig
• Organized new slots that were created during import
• Prepped Strong Lizardgirls arms for import (all views)
• Prepped Kay recolor for import
• Listed remaining images needed to create full Kay body for Side view rig
• Imported Kay recolor into Spine and fixed all errors caused by import
• Imported BandageWraps into Spine
• Imported all Strong Lizardgirl arms
• Imported Default Lizardgirl into Back rig
• Imported Meiri's hair into the Back rig

Rigging:

• Keakrix back view and clothes rigged (except for arms)
• Side view breasts rigged
• Keakrix 3/4 view rigged (except for arms)
• Sek armor rig for all directions

Animation:

• Female Back stealth idle
• Front and back female run
• Side sleeping in fetal position
• Waking up from nightmare
• Sleeping side loop with nightmares
• Sleeping fetal loop with nightmares

Code:

• Implemented Vlad's feedback and implemented a damage text, reduced damage red fx, added HP/Stamina/Mana to in-game menu, zoomed in game, added a red pulse ontop of the hunger when its depleted, and fixed other bugs https://streamable.com/3l7h10
• Imported Character Customization and hooked up the character preview used in the overview for this screen as well.
• Added more functionality to character preview for the character customization and based off Pikant's previous ideas, I implemented the ability to take a snapshot of your character's head and it'll generate an icon for it. (It also applied the following character mask for consistency with the other icons) https://streamable.com/9elsga
• Implemented Sleeping with beds and a top down view for sleeping along with the bed backgrounds for the view. Beds can be chosen from a set list and the appropriate BG for the bed chosen will be displayed.
• Sleep for between 1-12 hours and save your game, or choose to load in an existing save.
• Slots 2-5 are coming soon. https://streamable.com/fw6lmw
• Added Dialogue Barks which work with the existing dialogue. - https://streamable.com/nm0dpo
• Created Level transition into the Dream State when starting a new game and disable UI and start in dialogue. This is a 'Scene' and can be viewed over and over in the memories. - Tons of improvements were made to the Scenes system to support switching between levels mid-dialogue and transitioning smoothly into the level!
• Also created the option on nodes to wait until input to continue so you have to click to keep going. I can also clear the old text if we'd like...? But keeping it is fine at the moment imo. https://streamable.com/wq8ngr
• Setup the dialogue event system to use Bolt! This allows for visual scripting. Here I have the last node's end event from the intro placeholder dialogue. I Pause the Dialogue from continuing, Fade Out, and Load into the Tent level (Fading covers the other loading screen). Next is having it enter the sleeping state then start the waking up sequence. https://streamable.com/amt1o2
• Here's a video showing creating a new event and editing it in Bolt's graph editor. In the event I access the SceneObjectManager to get the Player Controller and get the PlayerInventory from it and Add Currency to give 100 coins. Then I add an event listener that the dialogue system sends it to trigger it to go off and trigger the action to give currency. https://streamable.com/r5uli7

As you see, so much was achieved this week! Thank you for believing in this project, we could not have made all this without your support. We’ll try our best to do as much as we can also the next week!