Transmission 5.0

This month is a late dev-log. We have been working tirelessly on PA character creation, we aimed to have something production ready so we don’t have to revisit the core framework before early access release. We have achieved that, and currently the character creation tool is available for our top-tier Patrons for testing and feedback.

Character Creation

We aim to deliver a feature rich and expansive character creation experience, in our hope to stand alongside AAA titles within this area. Character creation is very involved, with lots of moving parts and things to consider, including pitfalls.

Last month we covered quite a lot of the character creation, we were still heavily in development back then, and we are at a stage now where we can put it down and move on. But we did want to tell you more about it. We didn’t talk much about the clothing last month, but now we have finished the framework that supports it.

Players at the moment can equip different clothing items for the under top, over top, legs and feet, but we will be opening that up to allow for eyewear, headwear and handwear. Our clothing forms with the character's body, so it will always fit. Players can also customize the colors of the clothing, and in the future, even choose between patterns and iconography for their clothes as well. We have built with all these things in mind, so adding new patterns/colors/logos is extremely easy, even adding new clothes doesn’t take too much time.

We have finished developing our skin shader, it's come a long way since last month. It now has built in makeup functionality, players will be able, as both male and female, to add eye shadow, liner, blush and lipstick. There are a dozens of different styles and players can change the colour, opacity and even shininess too.

Lastly, at the end of the character creation process, players will be able to choose a name, and pose/express their character for the ID’s picture. There is a range of expressions to choose from, and you can even blend them to a certain degree, players can also position the eyes as well.

In the future we aim to have a range of items and styles for players to choose from. This will be obtained through different sources, all with the intention of giving players all the tools to express who they really are, or express any fictional character they can imagine for their ghost hunting adventures.

Ghosts & Items

More work has been done planning and locking in ghost behaviors and how they will work within our haunts. Although our ghosts have a procedural nature about them, nearly all of them have something unique, or their own flair when doing things. Because of the amount of ghosts we have planned, and how dynamic they are we need to make sure that we consider every behavior and feature they possess against the players and the haunts to enable for a fluid and rich experience across multiple sessions. This month we have finished planning the Jinn, Itsuki, Ouni, Mare and Shinigami. More can be found about these ghosts and how we want to represent them on our Patreon.

In Addition to the ghosts we have planned out a few more items, these are spiritual items, the Poppet and the Crystal ball. Both are used to aid you in your investigation, like with the ghosts we like to plan everything out to make sure they work well and do not become a hindrance or make the haunts too easy. Going forward the items and equipment system will be a focus alongside the ghosts and haunts.

Moving Forward

As we mentioned in last months dev-log the characters are a huge part of PA, and now that they are actually finished to the point we wanted we can finally move on, its taken much longer than anticipated but now, after getting to this stage, we have realized why, there is so much going on, and making everything work with synergy has been very challenging. But we are happy that we can release a creation tool to our Patrons for testing and more feedback so we can better define the experience in the future, for now we have to move on to other important things, mainly getting the game playable, so we can iterate and work faster with more real time feedback.

We are so grateful for our community, who are so patient and supportive, we love you guys, and just want to deliver our best, so thank-you once again, for being so damn patient!