#featherveil islands

[xenonfossil]

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version 0.3 of my character creator is live! link in source to wishlist on steam or play the browser version on itch for free~

🎶 music is by crashtroid!! 🎶

new stuff: 🐈 face & body markings!! 🐈 a ton of new body parts and sliders! 🐈 a lobby where you can watch your lads run around! 🐈 down with flat ui! it has now been  b e v e l e d

enjoy, and dont forget to show me your creations!!!!

[featherveilislands]

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Title text animation made in aseprite and unity. Featuring our postal gryph mascot, Parcie!

[xenonfossil]

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just released version 0.2 of my lil creature creator in itch :D link is in the source

 you can play it in browser now, and edit face features!! i’m very proud of it so far and am excited to keep working on it

[xenonfossil]

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some low poly pixel crops i made for an Asset Pack Jam! they’re free to use for whatever, but if you do PLEASE show me what you use them for! :D

link in source!

[xenonfossil]

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y’all ready for version 0.3???? :3

[xenonfossil]

randomize that face babeyyyyyy

[xenonfossil]

worked on some new features!! got bat wings, clawed paws and feet, cloven hooves, and cheek fins and spiked cheekfluffs

[xenonfossil]

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ehehehehehe....... it begins!!!! finally getting to work on the lads wandering around the station hub

[xenonfossil]

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more sliders :0

[xenonfossil]

baby steps of when i first started working on the character creator in november of 2021!

[xenonfossil]

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snoots :3

[xenonfossil]

Hi!!! What's your game about have you ever explained it? besides the character creator I mean!!

i don't think i have! so when i first started learning game dev, like all hobbies i start learning, i jumped head first into a giant project. i don't know how to take it slow or small, i think i learn the best when i have big goals that i can try and figure out how to learn on the way to those goals!

so anyway, that project i eventually named Featherveil Islands, which was to be a grand, ambitious mix of the farming of Stardew Valley, with Animal Crossing style characters, and the voxel world manipulation of Minecraft

as i was learning Unity i actually got some decent progress with world manipulation

and an inventory system

with plants that could grow

and also, the baby stages of character customization

but, being my first project, i kept learning stuff and wanted to go back and redo older stuff, and also wanting some sort of finished thing i could get in other people's hands. despite my voracious consumption of other game dev advice videos saying to start with a smaller game, i stubbornly shoved the advice aside. i didn't want to work on some random small game, all my ideas were huge and big!!!

i'm a big fan of chris zukowski's how to market a game blog, and finally one of chiris's videos laid it out in a way i was more amenable to: take your big ambitious dream game and split it into smaller games. so i was like, oh shit, hell yeah i can do that! so i decided to start with the character creator so i could have a diverse range of characters for my future projects!

so yeah that's a summary of my game dev journey so far!! I've been working and learning on and off since like 2018 or so

[xenonfossil]

getting markings on the lads...

so flatkit is a bit weird, and the cell shading colors do not derive from the main color you set, but are set separately.... this means, in order for me to not have to figure out how to code something that will give me two colors that are darker shades than the main color, i have to set the color within the texture itself, and then it will work the way i want.

this means rebuilding a new texture when i want to change the color.... which is pretty slow for anything above 256x256, and causes the game to hiccup as it makes the texture. something i will likely solve with a coroutine or something later, when i learn more about how they work lol.

but it’s at least working!!!

also, added a new slider

[xenonfossil]

a bit jank on the textures because i haven’t fully unwrapped them yet, but! new ears and tails :)

[xenonfossil]

when i went to start drawing markings/fur patterns for the lads, i realized that the separated ovals i had for forearms/upper arms and calves/thighs were a pain in the BUTT to texture because you had to be really precise about where the textures went to make sure they matched up. so i spent some time merging them into one mesh for each arm/leg instead. gonna do the same for the torso at some point, but it’ll be fine for now!

[xenonfossil]

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here’s quick look at when I started work on the mii channel-esque zone! had to do some refactors to make sure the lads will show up properly here instead of their native monster factory scene, but making progress! for instance, there’s a bug where sometimes the ears become asymmetrically scaled, but only on some saved lads and not others... i don’t know whats causing it and it may not even need to be fixed cuz i won’t be switching one lad to be different lads in the future, but we’ll see 🤔