Progress Update 8 (Patreon)

Nothing to post yet. Last I posted, I said there were no 'big' things left to do code-wise. Since then, I've been working on a big code thing. So... yeah. I promise it's worth it in the long run. But... yeah >.<'

So basically, it's been getting harder and harder to manage working in Spine - the animation and rigging software used for the game. It's gotten to the point where the rigs are so unwieldy that making changes can result in hours upon hours of wasted time if I end up needing to tweak that change later. With oral stuff especially, there's a TON of tweaking to do.

This has been getting worse and worse. But, over the last several years, Spine has been updated to fix a lot of the issues I've been dealing with. Unfortunately, the code library that connects Spine to my game engine is no longer in development. I have to manually update it if I want the new features. I've been putting that off because it would cause delays to development. I figured I might do it after the Oral and Portals updates were done. 

Most of the important new Spine features involve making modular rigs. When this game started, Spine wasn't really meant for that. Instead, I had to find my own creative solutions to making a rig that handled different ponies/species with swappable body parts. Since then, Spine has gotten official solutions that are far better than my hack-job workarounds. That means that differently-sized or shaped creatures no longer have to be stuck on the original set of bones. Instead, I can dynamically swap bones out to adjust for different body types. That's pretty much the biggest hurdle I've been facing for these rigs for the past several years.

The difficulties of the Oral update have made it very hard to work in the old Spine version I was stuck on. As they pile up, it makes development more and more challenging, and gets more and more frustrating to engage with. Something simple becomes a large time investment, and if it doesn't look good, it's hard to want to waste more time on it. Eventually, I decided to at least TRY to update Spine.

Over the past few weeks, I've been going back and forth. Partially working on manually updating the code library, and partially trying to find solutions in the old version of Spine. I wanted to see if I could get the game update out to you guys even without the newer Spine features. Ultimately I decided that working in the old version of Spine was going to create far too many problems. I'd be hamstringing myself for the NEXT update, and then IT would take forever too.

So yeah, I decided to bite the bullet and commit to porting the 3-4 years of missing Spine features to my game engine. I really, really hate that it had to happen during THIS slow-ass update, but that's the judgment call I made. I'm about 85% of the way through the process right now. There were some pretty difficult math-related and rendering-related things in there, but otherwise, it's just a tedious process of porting, checking, testing, and repeating. 

To be clear about how I see this- it's AWESOME. I'm actually super excited, and feel really good about what this means for the future of SHF3. These past few months have been some of the most productive months I've ever had. The only frustrating/stressful part about it is that I haven't been able to share the fruits of that productivity with y'all yet. 

I'm going to finish porting the Spine features, and then assess what's left to be done from there. I'll make a post when that happens to keep everyone updated.

As a reminder- the Oral update is counting as one singular update. If you've been a patron at any point recently, your latest login info for the game will still be valid for the upcoming full release.

That's all for now. Huge thanks to my patrons for sticking with me throughout this long process. I'm hyped as hell to take the next steps, and hope you all find that it's been worth it when we get there. 

<3