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Weekly Update - Character Creator, Nudity?

2 years ago1,358 words

I've spent this week working on this side project I still haven't decided on a title for! The player can create their own character now. Also, what counts as inappropriate nudity??

I've been alternating between the titles Belief Battles and Frayth, both of which have their pros and cons. Maybe some other thing that feels right will come to me eventually.

I want this to be the sort of game you can quickly jump into, but one of my goals for this project was that the player can make their own character, so the game has to start with a way to do that. While character creators are common in games, I don't think I've actually made one since my pre-MARDEK Flash games (which usually had one, with MARDEK being an exception)? Unless there's something I'm forgetting!

Anyway, the game begins in some cloudy void with a few lines of text like this that establish the setting:



You then get to create your character, who is presented as an avatar of sorts for a god, which that god is literally creating here:



You can select from some body parts (only hair and nose currently) from the left, or a face (which also determines colour scheme) from the right. I've made a few faces myself to be selectable as premade options here, and will add more as time goes on since I enjoy it and it doesn't take long.





If - and only if - you want to, you can also customise the face you've chosen, maybe by starting with a plain, premade base -



- which you tweak slightly into something mostly similar but different enough to feel like it's your own:



Even if you don't want to alter any pixels, each character uses a palette of just 8 colours, and when you change these, any pixels already drawn with them change colour too. So if you like a premade face but want it in a different skin colour, that's easily done.

Of course, you can also just clear the canvas and make a charming creation entirely of your own design:




Following this, there's also a brief personality quiz of sorts with 12 agree/disagree statements that determine your runes:



(Interestingly, some of my old games also included these tests. Beast Signer definitely did because I replayed it recently, but I think at least one other also did. I do like personality psychology, after all.)

You can also decide on a name for your religion etc here:



I composed some music for this section too, which I quite like. That took a day or so.





Do these clothes-less characters register as uncomfortably naked? I mean they technically are naked, but in a Barbie doll kind of way. Would people be weirded out by that?

I had these concerns back when I made Memody: Sindrel Song, and ∞ wrote a blog post back then going into it in detail ∞.

My solution that time was to give Memody a loincloth, but I never really liked that since I felt it only drew attention to the 'nudity'. And Memody is a sindrel, whereas these are meant to be humans, so it's not entirely the same thing.

I wondered whether to do something like this here:



Which is reminiscent of how Adam & Eve's nudity is often depicted - which fits with the whole religion theme - but I personally feel that also draws attention to it and looks 'worse'. Or maybe it's because the leaves are too small?

Originally I intended for characters to be wearing underwear underneath their clothing, but underwear is currently being used as an equippable slot and as such can be changed. One option is to prevent equipping nothing in that slot, but still allow changing it, but... ehh.

The main reason I'm even thinking about this at all is because I know I need to post about this on Reddit, since the whole point of working on this side project instead of Atonal Dreams for a while is to practise doing the promotion stuff that I've been avoiding for years. I feel like this pixel face editor might have the potential to at least be mildly interesting, but if the models in any images or videos I share of it are 'naked', would that just lead to puerile comments about that? (Or if it did, would that even be a bad thing if it drove engagement? Hmm...)

I've seen stuff on Reddit about some recently-made AAA games which have full nudity in their character creators - provoking jokes about customising penis size and all that - but I think they're typically very adult-oriented games anyway, whereas this one's aesthetics suggest something more cartoonish.

I've seen some clips of something that's apparently called ∞ One Hour One Life ∞, which I think is a survival game set in primitive times with stick figure characters who can be fully naked, with bare breasts and genitals and everything. I saw a couple of youtubers playing it with full nudity that they never even commented about, which I found surprising (also surprising is that it looks to have been made by a solo dev?). So maybe it's not a big deal? Or would the more abstract visual style be what allowed that to get away with it?

Still, I'm worried about doing something socially inappropriate and suffering negative consequences anyway since I have social anxiety, so while I'm not stressing about any of this that much, the concern is at least there enough to write about it here.



The game is at a point where I could and probably should get some player feedback, but would I need to decide on a title before uploading even a test version of it to Steam...?

I assumed so, but some quick googling just now suggests I might be able to change it even after uploading... maybe. It's unclear. Most of the results are for Steam players, not devs.

I should really have posted about this game on Reddit already, I know, but
I'm such a recluse these days, and every attempt I make to try and get back out there just fizzles out quickly and I fall back into my cocoon. I rarely reply to emails or messages; the only conversations I have are when my one friend calls me so I can't just put it off.

And when I do reply to anything, maybe I just come across as brusque or annoyed when I should be more diplomatic and encouraging because I have so little mental energy for any kind of social engagement, and because past stuff with Fig Hunter trolls just mean I'm constantly on edge, expecting people to be privately mocking me or trying to put me down in some way.

So even if I were to post somewhere more publicly than this blog, would I just come across as the repulsive monster my demons try to convince me I am? Or would I just get completely ignored and entirely deflated?

I was hoping to use counselling to push through these hang-ups since I've obviously had little luck doing it alone, but I'm still waiting to hear back from them. At this rate, it might be months before I can see anyone.

Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and devote some time to just trying to break through these mental barriers? But didn't I decide to do that a while back, and never did??

No wonder being trapped or imprisoned is a recurring theme in my creative work!