What's Wolfschadowe up to?

[Wolfschadowe]

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what's been keeping me from working on BEW. What I discovered is that I'm really unhappy with the game in terms of visuals. I don't mean I'm jealous of other games or what have you, but just that the quality of BEW is inconsistent, and especially I go and look at earlier developed stuff and want to fix it. Then I realize how much of a pain in the ass it would be to fix it and I lose motivation. I've also come to realize how clunky and painful the creation process became for the game. It might be time for a change.

WAIT, DON'T PANIC (or celebrate) just yet. BEW isn't going away.

I'm working on a proof of concept for converting from a pre-rendered engine and format to a real-time rendering engine and format. Specifically, making the game in the Unreal game engine. Why? Well, here's the pro/con list I've developed.

PRO

• Real-time rendering means that any character tweaks are instantly reflected throughout the entire game.
• Current game text is fast and simple to import into the engine. Each scene such as the Wednesday Bar scene, takes about 2 minutes to fully import.
• Consistent graphics and artwork throughout the game. No jarring technology or generational changes mid-game.
• Better, smoother animated frames.
• Potential for added features over time. Maybe at some point in the future, play in VR? It's possible
• From early signs, much faster production time.
• Better game-play functionality (Major path autosave; Scene specific save/load sorting; Achievement guides; replay your playthrough as a movie, etc...)

CON

• New models for EVERY character would be required. (Same story)
• Game download size would significantly increase
• Essentially remake the entire game (Not as bad/slow as it sounds)
• Have to completely rebuild the gamecore in C++/Blueprint.

The main thing that has been keeping me away from changing the engine and rebuilding the game has been concern about how the players would be impacted. The game would likely be less accessible, bigger download, and some of the tradeoff's might turn folks away.

Recently though, I remembered that I'm making the game for myself, so I've started this proof of concept where I'm going to fully rebuild the short D1 office scene (and all the related infrastructure to create it) and see how it turns out. Here's a screenshot of the current prototype.

What's not there:

• Most of the furniture is not imported yet.
• No clothes or hair yet (obviously) but those are relatively easy, I'm just keeping it as simple as possible at the moment.
• Hotspots not yet implemented so I've temporarily moved those to buttons.
• Formatting and styling of the UI is not there.

What is there:

• The text for the full scene is present and you can play it through the full scene. That part took about 10 minutes. (text only, no camera moves or pose changes yet)
• Beyond that, what you see is what is there.

spoiler: show

Screenshot.png

So it's pretty bare at the moment (pun intended) but I think the main point for me is that I'm having a lot of fun with it figuring it all out. I can already tell that creating the content is going to be much faster and easier once I get all the foundation work done. The main thing to remember for everyone is that this is just a proof of concept where I'm seeing if it will work, what will the result be, and is it even feasible to do. This may or may not be the direction BEW is going. We'll see.

[infiniteignorance]

One question: Does this mean more realistic animations? Because I'm all for that in any game. You could write the rest of BEW on Index cards and I'd play it because the game itself is high quality compared with most other games of the same type. The animations make al the difference.

[Wolfschadowe]

Does this mean more realistic animations?

Yes/No/Maybe?
I think I know what you are asking infiniteignorance, but I want to head off some others that may get the wrong idea, so please bear with me for a moment.

I don't currently have plans to have a lot of movement in the Unreal version of the game. What I mean by that is don't expect something like "House Party" where everyone is "living." Walking around, and interacting. It's still going to essentially be a slideshow with occasional animated loops. No animated transitions. No walking to the next stage. No animated talking, etc.

spoiler: show

Note: I am playing with another game design based in the Schadoweverse that is kind of a Fallout meets X-com meets The Sims (or instead of The Sims, for those of you familiar, more like the old similar "Singles" game that was Sims with Sex)

Some of that might be added later here and there. I might figure out "living" animations like blinking/Breathing and Visemes so that the characters lip-sync the the text. Maybe. In the future. But not likely.

Here's what can be expected:
- Those looping animated frames that are currently in the game, like the first in the bar where Faith fondles herself at the bar, or the blowjob animations, and Natalie's lapdances. Those will be animated and look MUCH MUCH better. (I hope)
- I may add some one-time transition animations here and there where they make sense. Like in the very first Office scene, if looking up Emily's skirt, I may add a subtle leg spread animation to that as a transition, depending on difficulty and how much time it takes. I might even add a subtle replay button to those, if I include them.
-Far, far less likely, I might add optional animation control similar to some Pusooy games (but better and less frustrating) for immersion. These would always have an "autopilot" if added.

Hope that answers it.

[infiniteignorance]

Your first bulletin point answered the specific question I had in mind. I'm not looking for a movie.

[palinathas]

Not against it, especially if it leads to getting more of the story!

[Cabin Fever]

(At least to me anyways) A completely re-do isn't such a bad idea. It's been so long that I've forgotten half of it. A re-do will require a replay and that will refresh my memory.

[xsandman78]

From my own point of view I don’t know quite the extent new models will bother me. Other than that I don’t have much issue with the notion of remake/rebuild.

[Tao Dude]

Looking at the Unreal website, it is possible to import meshes and associated materials from other programs, but unlike Unity, which I believe will pull stuff direct from DAZ 3D, Unreal is optimised for import from Autodesk products like Maya, which is a bit pricey.

There is also a pair of plug-ins called unsurprisingly DAZ to Unreal, that are optimised for Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 characters, so the port would not be impossible.

[Wolfschadowe]

Looking at the Unreal website, it is possible to import meshes and associated materials from other programs, but unlike Unity, which I believe will pull stuff direct from DAZ 3D, Unreal is optimised for import from Autodesk products like Maya, which is a bit pricey.

It's actually pretty easy to go from Daz to Unreal, especially for this type of game. DAZ props move seamlessly, I just need to update the materials to make them look good with the different renderer.
The difficulties come in optimizing the characters for other types of games where there are a lot of characters moving around, such as a FPS or Action RPG and using the Daz characters. They have a lot more polygons and detail for the real-time renderer to handle and can bring the game to a crawl even on the best gaming systems. That's where Maya comes into play to reduce the polycount and merge material zones to reduce render passes. All that can also be done in Blender if needed. I don't need to do that for this game.

I can export anything from Daz --> Unreal with a simple fbx export/import process.

The main issue is the complexity of multiple skeletons paired with animations. A "pose" in unreal is an animation frame. The main reason that I don't want to just export all the characters and import them to Unreal directly is because I never standardized on a skeleton, meaning that I'm using Genesis-Genesis 8 base characters in the game (Including supporting actors apart from the main interests). Additionally the Genesis 1 - Genesis 3 characters are all T-Pose based, and unreal is A-Pose based. The Genesis 8 character is also A-Pose based.

Standardizing on a single skeleton reduces the workload considerably. That means all clothing, Hair and accessories will be interchangeable (they are also skeleton based). Additionally, any poses or animations such as breathing or blinking or whatever, will also be interchangeable between the characters making the game much easier to create and maintain.

An additional bonus is the the Genesis 8 character is mostly compatible with all content for the Genesis-Genesis3 characters. Poses can be updated to the Genesis 8 character, assiged an animation frame, and exported to unreal. Clothing can be up-converted to Geneses 8, and exported to Unreal, etc...

So the main reason for new characters will be to move them to the Genesis 8 skeleton. Most I will try to keep similar to the original, although a few, like Azumi, will be completely redesigned.

[Tao Dude]

Additionally the Genesis 1 - Genesis 3 characters are all T-Pose based, and unreal is A-Pose based. The Genesis 8 character is also A-Pose based.

I'm still playing around the fringes of DAZ, as I am more of a coder than a 3D artist. You are probably aware that there is a tool that will convert characters to Gen 8 from Gen 3: presumably, that will fix the skeleton/posing issues?

My problem is that I am more of a collector than a doer unless I have an external stimulus to point me in a particular direction, so I have multiple similar tools and shedloads of assets that will make a great game once I work out what form it needs to take and can switch off the real world distractions that stop me getting an uninterrupted run at it.

[Wolfschadowe]

You are probably aware that there is a tool that will convert characters to Gen 8 from Gen 3: presumably, that will fix the skeleton/posing issues?

It does...but it doesn't. I've tried the tools, and you can actually go all the way from Gen 1 to Gen 8 with various conversion tools. Unfortunately the tools cause serious deformities around the hands and shoulders, and the transitions from Genesis 2 to Genesis 3 totally screws the face. Again it happens from Gen 3 -> Gen 8 (There is only Gen 1, 2, 3, and 8. This is because Gen 1 was Victoria 5. Previous Victoria versions were pre Genesis technology. So genesis 3 was Victoria 7, and they decided to avoid confusion with Genesis 4 and Victoria 4, and just jumped so that Genesis 8 is Victoria 8.

The faces generally look good when neutral, and even look okay with default characters, but once you try to morph the face to a unique look, then all the expression morphs deform and you get a real horror show. heh. For still artwork, that can be overcome with time and tweaking for every single pose and expression, but I found it's a lot of time, on the order of hours per pose to get something looking right after conversions. I played around with that a lot. Just look at how many iterations I posted on the up-converted Faith.

My problem is that I am more of a collector than a doer unless I have an external stimulus to point me in a particular direction, so I have multiple similar tools and shedloads of assets that will make a great game once I work out what form it needs to take and can switch off the real world distractions that stop me getting an uninterrupted run at it.

You just described me perfectly! BEW is my external stimulus, but I have the same tendency. I'm a bit of a digital hoarder. heh.

[MJLHistory]

Wolf its your game i will like it either way you decide to do it
new graphics , old graphics whatever you choose works with me

i'm just looking forward to the continuance of the story

and Thank you

[dutch]

100% correct! If we stop telling Wolf how to do it, Wolf can actually get to doing it rather then waste time with our silly suggestions.

[palinathas]

Wolf its your game i will like it either way you decide to do it
new graphics , old graphics whatever you choose works with me

i'm just looking forward to the continuance of the story

and Thank you

I'll third this! Tell us if we can help, if not that's cool too!

[ThorKruger117]

A happy Wolf is a productive Wolf. You do you, my friend.