MNL Progress Report #113

Hey there, nudies! Another busy week for us, with some very fun progress. But first, hope you like this new art from Anne because I personally LOVE it. These COLORSSSS

We've been chugging away in the background, trying to improve our process to make things a bit faster! One of these was Invertex implementing a drop-down selection for animations! Before, if I wanted Amber to emote during a particular line of dialogue, I'd have to go in and write in Amber_Idle_Excited. Not a particularly difficult task, mind you, but once you get into hundreds of lines of dialogue, it gets pretty mind-numbing AND is fairly difficult to keep track of. But now, everything's organized in a nice little drop-down box!

Notice that "set wearable" option? That's another thing Invertex added as well. Now, we have an easier way to enable or disable clothes and accessories on characters!

(NOTE - not a real scene)

While Amber loses her clothes pretty definitively and permanently, this is still an easy way for us to enable her shoes, bag, or any other accessories. It can work on other characters too, so expect some fun clothing mix-and-matching!

As far as story progression goes, one of our major NPCs for the opening needed some extra work. Freddy, the cafe owner, was one of Bear's first rigging jobs (even before Amber!). It was great practice, but now needs some revising to better fit the rest of the gang. Bear's been hard at work re-rigging Freddy for new animations and is just about done. Since he's a heavier character than the others, special consideration was given to how he moves around, like where his bigger belly rests when he sits down.

Couldn't just have his stomach clip through his waist, so it sits a bit more naturally on his lap when he sits! Bear's a real one for figuring that out.

Not only that, but we felt the cafe area park was a bit empty. We decided to add one new piece of equipment to make it feel a bit busier...

A rock-climbing wall! Bear knocked this one out pretty fast. Why a rock-climbing wall specifically? Well, beyond just filling out the park more, we also wanted to slightly expand on the opening a little bit more and realized we had an opportunity! Anne's hard at work now on some new illustrations for a couple more scenes with Amber in these early moments of the game. Here's a sneak peek at a very rough WIP Anne's cooking up...

Poor Amber! She wouldn't have these problems if she just ditched the pants...

And that's all for today! Thank you so much for the support, and see you next week with more!