/a/ - Animu & Mango

I can't remember the original summary of this game, is it just wish fulfillment for lonely weebs?

Split the difference and make a large variety of date scenarios.

Personal pet peeve, shirts do not hug the area between breasts. Boobs in a sweatervest should look like this.

>>413168

Pretty much yes, but the base game will also have predefined characters with their own visual novel-style routes and actual dating sim-like gameplay with stat management, but you're able to walk around and explore the environments, join clubs, meet side-characters, ect., so it's kind of a life sim/high school RPG too. I'd almost imagine the gameplay being a much more in-depth version of the Persona 3/4 social link gameplay, just without the dungeon crawling. Another thing it will have is heavy emphasis on modding support, and you'll be import MMD characters similar to what I showed in the first videos I released.

Yeah, having had some time away from working on the character, I've identified a ton of areas where it could be improved, and I've even had some help with a revised body mesh which I'm planning to integrate with my own model at some point, but I haven't just gotten around to adding any further revisions yet. I've also got some very rough concepts for potential new uniform designs which could replace this one in the near future.

Bumping because I've managed to get the visual novel native code embedding and branching working properly now, and I'm quite excited about what I can do with it. Whether I focus on gameplay or VN stuff first, I'll be using this system heavily either way.

Hopefully I will be able to show something off with this new feature soon. If the idea of writing custom scenarios in a game like this sounds appealling to you, here's an idea of what the visual novel syntax looks like, and it should be very familiar to anyone who's ever used Ren'Py before.

>>414947

you think i understand that shit

>>415112

anon git gud

never even used Ren'py and it's still easy to tell what does what

>>415000

Thank you.

>>415063

There will be a goth loli, but currently there's no conventional lolis planned. Not out of the question by any means though.

Topical considering that Nintendo have decided that petting cute girls is just too HARDCORE for westerners, but the game will have a touching/skinship minigame, and if you're so inclined I could make it so you could poke and prod the girls as opposed to gently caressing them as a form of bullying.

>>415096

Maybe, if coupled with believable narrative buildup.

>>415112

>>415125

I generally wanted to try creating a scripting language for VN scenes which is both very simple, but also very powerful, and modelling it off Ren'Py seemed the best choice; I wouldn't really want to simplfy it any more as I feel I would be sacrificing a great amount of potential flexibility it can offer. I can understand though why the way I'm presenting something like setting flags may look more convoluted than it needs to be, but I don't think I can do variable assignment the same way Ren'Py due to differences in the embedded language, and this way also gives much more predictable control when serializing this data for saved games. At the very least, I will try to write some documentation on how this language actually works, but it's really just something people will have to learn. I'd really like to make this accessible because while there are mod-friendly waifu type games like the Illusion-Soft series, it would be great to have one where it's possible to write custom scenarios too to give the act of fugging cute girls narrative context.

Either way, for an update on this, I've just added support for embedding entire blocks of native code inside VN scripts as opposed to just single lines, as well as fully functional conditional branching.

>>416510

It's primarily done by me: I do the programming, the design, and a lot of the 3D art including the character. There are, however, three other people who contribute new and improved 3D artwork on and off, one of which is another anon from this board. There's also two people involved in the music creation, and while some high quality work has been produced, we're still having trouble figuring out the overall direction in this area. Last but not least, I've had some 2D art contributed such as the one I'm posting here.

That said, it's not really structured like a proper organized team, and I think as the project becomes more mature, it could stand to benefit from that. For now though, I just let people contribute stuff they would potentially like to see in the game and I'll include it if it's high quality and fits the atmosphere and theme.

If you wish to contribute dialogue, by all means I'd love to hear your ideas. I open these threads primarily so people can suggest ideas and such. I've posted the rest of the planned cast here if it might help you.

>>413161

Do I play as the waifu?

Also, do you have a patreon? In the future I'll be able to throw you some shekels.

>>417069

The character you'll play as will be a transfer student you can customize. It's mostly being designed with the assumption that you'll play as a male MC, but you'll have the option to also play as a female character too, but the only love interests planned right now are female so it'll be forbidden love only.

I don't currently have any channel open for accepting donations at the moment, but it is something I may be willing to accept in the future. It would actually be very helpful and much appreciated. The reason I'm still hesitant to open a funding channel is a. that I feel that since there is so little interest in the game it might be more hassle than it's worth, and b. is that I still don't feel comfortable accepting any money for the project since I feel there needs to be more content in it, specifically something that could make it a moderately fun game rather than a pure tech demo. I really want to feel confident I'm providing something of worth and value to people beforehand. If I can get the game at least partially to where I want it to be regarding game mechanics, I am considering opening up a means of donation after that.

>>417137

Pretty much yes, though in one minor subversion of the arrogant ojou-sama trope, girl number 3 is intended to actually NOT be a rich girl, but rather an inverted snob who does indeed think incredibly highly of herself and acts out the stereotype, but is way too inept to carry off this look and attitude successfuly.

Your guess on the nerdy girl is also correct, but I would emphasise her social alienation coupled with her own brand of arrogance as being the primary thing which should define her character. While not quite on the same level, I'd almost want to have her display Tomoko levels of social awkwardness at times

In general, an overarching 'theme' I would like to retain with all of the characters is the idea that they're all socially alienated in uniquely different ways.

>>417135

Okay I'm going to keep following this game. To be honest yuri isn't forbidden handholding.

Humbly requesting a Seras Victoria hairstyle.

If possible I'd prefer a patreon-style system in the future. One-time dumps aren't great for development in my opinion. Also would help me with my budget.

>>417153

Forgot to spoiler, sorry /a/

You sick fuck!

>>417855

It would be nice to do other routes after the fact. The game is at least being built with future extendibility in mind. Personally, I'd love to have loads of routes right from the start but I have to be strict with myself as to what makes it into the base game. The original plan was only going to be for two routes to start with but I was persuaded to bump it up to four.

>>417891

IMO 2-4 routes is more than enough.

I'm not really against 'expansion packs'. I'd rather have a really good solid base game (features fleshed out); an in-game editor would always be a welcome feature. Than 20 routes of pure rubbish.

>>417926

Waifu dev, you should start trip fagging

It'll stop fags speaking for you in the future

>>417944

I was also thinking of something like the shy but perverted teacher from KissXSis, but I realise she's actually not quite a Christmas cake just yet.

>>417946

I suppose I could. I generally dislike the concept of tripcodes on anonymous image boards simply because I've always felt it brings in too much of the ego-driven drama all too common in other types of communities, but if it's only for a project I'm heading, I guess it makes sense. I haven't bothered before because I assumed these threads are slow enough that people would be able to fairly easily work out which posts are mine, but if they get quite active or there's just a consensus that people would prefer if I trip posted, I guess I will.

Anyway, I'm trying to retool a layering system I wrote for the game to be a lot less hard-coded in order to better match the functionality of Ren'Py, but it's very hard to do without breaking all the previously implemented functionality.

>>418385

Even though it will have conventional VN scenes, and as I've mentioned it even has its own custom-built VN engine, I don't actually consider it to be true VN simply because it's treated more as a stat-driven RPG/sandbox first and foremost with the VN-style interactions relegated to events and as rewards for effective stat-management.

Regarding sticking with it, while I wish the concept had resonated with more people than it has so far, I'm still here and I intend to keep working on it. I'm also going to keep releasing new prototype versions of the game as significant features and improvements get implemented, so you hopefully won't have to wait for the full version if you at least want to get a decent representation of how it will turn out.

>>418739

>Regarding sticking with it, while I wish the concept had resonated with more people than it has so far

I haven't posted in your threads before because I have nothing to contribute, but I like where this is going, and I'll be excited to play it, as I'm sure will many others. Please don't be discouraged.

>>413177

>the base game will also have predefined characters with their own visual novel-style routes and actual dating sim-like gameplay with stat management, but you're able to walk around and explore the environments, join clubs, meet side-characters, ect., so it's kind of a life sim/high school RPG too. I'd almost imagine the gameplay being a much more in-depth version of the Persona 3/4 social link gameplay, just without the dungeon crawling

The base game will be like a dating sim, but you're able to do normal dating sim stuff too. I'd almost imagine the gameplay being much like a dating sim with dungeon crawling, just without the dungeon crawling.

Sorry. I just had to.

Sorry for the delay in replying. I've been frustrated trying to overhaul the game's layering system, but I've mostly got it sorted now.

>>419160

You're quite right about that. I've always said to myself that making the characters memorable and likeable should be a top priority, because it won't matter how refined I'm able to make the mechanics, if people don't like the cast they won't care for the rest of the game.

Would anyone perhaps be interested if I started posting little snippets of self-contained script and dialogue here to get an idea for the direction I'm hoping to go with the characters?

>>419518

It does indeed sound quite awkwardly phrased like that. I guess what I'm trying to convey is that I'm hoping to find a happy medium between the fairly constrained aspects of traditional dating sims, and something with more open-ended and freeform elements.

Sorry for the delay again, went quiet for a few days to work on another feature. It's interesting that people have started asking me about the Godot engine, because I've actually just fixed support in it for GPU skinning, being able to offload character animation to graphics card, which should yield some performance improvements which may allow me to start introducing some more characters to the freeroaming school setting soon. I've already sent this fix to the Godot mainline so it should be ready for the next stable release for other people to take advantage of too.

>>422025

In the very early stages, I was actually writing my own engine to support this game. It was actually going quite well and I think the overall design is still rock-solid, and it was inherited from an even earlier project to reimplement various visual novels in the style of ScummVM. The problem was that the design was very large in scope and actually attempted to be almost as general purpose as something like Unity. If the goal was just to create an engine, I'd say it was going well, but unfortunately not much of the game was coming together which led me to decide to build it off a pre-existing engine.

I chose Godot because it seemed the closest thing out there to the direction I was going with my own engine, and the really isn't much else out there comparable when it comes to licensing. I decided early on that I would only use open source technology and tools because I would like to eventually make this a true FOSS project somewhere down the line. The game was never intended to be a graphical powerhouse, but the switch to a new engine did encourage me to be a bit more ambitious in terms of design which led to the idea of introducing freeroaming as a mechanic. The renderer definitely needs improvements in terms of occlusion culling and other optimization, but there is a full overhaul planned this year which I hope I can get directly involved in.

>>422036

>>422265

I'll definitely put aside some time to work on the script. I've had a few ideas for scenes which might be entertaining example showcases which may help demonstrate the direction I'm hoping to go with the characters. I'll post them here when I feel they're sufficiently polished. Actually, tomorrow I might already have something very small to show which I'll post here too.

>>423850

Oh. It seems to be a lot like Python... Shouldn't be too hard to learn then.

'Hmph…well it’s Valentine’s Day today. I don’t even care, it’s just another pointless ritual designed to ostracise and mock anyone in society who refuses to participate as being a NEET virgin loser. Utter nonsense. Oh well, there’s no real purpose in trying to fight it this time, and I guess you are my senpai, so you might as well take your stupid obligation chocolate.'

So yeah, since it's Valentine's Day today, I decided to try sketching again.

Just a quick update on what's happening so far. Been a bit busy recently so I've not had all that much time to work on it, but I did manage to fix a bunch of bugs with the facial morph import pipeline. This removes a couple of unsightly glitches when the characters blinks and also just makes things easier to iterate on. The last major step to making facial animation a viable universal system is the plan to create a custom file format for it and allow morph data to be loaded and unloaded flexibly.

The end goal of this is actually to create a powerful ingame character creator.

For now, I'm going to go ahead and work on what was suggested, that is to write some one-shot scenarios for the purposes of fleshing out the cast.

Sorry for the delays, still been busy recently.

>>427470

>>427471

I'm still undecided as of yet if it would be the right thing to do right now. I do actually think it's justified for an actual project like this where it does make some sense that people involved in it retain some level of identity, but I still don't really think these threads are active enough to fully justify it as of yet over concerns for things like impending impersonation, but I will consider whether it would be worth using trips in the near future.

>>429712

It's kind of hard to say, specifically because I've been building the engine directly from a custom fork which pulls from the bleeding edge version of the engine, so I've actually been getting new features from the engine as they've been added. It's difficult to remember exactly how big this stable build differs from the last one. I think this build is mostly going to be notable for stability, quite a lot of fixes and improved functionality (some I myself contributed). One notable new feature is the live scene editing, but to be honest, it doesn't really work in the way I think a lot of people were expecting. I could see it being more useful when live script editing is added since that's something which would be very useful to me and would significantly cut down iteration time on game mechanics. That said, I've actually seen a prototype video of someone showing off a more conventional style of live scene editing working in action, so it may still get added at some point. Scene inheritance is very useful for me though and I've started using it more extensively in the project. On the whole, it's mostly a fairly iterative update, but I hope that I can started pushing for some more radical changes soon, particularly improvements to scene management and renderer optimization. There are really only two significant technical features I feel I need right now which are improvements to the renderer and off-mesh links for navigation, as the idea is to use off-mesh links to allow characters to properly navigate through doors.

I consider it to be a step in the right direction, and would still recommend it as being the first engine anyone looks at for any kind of 2D project, while still thinking it's got somewhere to go before its 3D support is just as good. It would still be helpful to get more people using it though, since improving its mindshare amongst other developers would attract more interest into making it better. I'm actually doing some performance comparisons and improvements right now and have some findings which might be interesting, so I may post about that later. I still intend to post some script soon, but I just haven't had the chance to sit down and focus on that as of yet

>>430394

Not sure what you mean exactly. Are you talking about the Mount&Blade expansion pack? I'm not all that familiar with the series, but at glance, it does look like there might be some overlap in regards to the kind of RPG depth I would like to bring to this project. Is there a specific feature you have in mind which you feel work here though?

>>431332

GDScript is mostly fine. I'm not the biggest fan of dynamically-typed languages, but I've not had any major issues with it as of yet. It could use some syntax extensions like enums for instance and it could also probably benefit from a JIT compiler at some point for better performance, but from a technical implementation layer, the layer between it and native code is incredibly thin to the point that rewriting GDScript into native C++ and vice-versa is actually a lot simpler than you might expect. The flexibility of it though has allowed me to do the trick I've talked about though where I've now got a visual novel language which can embed GDScript inside it directly.

The shader language, without talking about the syntax itself, I should mention that it's implementation and the 'problem' that it solves, despite it not really being a problem in the state the engine is currently in, is probably one of my favourite and one of the most forward-thinking aspects of the engine's design. It just makes me smile as a programmer. How it works is that the custom shaders written in Godot's shader language are divided into vertex, fragment, and even lighting stages, and at runtime they get converted into a native shader language, in this case GLSL, and inserted and instanced simply as stages in one massive 'ubershader'. This essentially means that as long as you're writing your game-specific shaders through this pipeline, they'll automatically work on any graphics API the engine decides to support in the future just so long as a parser is written. The implementation is actually what inspired the extensions I've been talking about recently regarding the VN engine.

As for the language itself, again, it's fine, but it could definetly use some more features. It is similar to GLSL just with some syntax differences and a smaller subset of features (imagine it makes supporting lowest common denominator native shaders easier to convert to). Working on the sky shader for example really made me wish it had support for things like mixins though, and these could definitely be added at the precompile stage, but the language just needs some extra love and attention. The core of it is fine, and suitable for the majority of things you would want to do with custom shaders, but I actually extended it myself a while back to better support features required for my outline shader. It's also got a nice optional visual node-based representation of the language you can usually which I also submitted improvements to, so I think it frees up artists a bunch to do really interesting things with shaders without having to worry about their technical implementation which has been a long-standing point of contention with cross-platform renderers. It's also worth contrasting this with Unity's ShaderLab, which kind of works the same way in the sense that the shaders it provides are only meant to be a snippet of a much larger 'ubershader' in order to simplfy their creation and remove concerns regarding removing common boilerplate shader code like vertex skinning for example. The difference lies in the fact that it does not provide an intermediary language; you have to write native shaders directly which essentially makes them unportable (though you can at least keep them all in a single in a format which basically amounts to glorified giant #ifdef statements). They do support a language called CG however from Nvidia which is kind of intended to solve the problem, except for two issues: one is that it's proprietary, and two is that it hasn't been supported since 2012; CG is essentially a dead project at this point. Unity are likely going to have a lot of trouble supporting 'next-gen' APIs like DX12 and Vulkan as a result of this, since unless they can pull out a really smart solution, the only thing I can think of right now is asking developers to essentially rewrite all their shaders just to support these APIs. This is again why it often feels like Unity is this cobbled together effort which happens to have a ton of money and polish thrown onto it, while Godot has a serious NIH fetish and less polish, but at least results in a way more consistent overall design.

Looks like a promising project OP.

Was hoping to check out godot at some point so I really hope all the HW Skinning / Morphing / IK Solver stuff can be successfully integrated at some point since all of that shit really makes for a good 3d engine which I think godot is still lacking in (e.g. I wouldn't dream of using software skinning these days, its just too damn slow).

>>432334

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

>>433256

I can tell you now that hardware skinning has been merged, but unfortunately it wasn't merged in time for the 2.0 release so it'll likely be available for the 2.1 release. Still, it's available if you compile though. Morph animation is already available in the vanilla branch, but my branch has what I consider the 'proper' way of doing it, which has both better performance and a lower memory footprint. The reason this hasn't been merged into the main branch as of yet is it still has quite a messy asset pipeline, currently relying on a hacked version of the Collada spec to get them in the engine. After assessing the options, my plan for this is to write a custom file format specifically for morph data which could be loaded alongside other formats. As for IK, I already have a basic leg IK solver, but I've decided to rewrite it and some other things in C++, which I'll release as a module for other people to use very soon.

On another note, and apologise to anyone who wanted to see some script writing. I've just been very busy recently and I've also been focusing on implementing another new graphics feature: software occlusion culling with occlusion planes. Implementing such a feature into the engine as is shouldn't be too much of an issue, but the challenge is the fact that I'm having to write a software triangle rasterizer from scratch. This is something I've always wanted to try writing, even if in this case, it's just so I can take advantage of the depth buffer.

Again though, I still intend to dedicate some time to script writing, but I keep feeling compelled to solve as many of the underlying technical issue with the game since it's the area I tend to feel most comfortable.

>>433553

Yes, something I could give now is some outlines on what I would like to do with some of the characters from a broader more general perspective. I could at least give some ideas on where I would like to go with them and maybe you could tell me what you think. I've said before that a general theme I'm interested in exploring is alienation, but I'm also seeing how this could interplay with the characters' own aspirations too.

For the first girl, the athletic one, she's probably one I'm having the most trouble defining a coherent voice for. I kind of think of her as the 'poster girl' for the project in a sense, being that I want to try and develop her as the type of character who's more immediately likeable: an energetic, light-hearted, fun-loving girl who's easy to befriend but difficult to develop beyond that largely due to disinterest in romance as a concept. I plan to develop her story about her as a talented aspiring sports star in the swim team, but conflicted by the responsibilities burdened by her family.

For the shy glasses girl, with her it's my most explicit desire to attempt to create a largely offbeat character whom you could consider 'endearingly flawed'. I really want to try and develop someone who is comical in a very dry and deadpan manner. Aside from her very literal social alienation from her peers, I want her to be someone you can have light-hearted 'intellectual banter' with, someone you can have ridiculously obtuse conversation about incredibly mundane topics. Consider this, a mundane conversation starting about the correct way to eat certain foods could develop into a highly political discussion about the history of agriculture and trade tariffs, and have no idea how it even got there. Another idea recently put forward for her was that she could be an aspiring horror writer despite herself being incredibly cowardly, roping you into investigating urban legends with her. This would allow us to play off and introduce a lot of obscure Japanese urban myths, giving her route quite a lot of unique events.

For the Gothic lolita character, she can actually fit the role of the designated foreigner character (and she's not even blonde, breaking new ground here!) being half Irish. I've mentioned before that I see her as kind of a kind of fake ojou-sama type, specifically someone who is not of high status and comically inept at pretending she is. I want her to be tsundere through and through, but the underlying aspect of her character is a very real sense of envy and inadequacy, possibly motivated by judging herself in relation to a successful older sibling. I also want her to secretly embrace Akiba culture, working part-time at a maid café, and it could be possible to play off the juxtaposition of her fake ojou-sama persona and her roleplaying of a largely a subservient role.

Finally, for the delinquent type character, she's actually a character which was largely suggested by a friend, and is probably much simpler to explain since her archetype has been explored many times before: she's a delinquent with a secret heart of gold. She has a dysfunctional family life, and is running with a bad crowd, and the main characters role is becoming someone strong enough that she can rely on and not end up becoming a genuinely bad person herself. This is a slightly random point of contention, but I've kind of internally debated on whether or not this character should smoke. It fits her role and makes her feel a lot more mature and grounded than the other girls, but I wonder if it might turn some people off. Let me know what you think?

Again though, one thing worth noting is I don't see this becoming a very 'plot-driven' story. Instead, I want to focus on trying to make the characters memorable and endearing so that it's just entertaining to interact with them. Unlike a conventional visual novel, we have to contend with the fact that events can play out out of order to an extent. That said, a good approach might be to plan out all the 'major' events in a character's route linearly and then attempt to fill in the gaps.

>>433834

The specific original meaning of the name 'Galatea' is a reference to the ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion, who made an ivory statue he fell in love with because he thought real women were bitches and whores. The statue was then brought to life by Aphrodite.

In other words, Pygmalion was the prototypical waifufag.

Just another quick update, not stuff really specific to the game, but some new enhancement for those of you who are at least interested in what I'm doing with the engine. Amongst other things, some new options for object shadows are available, and right now I'm attempting to add a pretty significant convenience feature which should, at the very least, help with speeding up design iteration: dynamically-reloading scripts, basically being able to change the game code as the game is running. This in itself is also a prerequiste to some prototyping I've been doing which I think could allow Godot to become a 100% WYSIWYG engine, but I'm unsure if I can dedicate significant time to something like that, evne though my prototypes seem to imply it would be possible with minimum changes.

You have my interest, OP

Is there some place where I can follow the development of this?

>>440506

That's generally an important aspect of the kind of storyline I want to bring to this thing, characters being disingenious with themselves, pretending to be something they're not. I mean, that's probably going to be most apparent with the gothic lolita character even if that's largely going to be played for laughs.

Regarding a questionaire at the start, although I do want a degree of malleability with regards to how the characters turn out, I really want it to grow organically out of how you interact with them in order for them to feel more real, so a hard rule I'm imposing is that you shouldn't be able to alter a character's look or personality without doing it through interaction by expressing approval or disaproval for certain types of looks and behaviour. Of course, if you do want to alter characters this way, I will be providing mod tools to alter anything beyond this scope.

>>440540

I'm glad you liked the little prototype I put together, although given the choice I probably wouldn't have released anything at this point due to feeling that there isn't really enough meaningful content for it to even be worthwhile. It's mostly there just to test some basic things like character models, pathfinding, physics, ect. Although, yes, most of it was made entirely by me, I do want to at least acknowledge that I did get some assistance with some of the props shown as well as the three music tracks you can find on the phone.

I'm aiming for the next release to actually show of some gameplay and meaingful interactivity in the world, but right now, I've just added another experimental engine feature for what I call 'multi-pass materials'. The way character outlines are currently being done is really cheap, it's literally two seperate models, but with this new system, I can define objects to rendered multiple times with different shaders. For me, it's only useful for doing outlines 'properly', but other developers may be able to get more interesting things out of it.