Hi This patch took a considerable amount of time but I think it has been worth the wait since I'm adding a lot of customization options for all the human classes. Let's go in detail:

New Human Bodies:

In order to add customizable faces to the human classes I had to discard the old body models since those only had heads with helmets. The new bodies are more detailed and have the added benefit of having "blendshapes" that allow simple facial animation like blinking, frowning, smiling, etc. so the characters look a bit more alive.
COMPATIBILITY NOTE: You can still play with save files made before this patch but since the old soldier bodies are gone, once you load an old save file, all your soldiers will receive the new bodies and a randomized look (for face and body). This is necessary to keep compatibility and to avoid legacy soldiers without customization parameters looking like bald clones.

Face Customization:

While you can still make your soldiers wear helmets, if you decide to customize their faces then you have a lot of options like hair, skin and eye textures, face paint and even accessories like masks and visors.
You can also edit sliders for the shape of the face or the default facial expression of the character in case you really want to go deep in face customization. NOTE: there's also a "Randomize" button in case you want to see possible combinations instead of doing all this manually.

Body Accessories:

Every class has its own base armor but you can customize a lot not only by changing textures (like before) but also by adding and removing armor pieces like pauldrons, ammo pouches, bracers, etc.

Most of these accessories also have their own texture combinations.

Future Customization Content:

Since this patch was taking too long I had to leave some of the customization content for a future update. In specific, the expanded customization for the alien classes is missing (you can still use the basic customization for the Void Spawn and Krell'Sha soldiers) and beards for male characters are also something I owe you. Besides that, I made this system with the idea of being expanded easily so I can always add new accessories and textures, I have plenty of ideas for cool armor pieces that will help to make soldiers feel more unique.

What's Next?

Right now I will take a few days to update my trailer and screenshots since the game has changed a lot and I need to show these changes in the store page. After that I'll work in some small patches with a mix of content, fixes and new mechanics for a while. I would really like to add new skills and combat mechanics to the existing classes. I have a lot of ideas like invisibility for the assassins, improve and expand the melee combat and others. I also would like to go around my existing maps and improve them a bit. And then I'll need to decide what other big feature is next, probably the promised space station overhaul that will bring lots of exciting content like an arena or in-station missions and new mechanics. It's not the only big feature so if I decide to tackle something else I'll let you know. ----------------------------------------------------- Regards, Jorge

[ 2023-08-17 07:18:05 CET ] [ Original post ]