Progress Report - November 28, 2023 [What Should My Next Minivid Be?] (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

I apologize for this post being a day late. Had a busy weekend and ended up just getting passed-out tired early on Monday, didn't have a chance to properly put this post together.

As you can probably tell from this week's poster, my attention's been a bit more divided than over the past few weeks. Though not as much as one might think - the thoughts have still been largely about Unreal.

Unreal Exploration Update

Before getting into those thoughts though, a quick recap of how the past week's UE5 exploration has gone. Last week's Progress Report, I laid out wanting to figure out prototyping levels, building a level transition system, and building a save/load system.

The level transition system is figured out, though in a twist that's equal parts amusing and annoying, I ended up wasting a day and a half on it all because I misread a function name. I'll spare you all the details, and instead just say that Unreal Engine 5 basically has two different level systems: one for traditional mostly-interior separated-by-loading-screen environments, and one for large seamless open-world games. Due to some spectacularly bad reading comprehension on my part, I thought UE5 only had the open-world system, and so I spent a day and a half hacking a separated-by-loading-screen environments system into it.

In the end, I managed to get it working splendidly. Only to realize that it was completely unnecessary. So even if all that work ended up getting binned, it was still educational. I now know more about UE5's level streaming system than I will likely ever use - but if I do find myself building an open-world game, I'll have my foot in the door!

Speaking of doors, I also had a little bit of a sidequest while streaming my UE5 exploration on Saturday. It wasn't in my original plan, but I decided to explore making interactable doors. It's nothing fancy, interact with the door and choose Open, and the door swings open and you can pass through. You can Close the door too. But, it was a system I had to implement myself, and it was fun figuring out how to animate elements outside of the Level Sequence editor.

It was also fun figuring out how to get the door to always open the right way, away from the player. The solution I came up with is a simple but effective one: the door has two invisible nodes on each side of it, each of which tells which way the door needs to open. When the player goes to open the door, it figures out which of these nodes is the closest to the player, and uses that node's information to open the door. It then saves what direction was used to open the door, so that when you close the door, it just plays that node's animation in reverse.

I didn't bother making a character animation for opening and closing the door, it just magically swings open. Stuff like that is ultimately fluff - players understand that when they tell a door to open and the door opens, that they're responsible for that. You don't need an animation to communicate that to the player.

Another sidequest I fell down was figuring out how to make generalizable sequences - sequences that can be played anywhere in the world, as opposed to in a specific place like a traditional cinematic. In this case, I made a generic sitting-down animation:

Putting this together was pretty educational, learned a fair bit about how the Level Sequence system works - and some of its quirks, which I ended up exploiting. The way I ended up having this implemented is the animation Level Sequences have a special "origin" node, and then the couch interactable has several "sequence transform" nodes. When the "sit" interaction is engaged, it chooses the "sequence transform" node that is closest to the player, and then plays the sitting Level Sequence, moving the Sequence's "origin" node on top of the chosen "sequence transform" node.

In effect, this allows a properly-set-up Level Sequence to be played anywhere, by simply correctly placing those "sequence transform" nodes.

It was a good thing I put this together too, because it revealed a problem with the "Set player states" function that a lot of the prototype relies on. It was a simple fix, but it was a subtle problem I probably wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for this specific use-case.

As an upside though, that function being broken resulted in this absolutely hilarious bug where I can spawn an army of Maxes, all of whom glitch more and more angrily with each one I spawn. I'm sure you could read a Life is Strange in-universe interpretation of that, if you were so inclined.

So that's what all I got done this past week in regards to the UE5 prototyping. The next thing I want to do is figure out what the best way to do exterior environments are. They are classically THE hardest thing for me to build in Source Filmmaker, and I am hoping that UE5 has some tools that will make it less painful. It has a "Foliage Brush" tool, which is a good sign - if I could just "paint" trees and bushes and grass shit onto the ground, that'd already be magnitudes easier than what has to be done in SFM.

I mean, UE5 already makes exteriors significantly easier to build in SFM, just by way of the fact it has HDRIs and sky lights. In a nutshell, HDRIs are special sky textures that also emit light, and sky lights allow you to easily and accurately set the sun position and time of day, with the lighting and shadows reacting appropriately. That is shit I have to meticulously do by hand in SFM, and UE5 gives it for free. Hell, the basic-bitch starter map in UE5 has it already in place - you've been seeing it this whole time in all the updates I've been sharing.

Once I've spent a day or two fiddling with that, I want to figure out the saving/load system. And then I think I am going to finally start working on the not-a-shitpost prototype tying everything together and showing what can come of all of these systems.

For that prototype, I think what I am going to do is write a quick little mediation tool, just for my sanity. I build the scene in SFM, use a SFM tool to write out what models are used and where in the scene they are placed; use a Blender tool to quickly import all of the models used and then export them out as FBX (with the materials imported and assigned); and use an Unreal tool to import the exported FBX's into the Unreal project, and reassemble them in the same positions they had in SFM.

I've already written a similar pipeline with my text-to-speech importer, so it should be pretty straightforward. REDEYE has a fantastic Source model importer for Blender which I will utilize for the Blender side of things.

Basically I don't want to waste my time manually porting assets one by one. My SFM has over 65,000 assets installed into it. I can just pick and choose the assets I need for a scene in SFM, and then automatically port everything over to Unreal. Should only take 2 or 3 days to write, after which it will save me God knows how much time in the future.

Okay, that's the UE5 experiment update done. Now let's talk about that poster image!

Looking For A Lewd Game Design

So I am pretty certain I've mentioned before that one of the reasons I am looking into UE5 is that I want to make a lewd game as the next on-stream project. If I didn't mention that before, uhh, yeah. That.

The question is, what would such a lewd game be?

Before we tackle that question, we first need to establish some ground rules and set expectations straight. Firstly, this is an on-stream project - that means that having fun and learning things, either me learning things or me teaching things, is the top priority. Getting bogged down in the minutiae of game development and polish are not on the board.

All of which means, in a word, the game we make is going to be jank as fuck.

Similarly, there is no expectation that the game we make will ever be finished, or even released. Again, the focus of the stream is to entertain and educate. Actually producing things, like the 10-minute Maid to Facefuck, the 8-minute Ladies' Night Out, the 22-minute Refuge, or the 59-minute Peasantsday (even if that is unpolished, it's still produced at least, once it's all finished up), is purely incidental. It's not the goal.

And then thirdly, this is going to be the first game I've ever built in Unreal, and will be almost entirely put together live on stream. That means the scope needs to be reasonably small, and needs to play best to my strengths. That means ideally a small cast, a small collection of environments, and a small amount of writing.

The reason for the last bit is, as much as I absolutely love story games, and I love writing, we have learned the hard way that I fucking SUCK at live writing, EG writing in front of a live audience. I tend to get anxious and rush my way through the writing, fearing that I am wasting the audience's time, and the result is writing that really suffers for it. I need time to sit in silence and reflect, to just lean back, fold my hands over my nose, and think. That's just how I write, and it is not conducive to having a live audience.

So ultimately, whatever game idea we end up on, it should have a small cast (ideally only one controlled character), a small set of locales (ideally just single rooms), and a small amount of writing (ideally be a mechanically-driven game, rather than a narratively-driven game).

The idea I am currently considering is a camwhore game. The premise is simple: your character decides that the tedium of a traditional job just isn't for her, and that she'd much rather show off her body for a living. You, as the player, guide her through her journey to e-fame, deciding the best course of action for her to take and building up her confidence to take more and more risks in her quest for fame and fortune on her own terms.

This simple pitch prototype I put together shows off the four major aspects of gameplay: pose, expression, outfit configuration, and hair/makeup. All of these would be assigned a wide array of parameters that mathematically describe what would be appealing to them (side-boob, bare ass, timid expression, glam hair, etc). These parameters would be compared to an invisibly simulated "market" which changes over time, determining how well the pictures do. The performance of the pictures directly correlates to boosting your character's confidence, which serves as the "level" in RPG terminology, which in turn unlocks new poses, expressions, outfits, hair/makeup styles, and environments.

As you can probably tell, my first incarnation of this idea was Elizabeth as a disillusioned fast-food worker. I think it'd be a fun, relatable story that would give us plenty of room to explore the more lascivious side of our imagination in a safe environment. I'm sure we've all had that thought of "fuck this I could be a stripper right now" while dealing with a bitching customer - even us guys, be honest with yourselves.

However, I continued to tinker with the idea a little bit. An aspect I have been enamored with for a very long time, as evidenced by the fact I have experimented with it though never successfully committed to it, is the idea of internally-motivated bimbofication.

Basically, a woman wanting to have huge tits and a fat ass purely for her own satisfaction, because she personally believes that is the body she deserves to have. No external motivations like needing money or being coerced involved.

My golden rule for internal motivation is "if the character had the money to do it without worrying about finances, didn't have to worry about society judging her for it, and would do it entirely free of charge, then it is internally motivated." See the Harley glory-hole minivid as an example of that being executed in practice - Harley's just there because she loves fucking strangers through a wall, she didn't even know you could get paid for it. Money was not a concern to her - she is purely there through her own internal motivation.

The question then became, who would be the best character for this? Ideally, it'd be a character who canonically has a slim frame (or a heavy frame), so that the eventual glow-up would be the most contrasted and pronounced. So I put together a small collection of possible characters:

Of course, there's more to choosing a character than just physical appearances. Their canonical personality and story is a big contributor to the appeal of using a character for this sort of story, and would influence the story and setting a fair amount.

For example, DVa could eschew her Overwatch antics to focus on her e-gaming career, naturally getting herself into becoming a livestreamer. However, she's quick to figure out that the female streamers who are more lascivious in their streams get more attention, which fuels her deeply competitive nature to one-off the other streamers, motivating the bimbo-camwhore cycle.

Or Barbara Gordon / Batgirl, after months of a middling-at-best vigilante career in Gotham, has a candid photo of her latex-clad bat-ass go viral, and seeing all the people online absolutely thirsting for her awakens something in her - "wait, people think I'm hot?" Maybe can use all that tight latex for something that's both less dangerous and more fulfilling that fighting crime.

Or the image at the top of this post, with the physics nerd who just wants to be a fat-tit bimbo whose operating 24-7 on head-empty-pussy-full energy.

In its current incarnation, this idea is an extension of the previous camgirl idea, just adding body modifications like piercings, tattoos, and body augmentations as additional dimensions to the customization - and more variables in the unknowable matrix that ultimately dictates what sinks and what floats in the ephemeral entity we know only as The Algorithm.

The New Year Quickly Approaches - Which Means It Is Time For A New Minivid!

And I'll just be blunt here, I don't know what to do.

I've been exploring a few ideas. I'm just gonna vomit these images into this post.

It's 4am, I've been feeling like shit all day (no idea what it is, just been feeling like shit - I think I might be tired, I don't know), and I've been writing for the past hour now.

So I'm not going to expand on any of these, or go into any of the ideas I've had I have no images for.

Instead, I'll just open the door to you all: what do you want to see? Any characters, IPs, settings, stories, kinks, whatever. Let your imaginations go wild. Just remember that minivids are only 5 minutes long, and are put together in under a month. So whatever you come up with needs to be pretty quick to set up and pay off.

That's all for now. Until next week, everyone!