Ok so I had an idea like an hour ago. I really liked the core systems of tainted elysium, with the mostly text based game with the character on the sidebar.
Would anyone be interested in something similar to that but more of a life sim with a bunch of different kinks available to the player (weight gain / inflation being the main focus and the other stuff being developed somewhere down the line). I’m all for adding more systems like combat down the line as well.
I’ll delve deeper into it later when I’m awake and not at work but I’m hoping I can get a bit of feedback from the community. If you have any questions or suggestions I’m happy to hear.
That’s the plan at least. The hardest thing to get working would be the vector graphics for the 2d character sprite, But I have a few ideas that might get it working.
FL: Would it be alright if you share with us some tips on how to code such an amazing body shape model?
FL: what kind of drawing algorithm did yo use?
AA: ya see, thats the thing. I didn’t use any algorithms. lol. Its a trick.
I’m a pretty medicore coder at best as far as skill goes, most of what I do is a combination of trial and error, luck and hiding it in pretty packaging. The body model itself is made up of tweened vectors that I’ve drawn, the program doesn’t draw them, the code I write just tells it where to go along that tween.
To put it simply, each body part is its own folder of animation, so frame one being the smallest size and the last frame being the biggest. Each frame between I’ve animated the change from smallest to largest between a number of key frames and then used the built in tweening software (from flash) to fill in the inbetweens. So, each part has this animation of the part changing shape. The code I wrote checks the bodies volume for that part, determines which frame it would be at, and then lets the animation play from its current frame to the new frame it should be at and then stops, giving it that dynamic change.
Each part on the model works the same way, so its just all strung together in the end as a single body.
I lacked the mathematical skill to create what I wanted, so I filled in the gaps with artistic ability, sorta.
There’s extra code tibits in there that speed up the rate of change and slow it down as well as swaping out certain bits, but for the most part, thats all there is too it. So long as the “current frame” and “future frame” aren’t matching, it’ll run a check every tick and move the animation up one frame.
I was actually planning on doing it in unreal. as overkill is it might sound, it’s what I spent the last 3 years going to school for so its what I’m most comfortable with.
I didn’t think anyone knew the elder knowledge of how it actually worked. Thank you so much for this. now I just have to find a way to make it work in unreal. I’m on the opposite end, I’m more of a programmer than an artist
MH: I’m curious, how is your body model implemented?
AA: its not too complex, its more of a bunch of simple things built ontop of eachother. If you know anything about animating with motion tweens, its essentially the same thing, but between different size ranges for each individual part. I use code to tell it where it should go (like, fat x in part y is going to tell it that model part y should go to frame Z and animate the inbetween) and whether it should speed up or slow down, etc.
This is a small bit outdated, but I made this little break down of it a while ago. Each part of the body is a seperate cell of animations that are stiched together frankenstien style to make the body seem like its a dynamic thing.
It’ll be a nightmare getting VN mechanics in unreal.
And an even bigger nightmare to get the dynamic body working in 3d to get much of anything from unreal.
Nope, it would be easy to make visual changes on character 3d model in unreal. You just take basic character model and create multiple shape keys for different body parts and use those keys when you need to show visually how different body parts get bigger. To make it look smooth and nice would be better to use three different models for three different weight stages. For example first model show changes up to 200 lbs, second model show changes from 200 lbs to 400 lbs, third model show from 400 lbs to higher amount. All models have their own shape keys for different body parts to make them better fit to main FAT shape key and prevent clipping issues on huge body shapes.
The only problem will be “Interchangeable Calf Sector”, because it is hard to sculpt shape keys on multiple legs objects at the same time. Would be easier to sculpt them separately, but that will take a lot of time too.
I actually don’t think it’ll be that hard to get the visual novel part working, but I’ll actually have to try it to see if I can. Worst case I’ll use a different engine.
In the case of the body itself, I still plan on using 2d since my modeling skills are absolute trash. It also means I can add clothing and accessories a lot easier that scale with the body instead of having to make different blend shapes for each piece of clothing.
I’m racking my brain trying to think of a way to do this with 2d sprites and tweening like in TE but in Unreal, since with that I feel like I’ll have more control over future content without having to redo core systems just to add clothing or something along those lines.
Also I suck at 3d modeling lol
Edit: maybe using just slapping it on the hud for the base might work… I’ll have to jump into unreal at some point when I’m not sleep deprived to see if that could work
I’d strongly recommend using a different engine.
UE’s 2d functionality is mostly deprecated and it’s one of the most difficult to use as a single developer.
No engine has vector graphics support anymore like flash had, only thing that can do what flash did is chrome (not even Firefox).
I did try to do something similar in the past.
Your best bet is using a 3d model and morphing/key shaping it even if the model is just a 2d slice.
If you want help with game dev do dm me on discord Voxilous#0541.
Yeah that was one of the thoughts I had, but I wanna try something first, no idea if it’ll work but I think I know how I can get the 2d portion working.
I have confirmed that my idea does not work. I’ll try out the 3d model slice at some point soon, I’ve been awake for an hour and haven’t had coffee yet so imma do that now.
Oh baby I just had a certified Jimmy neutron brain blast.
I dont need to use flash as an engine, but I can use it to do the shape tweening of each portion of the body like in AA’s diagram, then export each as a transparent video file. Then with the power of programming in Unreal I can Frankenstein it all together to make it work!
I’ll report back when I figure out if it works or not
Behind the scenes, that is exactly what flash does. Though flash stores it as a gif.
Any video format will be better. Thought if you go through the bother of animating it, you could export it as a sprite sheet.
You could then also apply tweens onto them as well.
Still I think you’d be better off using a JavaScript visual novel engine or pure JavaScript html.
Barring that, either renpy, Godot or if absolutely necessary, unity (with fungus).
