Bug Hunting and Experimenting
Added 2020-04-04 09:54:50 +0000 UTCIn addition to bug hunting I like to spend the time between the patron and public release of any new version of Lab Rats 2 experimenting and prototyping potential future features. This week I have been exploring additional ways to make use of some of the assets and functionality I added for the animation system. In particular I am trying to use region maps to hide or make sections of clothing partially transparent without requiring item specific maps to be made.
My current concept for this system would be to add some sort of visual support for pieces of clothing that are half off, pulled out of the way, or otherwise no longer hiding what they're suppose to hide. In theory this could be achieved by adding unique half-on clothing items, but they would require a full image set as well as extra time modeling the half-on state for rendering in DAZ. A region mask only exists once for every body/breast set and can then be applied to every clothing item that would interact with that region.
Using this hybrid display style would pave the way for more clothed sex options, letting you, for example, pull a girls skirt up and panties to the side without explicitly removing either of them. Until now I had avoided those mechanics because I had no way of representing them on the character model, which I felt was a critical bit of feed back about the state of a girl and what you were suppose to be experiencing.
The example image above shows a girl with her breast region, plus some blur to smooth and enlarge what's shown, cut out from her shirt and bra. This style of effect might be used in an event where a girl shows you her tits, but isn't actually pulling any clothing off. As part of my experimentation I have also added region masks for more general parts of the body, such as: torso, stomach, pelvis, arms, legs, etc. With a little more work this would let me tidy up the effect shown above to not have any of her tshirt showing at her stomach, while also having a sharper transition line above her tits.
Let me know what you think!
Comments
I disabled the "sneak" and "ask" path to see how the game feels without them. My goal is to have enough location/people specific events that allow you to sneak someone a dose of serum that the "sneak" option isn't needed, and for there to be explicit character story events to "ask" someone to test serum for you. I just now noticed that the employee serum testing policy was lumped together with the others when I disabled them. I've fixed that now.
Vren
2020-04-07 08:33:28 +0000 UTCIt sounds like a lot of work for only so much gain. Does open up a lot of potential interactions though. I would say the changes to the seduction/obedience mechanics change the early game quite a lot though. Like to the point that your serums seem completely secondary to your success with the girls just as a playboy. Also when I got Nora's first experimental serum I only had 1 person obedient enough to give it to. Needs refining if I'm being honest.
Dreamdayer
2020-04-06 22:22:58 +0000 UTCGreat idea! Sounds like a lot of work though.
Drackin
2020-04-05 08:29:43 +0000 UTCNot sure if you read old posts, putting this on here in case you didn't see my comment on that last one. Are 3 of the 4 routes to give someone a serum (sneak, ask, take per policy) meant to be disabled in 0.27? If so, it seems like getting those added back in might be a higher priority than refining graphics.
2020-04-05 06:06:02 +0000 UTCOr open, for certain button-up shirts... ;P
Graeme Cracker
2020-04-04 21:57:53 +0000 UTCI love the idea, and there might be some good applications for it, but I don' t know if it won't just cause more "immersion" problems than it solves (those half gone lower arms in that t-shirt, for example).
2020-04-04 18:10:23 +0000 UTCIdeally she would be seen hodling the shirt up :)
Minimoy
2020-04-04 11:05:39 +0000 UTCSounds fun. Keep up the good work.
Demi
2020-04-04 10:13:19 +0000 UTC
