Since the plugin allows for custom models to be used, I actually went and modeled / textured a shelf from scratch today. It’ll eventually be full of books, but I feel really proud of it. I feel like I’m starting to really flesh out the visual style I’m going for tbh.
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Spent the past couple days working on furniture. Yesterday I fixed up the shelf model, and also spent the majority of the day modelling and texturing this table. Today I wanted to see if I could do two models, so I made a chair and that cool lamp I did in Koikatsu. I think I’m almost done making models. The chair’s gonna look closer to the table visually, I just used the red / black to figure out the lines and making sure it looks good.
I also decided to put some visual effects in the game (they’ll be able to be turned off if they’re distracting). The 3D filter came with bloom and chromatic aberration, then I also found another plugin that had a CRT filter in it. I messed around with all of it and I think I’m starting to really get a feel for the visual aesthetic I’m going to go for.
I think I’m almost done with 3D models for now. I’m not super experienced making them so it takes a long time to model stuff. Luckily I think I’m getting better at modelling stuff so it’s going a lot faster. I think the last couple models I’m gonna make for now are Sasha’s bed and some other little things.
I also need to figure out how exactly I’m gonna work in the horny stuff as well. I haven’t forgotten I’m making a weight gain / stuffing centric RPG lmao. I kinda just got lost in figuring out the visual aesthetic because it’s really fun.
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Absolutely wonderful work your doing here with the 3d modeling and assest. Feels like a completely new game here and one i cant wait to play.
Hi everyone! Sorry I haven’t posted an update in a while. I kinda got lost in the sauce lmao. I’m also trying to see what spacing dev logs would be like, but I think I’m gonna try for twice a week instead of once a week because I got a LOT done.
Pretty much since I last posted an update I’ve been working for most of the day trying to either make stuff or figure stuff out. No horny stuff yet, but I wanted to flesh the aesthetic and game world out, as well as get a good work flow going before I started working on the spicy stuff.
TLDR:
- Got a lot of models done, figured out how to make models faster
- Figured out how to make doors and stairs work
- Figured out how to do 3D objects with 2D images
- Figured out how to make animated objects
- Figured out how to do lighting and fixed camera angles
- Implemented a loading screen to split up areas to prevent lag
- Designed the food area and Sasha’s room, started working on the library
Starting off with the rooms I started working on, I ended up splitting the food area into 2 rooms: A diner and a Japanese style convenience store.
If anything in here clashes visually either with a solid or checkerboard pattern, I still need to texture it.
Let’s start with the diner.
Originally for the diner it was just going to be a McDonald’s. While designing it I realized a diner would be more fitting, because when you think cartoon restaurant you think of a diner.
Also while designing it I realized it looked a bit empty; so something cool I wanna do is as you progress through the game, more NPCs start to hang out there that you and your party members can interact with.
The fans also spin. I’ll probably offset the animations so they don’t spin in unison lmao. The door’s not done yet. I also need to finish up the food counter so it looks nicer.
Moving onto the konbini
For this I referenced a couple different Japanese convenience store chains to figure out what look I should go for. I realized that you could actually just go on google maps and look at images people posted in their reviews for reference lmao.
I figured out on accident how normals worked on a model (TLDR every face has a visible and invisible side), so the current placeholder image is gonna be replaced with a Japanese city area so it emphasizes the fact you’re in a dream. I figured that on one side the doors look like exit doors, then on the other side they’re the Japanese cityscape.
Speaking of the doors, they automatically open / close. It was a bitch to figure out, and it’s possible to make the doors break so the doors keep sliding out, but reloading the room returns them to their original position.
Also while working on this room I cross-referenced the tutorial playlist I’ve been using to help me do fixed angles for dialog.
Moving onto Sasha’s room
Still kinda working on adding stuff to her room. I got a bunch of furniture in so far and am working on decorating the walls with posters and other things. I’ve also gotta fix her walls to have a new texture because this is just the current library walls.
I also decided that as you play through the game and get more party members, when you come back to her room they’ll all be there chilling out like in the Knights of the Old Republic games. It might end up being cramped at some point, so maybe at the halfway point her closet opens up and it turns into sort of a hangout club space in there.
Here’s a closer view of the furniture. The bed’s a modified model of the table I made, then I made the nightstand and then saved as a new model to make the dresser. Being able to alter models to make different models has sped up the time it takes to make stuff, as well as giving stuff a more consistent look.
This is the biggest model in the game lmfao. Specifically the PS2 controllers. I don’t know why I went so hard on modelling the controllers down to the cross indents for the D-Pad / buttons. For reference, a SINGLE controller has 1076 polygons. The entire TV cabinet model has 2386 polygons. About 90% of the model is just the 2 controllers lmao. My second biggest model, which is the lamp, has 600. Most of the other models are significantly smaller polygon-wise lmao. Anyway, the engine has no issue with the model having so many polygons, so I don’t either.
Speaking of the TV and console, it’d be fun if eventually I make it so you can play mini games in it. Considering that you can do first person mode as well as plugins for a ranged attack, I could in theory recreate some sort of DOOM for the meme lmfao. The minigames will probably be a long while in the future because I’d essentially be making little game demos. It’d definitely add a lot to the game.
Onto the library
I started working on this last night. I’ve gotta fill the shelves with books, but I think it’s coming along nicely. It’s also cool how I can actually properly create what I imagined in my head when I made the initial demo, with some alterations obviously.
With the plant I figured out how to make a fake 3D object out of 4 different sections. I’ll probably fix the size of it up so it looks better and doesn’t clip into other objects, but it’s essentially the plate on the bottom and the dirt as flat planes, then the pot is a sprite that follows you, then the plant is an 8cross shape.
The couch is also fun too, it’s probably one of my favorite models tbh. I can’t wait to texture it.
Also I love being able to use the 3D plugin because I can offset stuff so everything’s not in the same position. I can rotate and slide stuff over so feels more varied. I can also change how high up stuff is off the ground.
Now onto some smaller things
I figured out how to make stairs that go to a different floor, figuring out the railing in particular took me a bit to figure out because it was one of of the first things I did that required me to really think hard about how to do something while making the game lmao. You can walk up it and then at the halfway point you automatically walk up and the screen fades to black before going up to the next floor.
I figured out how I could have it so you walk up to the door, hit the action button, then the door opens and you walk in before it fades to black, transferring you to another map. It looks really nice and I feel proud of figuring it out.
Originally the diner and konbini were in one map, but I think the lighting made it start to lag, so I ended up splitting it up and making a placeholder loading graphic because the game would freeze for a second or so while it loaded the other map. Something else I realized is that I because activating the lighting normally lags the game for a few seconds, I could just mix that in with loading up the map and it’s not really jarring.
I probably missed out on some stuff, but again I did a LOT. The next things I wanna do are finishing up the maps, working on the hallway between sasha’s room and the other rooms, and then trying to figure out the battle system. I could do something where it’s the 2D sprites in a 3D space, but I think I’ll start out with it just being a side view with animated sprites just to make it easier on myself. It’s wild to think that I’m doing all of this in RPG Maker.
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I still need to fill it with books lmfao
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This looks breath taking!
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Sort of a little update, I’m gonna start working on the battle system today. Hopefully I’ll have some sort of demo of it by the time I post my next devlog on Tuesday.
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Hiyo! I’m back again with another devlog! I got some more stuff done this weekend. I did start on the battle system, but mostly what I did was finalizing all the pieces for the setting. I think I’ve got a good spot to cap out the demo too. The past few days was focused on figuring the last few big things out, as well as seeing how far I could push things. Also I decided I’m gonna have the settings up to high for these screenshots. This devlog’s also gonna have gifs because I feel like it’s very warranted.
Onto the devlog!
Starting with figuring out the thing that were BUGGING ME that I finally figured out that I glossed over before.
So the first, and probably one of the most important things, I’m gonna talk about is distance.
I didn’t realize that the actual distance /needed/ to be set, the default is REALLY far away. For now, I think a distance of 3 works the best. It was at default this entire time and I had to really think “wait why does a value of 0 for distance set it to first person mode?” I feel kind of silly for taking so long to figure it out, but here we are. At the default distance it kept jumping around and it was distracting at times, especially if you ended up getting the camera in a seam and being able to see the entire map exterior.
Default vs a value of 3
In other news, I figured out how to map a first person mode toggle (right now it’s the F key). I’m unsure if I wanna keep it locked to being stationary or not, but I feel like it adds a lot in terms of being able to take screenshots. It definitely has aided me in getting them, as well as making testing a lot smoother.
Onto the lamp height
Looking at the tutorials again I realized you could /set/ the height for the lamp effect. I don’t know why I glossed over it but I think it makes stuff look nicer.
Here’s the picture from the last dev log compared to the way it looks now. You can actually /see/ the blue light coming from the window. This also means I’ve gotta use /way/ less lamps too, which is nice. I also can set the lamps as being less intense so it’s more of a vibe. Then the third picture is with all the effects on. I don’t know why one of the bulbs isn’t glowing, but I’ll probably figure it out.
Moving onto the rooms!
For the area between the different rooms I was torn between a castle and a mansion, but I realized since it’s a dream I could do the mansion for the first half of the game and a castle for the second.
This also made me realize something else too: I could have larger models.
I couldn’t figure out how to do a sloped ceiling, but I realized I could import models. Initially it was just gonna be the ceiling, but I figured why not see if I could do the pillars. The ceiling is in sections.
Also with the lamps, the bulbs float. I decided to look back at the tutorials and see how I can make something float. I need to fiddle around with the settings a little bit but I think it looks super nice.
Moving onto Sasha’s room
I decided to work on Sasha’s room a bit more, and then had an idea. Why not make Sasha’s room the main menu?
Here you can see a couple things too: Fog, and me starting to update Sasha’s sprite. I feel like it’s looking a lot nicer compared to how it used to. I’ve still gotta work on the arms.
The words aren’t textured yet and I still gotta figure out a consistent visual style for them, but it looks super cool. The exit door also does an animation where you walk through the door and the game closes.
I also wanted to try going into the “this is a dream” stuff, so I thought something that’d be cool was making it so as you walk closer to some walls, they turn and vanish into the sides. It looks way better than I thought it would, and they’re not even textured yet. I turned the shadows down for this because the lighting for this room isn’t done yet.
Now onto the main event of this update, the central library room
Having the mansion ceiling be partially models helped me realize that you could make BIG models, and the controllers told me it can handle denser models no issue, so I wanted to really see how big of a model I could do.
This model is 39 x 39 x 60 tiles. It’s massive. It has no issues being rendered in the engine. There’s only 452 polygons in the model, so it’s less than half the size of one of the PS2 controllers and smaller than the library lamp lmao.
It actually didn’t take as long to texture as I thought because I split the walls into 16 sections and then the center part I split as well. So it’s a bunch of repeating segments. Then for actually texturing the books I made one then copied it a bunch changing the hue.
The way I made it so there’s no actual tiles is you’re walking on invisible tiles.
I really feel like I’m pushing the boundaries of what this plugin can do, and it feels really awesome. The doors are also a seperate model that will open up as you finish sections of the library. I also wanna add a giant stained glass ceiling up top that’s broken with pieces floating in the air, and when you finish the library area it’s fixed. It’s cool and I feel like that’s a good gameplay loop for all the different worlds.
And now what everyone’s probably waiting for, the battle system.
So I realized that the default rpg maker battler animation framerate is exactly what I’m going for. I wanted it to look sort of choppy like Into The Spiderverse. It’s only 3 frames per animation, but I feel like that’s all I need. Unfortunately I’ll probably nerf Velma for now because the waifs are gonna start off kinda squishy but like in vale-city they have different levels where the bigger they are, the harder they hit.
I’ll probably flesh out the battle system in the next few days. I wanna try making it feel really punchy and tight. I wanna try really hard to not only make the actual fight sections be extremely horny (they will be, don’t worry), but I want the actual fighting animations to also feel GOOD. It’ll all come down to timing, so I’ll probably do some research on animation as well.
I also want to find out the balance of making the battles challenging but not frustrating. Obviously it’ll be possible to figure it out and then grind, but that’d be optional. I don’t want it to feel like you’re just going through the motions, but I also don’t want it to feel like you need to pay an extreme amount of attention on making sure you don’t die.
I feel like I got a lot done over the past few days and I’m almost done with the actual level designs. So at this point I’m probably more than halfway done with the first demo. Luckily, I think setting up the game is the thing that takes the longest, and the next few updates after this one are going to be working on fleshing out the library and adding more stuff.
For the textures I think I’m just gonna start out with them being flat for now because I made a lot more models than I thought I would. Hopefully I should have the demo out in the next few weeks but yeah, I feel like really proud of how much I’ve done so far. Hopefully on Friday I’ll have the battle system fixed.
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I gotta say, this is such a cool looking project! And seeing all the work you put into the devlogs alone is exciting. Really looking forward to seeing more!
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Thank you ^^ It helps me put stuff into perspective, but also I love showing off the things I do.
Just wondering, does this game have weight gain?
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It will. I’ve just been focusing on getting the game’s setting set up first. Hopefully I’ll have it sometime soon. There’s a LOT of setting up the game I’m doing, but I plan on working on this for a few years so this will probably be the slowest part.
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That’s Understandable.
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Looks great! Loving the environments and your main character!
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Wow, this game looks really good. Full-on 3d RPG adventure sounds really promising!
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Yeah I’m having a lot of fun with actually making a lot of the spaces feel like liminal spaces, but not in a “this is a horror game” way. Sasha’s also fun and I can’t wait to develop her a lot more.
Yeah I think I’ve been wanting to make something like this for a loooong time, so I’m trying my best to make a bunch of 3D environments you want to explore. Could also be fun to hide some little horny side events in lol
This looks cool so far! Makes me think of like a 3D Yume Nikki game, or LSD: Dream Emulator on PS1. Seeing textured 3D models in RPGMaker is kind of crazy too.
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Yeah it’s extremely fun being like “y’know I wonder how far I can go with the 3D plugin.” I want to really lean into the dream aspect.
Sorry I got the devlog written up. Anxiety’s kind of a mess right now so I’ll repost it later tonight.
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