Felt like doing some extra work on the character model.
Currently planning out the different weight “stages” of the model (as in parts where a simple blend won’t work out). These don’t really work like drawn weight stages because you can typically get away with way fewer stages and still result in way higher quality because of shape key values, it just depends on how significant the changes in body shape are.
Here’s a list of what I think would be needed for the full beta planned sizes for the character model:
Default (0) - The base model. Nothing special.
Thick (1) - Some extra curviness but not quite fat yet. The waist is thicker but not yet a belly.
Fat (2) - Very very fat. There isn’t much significant shape difference between chubby, regular sorts of fat, very fat, etc, so it all gets compressed to one stage.
Near Blob (3) - Incredibly fat. This needs to be an additional stage because the way the belly hangs may not blend well from the thick stage.
Note that each stage added significantly increases the amount of work needed later so it’s best to have the fewest stages possible while still looking good. I will start with the last stage first and see how it blends. It may need more or less than what is planned here (2-5 estimated).
EDIT: The “full beta planned sizes” refers to the model’s beta, not the game’s beta. The model is a separate (free-to-use) project called FaeCharm (Faehna Engine Character Model) designed to make it easier for anyone to make 3D games on this site.
Hm, you can use one model with shape keys transformation from thin->chubby->bbw->ssbbw. Then another model for shape keys from ssbbw to ussbbw. Then another for ussbbw to blob. Depends on how complex developer plan to rework animations to fit body shapes, but at least I think from thin to bbw could be used in one model.
What reasons would there be for using multiple models? I believe I’ve heard the idea before but I’ve been trying to avoid it since having to manually apply certain actions across multiple models when updating them instead of having them as the same model sounds difficult.
Setting up a Discord server at the moment because people really want it for whatever reason. Game announcements will still be here but I’ll cross post to Discord.
It’ll mainly be:
News
Game discussion
Roadmap to the next major version and/or demo
Later - Channels for finding people to play with
If people actually talk in it then I’ll probably add more community-oriented features but it’s basically just news/info at the moment with a few chat channels because I don’t expect anyone to really care that much.
I also fixed some issues with the character model and made preparations to start designing textures.
Oh, sorry, that was misunderstanding: I thought the list of planned sizes which you mentioned was about different models. Well, using different models isn’t necessary since it is only how I personally do to avoid clipping issues in animations and to make sure chained jiggle physics for body parts work correctly. If character use only fat morph sliders I guess there is no reason to make multiple models and only adjusting of animations needed. In my case character have morphs for boobs, belly, muscles, fat and all morphs need to look good when player combine them, so I decided to create multiple models to make sure all morphs combinations fit correctly.
After a couple days of trying to get bones to cooperate, using multiple models instead isn’t looking too bad…
I would like to avoid it if possible but it does seem like it would make it much more manageable.
Main issue is that the bones can’t be easily moved around without causing certain things to get a little weird when editing shape keys. If you have any tips on this stuff then it would be appreciated since I’m not as experienced.
It depends on game engine which you are using, so my advice may not work for you. I am making game on Unreal engine and using Animation Blueprint to adjust bones position if needed. For example I created a locomotion animation for thin body shape and it look fine, but when character get fatter her hips get wider and arms in walking animation start to clip with new hips size. So, I am adding “transform bones” nodes in animation blueprint (postprocess) which control bones rotation. I am changing angle of “upper arm” bone by increasing it on some amount (custom variable) depending on value of current fat morph variable (or weight variable). With those when character get fatter her arms angle automatically increases to prevent clipping with new hips size. This method will work until character get SO BIG that simple angle correction wont work and animation changes needed.
I would just like to give a small apology for the lack of progress the past week.
As some of you may know, I live in the United States with my (abusive) mom, though even she has been nicer with what’s going on recently.
She has worked for a long time as a mail carrier for the US Postal Service and has been saving up money to hopefully get a house some day, but now USPS is potentially being dismembered and privatized, meaning she will lose her job and all of the benefits that came with it, including our insurance. As she is fairly old, it will be difficult for her to get a new job after this, especially as the job market becomes less regulated, and housing prices are extremely expensive here.
I have been doing my best to help her plan ahead. With how things are going, we may need to leave the country, which is very difficult for most people. Fortunately, my grandma (on her side) is an immigrant from Japan, meaning we can easily receive long term residency there as long as we have all the documents (which we likely will). Less fortunately, we don’t have much money and my brother doesn’t know a thing about the language. If anyone else needs to leave then I recommend checking a few generations back for anyone who was an immigrant because many countries have similar laws.
I do not mean to be political with this post. I am not trying to shame people for voting for Trump or not voting at all (I didn’t vote either), nor am I saying the democrats are any better. I understand why this is happening and that we should not blame each other, but instead try to help everyone get through this together.
Development will slow down a little most likely since I need to study Japanese (I’ve got decent knowledge but not nearly enough to live there) as well as try to make money through other means since my family will need as much as we can get. Patreon does help but I don’t expect to make much short-term which is why I’m not just betting everything on the game’s success.
Small poll because I’m unsure whether to focus more on getting the gameplay done or getting the visuals (mainly the model) done. This won’t affect what is released in the full version and likely won’t affect the demo’s content, just the order in which some things are completed, though I might keep the results in mind when planning future versions.
Visuals
Gameplay
0voters
Also another poll, which will affect future versions and maybe the full version, though the game will always focus on gameplay over purely being fetish content. You should always be able to enjoy the game even if, for some reason, you don’t have any fetishes and just like sandbox games.
Hello everyone. Sorry for the small break the past week or so, I had a lot to deal with but I’ve adjusted to everything that has changed recently. There’s a lot more that I need to manage around the house and a lot of other work that I need to do daily but the game should be worked on about the same as before.
I’m currently working on getting the built-in color picker working so you can style characters however you like without worrying whether the developer happened to put the exact eye/hair/skin/etc color that you want for that one OC who has some really crazy color palette for some reason.
It hasn’t been styled at all currently so it looks awful but it seems to be working properly so I’ll probably spend a bit fixing that up.
We are getting very close to the “game” part of the game, by the way, as the character creation part likely won’t be too much longer.
The Patreon membership has tanked (an entire >30% of my monthly income is gone) ever since the recent announcement (I think a lot of people misinterpreted and thought that meant the game was dead, which it isn’t) so it would be appreciated if anyone could help support the project.
Please choose an amount you think is stable for you. A one-month gold membership doesn’t help as much as a recurring bronze membership or even a tip membership over a longer period of time and I prefer the stability.
Hi, I’m new and I would like to ask some questions about the project. First I would like to know if you plan to add a futa gender,
2nd I would like to ask if you plan to add different kinds of vore like breast vore and unbirth, and the effects of those on the body like unbirth = pregnant, breast vore = milk, and cock vore = cum; the collectability and consumability of that milk and cum,
and as for my 3rd question my brain is working overtime, as I want to ask how hard is it to make a “numbers system” for the weight gain (like with project wild one) with a balloon like effect in-between the planed sizes on where it increases the player fat with the numbers allowing the player to be more specific on where and how much they want to gain weight on their character modals and of course every character will probably need their own values for vore results. As the weight of the vored character will have to slowly decrease as they digest before reaching a number that can be absorbed and divided across the body’s fat, but how hard is that to accomplish?
“Gender” doesn’t exist to the game, technically speaking, other than what you write in your character’s profile. You could write attack helicopter in there if you really wanted. Gender in the character model is just setting a bunch of sliders, so you could have a female face with a very masculine jaw, a man with boobs, a woman’s head on a man’s body, etc.
Genitals haven’t been added yet. They aren’t personally very high priority to me, but this is an open source game. Anyone can add anything they want to the game, whether as an official feature (has to be approved by me first), or as a separate version of the game (requires no permission from me). When genitals are added, you likely will be able to choose both, so that’s a yes, but it’s more of a long term thing.
Breast vore / Unbirth / Cock vore
It depends. Not personally something I’m into, but unbirth is mechanically and graphically similar to standard vore, so that seems reasonable. The others likely require messing around with the character model.
With most fetish-related features, you can answer whether it’ll be added with a few questions:
Is it vanilla weight gain, lactation, vore, or pregnancy?
Is it common enough that someone else will add it?
Will you get someone else to add it?
Will you add it?
If any of these are yes, it’s probably getting added. If not, I hope you’re ready to learn programming /j.
How hard is a “numbers system?”
I honestly don’t have a clue what you’re talking about here but I can answer how vore and fat distribution work from a technical perspective.
You have 4 weight-related numbers. Let’s call them fat, standard weight, breast size, and hip size.
Standard weight makes everywhere fatter. Breast size makes breasts fatter. Hip size makes the lower body in general fatter.
Fat is your weight. If you have 0% breast size and 0% hip size, standard weight is equal to your fat. If you have 100% in either breast size or hip size, standard weight is equal to 50% of your fat. If you have 100% in both breast size and hip size, standard weight is always 0. (Though there is one exception: bonus breast size from lactation.)
This basically simulates fat distribution. More boobs means less belly and butt, and more butt means less belly and boobs.
If you’re wondering where vore comes into this… it doesn’t. Vore uses belly fullness which doesn’t have anything to do with fat distribution. Belly fullness is also used by stuffing and pregnancy.
I see, also the “number system” I was referring to from project wild one works as follows;
height: 7’1"
weight: 684lbs (obese++) “(+30lbs)” = what is stored in the stomach and intestines and is usable at that moment to ad to weight “684lbs (obese++)” and to refill reserves, and can be refilled by using fat on your body or by eating, and will just normally ad to that number,
meanwhile prey if alive will ad to that number “(+30lbs)”, but won’t yet be able to ad to the weight or reserves until it is dead, after which will get divided into fat and not absorbed waste(there is no skat).
reserves: 84 (max=99)
reserves: can be used as energy and can be replenished by using the lbs. stored in the body, food, and prey. weight loss takes place when you have no reserves and need to refill by using your “684lbs (obese++)”
hp: 100/100 health automatically replenishes
wp:100/100 battel and vore actions uses “wp” energy that replenishes automatically(fast), but if reserves are empty it replenishes very slowly.
Oh also what I meant by “the player choses where to ad the fat” I meant that you could have the player choose where to put each individual lbs.(this is where the “balloon like effect” I talked about takes place) from the “(+30lbs)” or they can just keep it sitting there in their stomach and intestines as energy and food reserves for emergences when they need energy. (And yes this is something I would like to see in a videogame someday.)
Faehna’s system is somewhat similar but without reserves. You’re always either losing or gaining weight depending on your energy expenditure and digestion.
Every X ticks, digestion and expenditure are calculated based on your stomach fullness, calorie density, digestion rate, weight, and current activity. You need more calories as you get bigger, especially if you spend a lot of time moving around (which you often have to for progression because this game involves a lot of exploration).
There isn’t really much reason for a reserve system in this game. You already choose where fat goes with fat distribution customization in character creation (as well as with certain rare items).
Weight in lbs/kg is probably something that will be added at some point but only for display. Most likely, there will be a number from 0% to 100% internally. Why? Because a 100 cm goblin, for example, at 200 kg would be incredibly fat, whereas a 250 cm elf wouldn’t be nearly as fat at the same weight.
The “no digestion until dead” thing is also a feature. Anything vored will fill your stomach but won’t actually turn into food that is digested until it’s dead.
Currently working on making the game easier to work with, both for modders and for myself when adding new races. Trying to keep it simple and modular. Here’s a bit of a preview of how easy it is to set up a new race at the moment.
Values aren’t final. I actually changed a lot of them while writing this.
The technical part of this should be over soon so you can expect to get some screenshots of the actual character creation process soon-ish if I don’t have another panic attack.
NOTE: I will probably not be implementing the leveling or attribute system for the first demo, but you will get a preview of how the attribute system works. Descriptions refer to Alpha 1.0 features. Characters will also not carry over from the demos to Alpha 1.0.
Burps are definitely a planned feature. “Passing gas” as well. Probably by Alpha 1.0, even. Sweating can probably be done with particles, likely during the low stamina animation or trying to move with a high weight penalty, but it’ll probably be a little before it’s added. Messy eating probably isn’t too difficult for a basic implementation but don’t expect too much and it’ll be while most likely before that’s added.
All of these will be toggleable as usual for anyone who isn’t into it.
Hello again to everyone who’s still around. The title may sound a little like bad news, but I promise you, this is great news for the project and I’m sure you’ll be excited as well.
An Apology
I would first like to apologize for my recent absence. As some of you may know, I have really severe depression and PTSD. Around last time I posted, I tried taking steps towards recovery, but it went wrong very quickly and I had a really severe panic attack that felt like I was having an actual heart attack and was about to die. I couldn’t eat at all for days after that and spent weeks barely able to eat due to worsened PTSD. Lost a lot of weight from that. I also had really severe hallucinations one night to the point that I had to take a sleeping pill and wait until I fell asleep with the lights on.
There was a badly timed drama on the forum when I was starting to recover and even though just interacting with anyone at the time triggered my PTSD and made me feel nauseous to the point of throwing up, it was a real chance at changing the forum for the better, so I decided to participate. Staff took their typical pro-AI stance as usual, unfortunately, so while there were some tiny wins there for artists’ rights, nothing of real importance happened. This isn’t a drama post, however, so please keep conversations about that to Forum > Site Feedback, not my project page.
Anyways, that really screwed over my mental health for even longer. I didn’t realize how bad it would get and just thinking of the forum at all gave me really bad anxiety and fear for quite a while after. It still isn’t quite gone but I can at least handle this.
It took me quite a while to recover but my weight is back up even higher than before and my depression has gone from considering suicide weekly back when I last posted to only sometimes feeling a little down and lonely. My PTSD has worsened in some ways and gotten better in others so overall it’s about the same.
The Good News
I didn’t just spend that entire time sitting around doing nothing. Well, a lot of it was spent sitting around doing nothing. Can’t really recover mentally if you’re forcing yourself to work through really severe PTSD and depression after all. That’s how I ended up at that point.
However, I did get work done. Ironically, I would say this somehow ended up being even more productive than if I hadn’t had a severe panic attack.
I decided to pick up a side project as a bit of a break. Faehna is hell. I have a lot of experience in programming. I would bet $100 of my nonexistent money (I genuinely don’t even have $100 at the moment) that Faehna is the absolute most complex and painful project on this entire website. This is the sort of game you have a whole large team working on with a budget of millions of dollars. The fact that I am somehow over halfway to a small demo as a solo developer is an incredible achievement, honestly.
As I was saying, the side project. I’ve spent so long on Faehna at this point that programming a regular game with a reasonable amount of content honestly doesn’t even feel like I’m working. It’s incredibly easy. You don’t have to deal with a thousand different scenarios of users disconnecting from a server at inconvenient times or trying to synchronize data without allowing cheating every time you want anything done.
For this forum, this “side project” is huge. For me, it’s pretty much just a break.
Me and two other developers are working on what I will refer to as MGR. MGR is essentially a Stardew Valley type game where you inherit a farm and befriend monster girls who help you around your farm or generate resources such as milk. During this, you progress through both the main story and character stories for all of your monster girls. You get to fatten up all the monster girls, date them, marry them, and more. We’re pretty far in already and progress is going really quickly with everyone’s skills.
I’ve recruited both other developers to work with me on Faehna after the first release of MGR. From working with them, I can tell they will be a huge help to the game. They are both exceptionally skilled despite being new to game development.
Plans for the Future
I will be working primarily on MGR while I recover until its first release. Working on Faehna before I’ve fully recovered, especially without anyone supporting me, would probably lead to my condition getting worse again.
Upon MGR’s first release, I will shift to working on Faehna primarily and MGR as needed. After the first release, most of the content is writing and art, and I am not the writer for that game, so I will have lots of extra time for Faehna.
MGR’s first release is also when I am joined by the other two developers. I will be writing proper documentation for all of the code in Faehna and simplifying it to make it easier for my “programmer in training” to understand and learn how it all works. Even though I will be working on two projects, with an extra programmer to help out, it should be much easier and faster to get things done.
I do still have PTSD and writing these posts is honestly one of the worst parts of development for my mental health (probably won’t be eating for the rest of today and part of tomorrow because of this) so after MGR, one of my coworkers will probably start posting in my place. Not much will change there, just a different writer making these posts.
Final Notes
As I mentioned before, I am not doing too well financially. My Patreon is for all of my work, so if you want to support Faehna, MGR, and most importantly, my belly, please check out the link below. Membership went down quite a bit while I was recovering from that event. I’m aiming to at least get back up to $70 or $80, since money really gets tight for me below there, so please do consider it. Every donation counts for small creators.
