2019-07-22 Status Update

[Haxus]

Status Update
There have been no updates for a while. What's going on?

I have been deeply engrossed in upgrading the creatures.

I pulled out the code that was started just before the new spacecraft and building designers were implemented. At the time, I felt they were a higher priority than upgrading creatures so I put creatures on the shelf for a while, two years?

The creature maker had suffered from some code decay but it didn't take much work to get it going again. I was not satisfied with it. The CPU work to make the skins of creatures was too much and the result frequently drew out the term uncanny valley. It also relied heavily on data to drive the shape of body parts.

This time I am taking a different approach. The appearance is much more cartoon than realistic, detouring around uncanny valley. The CPU work required to make the models is small, possibly less than it takes to put together the current/old style creatures. All body parts are generated so there is no reliance on any 3D model data.

I am almost finished with the first male/female pair of people. I'll post screen shots as soon as I have something that is presentable, likely within the next week.

[Vectorus]

Very tantalizing, I'm looking forward to seeing the new style...

While you are working on this, is it worth giving some thought to how custom clothing may work one day in the future and making sure the right "hooks" are there on the creature parts? Especially for 3d stuff like armour, headgear, long dresses/robes etc.

Will old creatures be "translatable" into new ones? It would be so nice if the galaxy could be unified in that respect, though I don't think anyone would complain if you just got rid of current creatures on explored planets and rolled them again from scratch, as long as their statistics (food points, armour values) stayed the same. Existing avatars could get an upgrade token if not translatable. It would be a shame if all our favourite worlds were stuck with obsolete animals permanently.

[Deantwo]

A more cartoony theme does sound like a good idea.
Assuming we also start making more cartoony building blueprints (akin to some of the ones you already made), it will lower the expected design quality to a more manageable level.

Depending on how much you wanna cartoonify the theme of creatures, maybe some less realistic textures in the game would be good too.
But I am no artist, so I'll shut up now.

Looking forward to see what you come up with.

[OnePercent]

Status Update
There have been no updates for a while. What's going on?

This time I am taking a different approach. The appearance is much more cartoon than realistic, detouring around uncanny valley.

Holy crap does this mean we can make our own heroic space waifus then?????

[5crownik007]

Mmmmm, sounds good.

Holy crap does this mean we can make our own heroic space waifus then?????

SPACE WAIFU WA DOKO DESU KA???

[resonkinetic]

Holy crap does this mean we can make our own heroic space waifus then?????

you have no idea how badly i've wanted this

[Vooker525]

Portion of rage here.

No one will look at characters, buildings or spacecrafts if there is simply no quality of life things. Still no movement prediction for most stuff. Mobile online shooters have smoother movement with 150+ ping. Abandoned optimization, nothing about simplifying designer. Grainy skybox with visible bordes on edges. No forum moderators. Code decaying (subjectively), which leads us to vicious cycle of reworking what works okay with thing that works a bit worse but is just abandoned on halfway. What will be after 2 years? Another rework of worlds/spacecrafts/cities? Why not improve existing?
I understand that there is desire to do something else that exhaust after some time but... characters? They work fine for so many years while others things not really. What to do? Correct, invest time in characters instead of other things.
I really wish you would give some love on movement prediction and small/medium features (and graphics stuff that doesnt require artist). I will make a list at some point