Hello my MODDERS, MODIFIERS and MODULATORS!!

This is a quick status update just to give an overview of how the update is going and to talk about some new optimizations that will be added in the next update!

How's it going

Last week was my birthday, so as mentioned in the previous post, I took a few days off as a small vacation and am now back!!

Right now, I've finished the new Mia MODIFICATION sprites and am currently working on the first sexy artwork.I'm currently hoping to have the artwork for both scenes mostly finished by the end of next week!!

New Godot Version

Modification App was running Godot 4.6, and I've upgraded it to Godot 4.7.

Upgrading an engine version isn't like updating a game - especially one with custom code like mine.And generally, game developers recommend never changing the game engine version once you start a project, to avoid compatibility issues.

However, while I don't care about most changes in Godot 4.7, they sneaked in an absolute game-changer.Godot now allows you to change the size and position of UI elements without messing with their layout - something Unity always had, and I missed a LOT, since I really liked using that to make buttons and GUI feel bouncy.

So I took the extra effort to upgrade the engine and all my custom code so I could make buttons do this!!Completely worth it.

Upgrade to the Quality textures

Last update, I added the Quality toggle where low-end devices could lower the texture resolution to be able to play the game better.

This setting was only available on the Main Menu settings because Godot doesn't like you trying to change the textures once it has already loaded them.

And while in the last update I wasn't able to change it (at least not well enough to include it in the update), I'm now able to clear the old VRAM textures whenever I want.Which for now just means that the quality setting is now available in the normal game settings too!!Additional notes for the Web release: that one still requires a page refresh since it isn't possible to clear vram from inside a browser, so I'll have a warning to save before trying to change the quality on those.

Trimming the (texture) Fat

This is a feature I've been trying to get working for a long, LONG time.And I believe I was finally able to do it.

This is an optimization that should improve the game texture loading and frame rate by 50-75% for everyone. Not just for different quality settings!!

To give a quick explanation, without going too much into boring code stuff - I'll just use Mia's body sprite as an example.

Mia across the different MODIFICATIONS requires her to have different sizes, both width and height.In order for everything to stay aligned, I use big textures so everything is the same size and I can easily swap them.This works well - with the only downside being that most images have a lot of empty space.

Now, you could trim them to be as small as possible, but then they would all be different sizes, and it would require manually setting an origin point for every single sprite in the game so they stay aligned.And that's a lot of boring work.

Instead, I've always wanted to be able to trim the textures as small as possible, BUT have the game act as if they were the fully sized texture.That would make adding new sprites as easy as right now, while making them much smaller and faster to load.

This has been a feature I've wanted to get working for a long time, and I've tried many times to get it working, and I believe it's finally done!!

After doing the change, I went back to the Goth sexy scene I used as a benchmark in the previous update, testing it at full resolution and...Honestly, even I'm impressed how much the memory usage came down.

I still need to test this further and check if nothing breaks on different platforms, but right now it seems like a big success!!

That's all I have to share for now!!

Hopefully by the end of the week/early next one I'll have the first sexy scene artwork finished and can share it with the MODIFIERS and MODULATORS!

And in the meantime, I'll go back to the dungeon and buy some "you need to be this tall to ride" signs and place them around just to taunt Mia.

Ⓣ