October Devlog - Catgirls in Godot (Patreon)

Happy Halloween and welcome to another devlog, everyone! I'm deep in Catgirl Care development at the moment and I'm happy to report that said development has hit what I wrote internally as its first milestone: moving the character model from Blender to Godot!

Let's talk about this month's progress:

Remember Rain?

If you played the scrapped Catgirl Care visual novel, you may recognize Rain, the main character! I made assets for her in Catgirl Care Chibi and I felt it would be a good idea to start with her appearance for the 3D Catgirl Care as well.

Last month, I showed off the initial Catgirl Care base model. At that point, I didn't have the base model rigged for animation yet so I spent a good chunk of this month just iterating on the base rig until I made something that I'm pretty happy with.

Rockin' Resort has some pretty complicated character models with a ton of cool features but I wanted Catgirl Care to have a simple core skeleton. The majority of the armature is as simple as I could make it with only a couple extra features like jiggle bones, knee bones, and wrist twist bones.

The reason for keeping the skeleton simple is that I intend include modding support and character creation meaning that it needs to be as easy as possible to add new features to the catgirl. This is already paying off now that the model is in Godot, actually!

A Catgirl in Godot

The simple skeleton is pretty much the only thing loaded when a catgirl first instantiates into Godot. All of the meshes (her skin, hair, clothes, etc) are then loaded on top on the first frame. This approach even allows for secondary animation rigs to be attached to the main rig (like the catgirl's ears or a cloth simulation skirt).

Loading in each part separately means that I can easily replace anything in the future while also giving modders a lot of freedom. The only thing that will stay constant is the animation rig.

It's worth comparing this to my The Blind Date Game approach where hair and clothes were the only customization options. In Catgirl Care, a lot more is possible. You could add particle effects to a character. Hats and all kinds of accessories are supported. It's even possible to add other species like dog girls and fox girls!

I put a lot of work into making the catgirl model Godot-ready so she was very easy to get set up with many of the same tools and techniques from Rockin' Resort's characters. I've even brought over the Rockin' Resort character shader which I've started updating to support features like customizable color palettes, custom gradients, and even adjustable texture decals (which should allow for features like makeup, freckles, t-shirt logos, and more).

Currently I've only finished color customization but more will come soon. In the demo, I'll likely only have Rain's models done but my plan is to spend a bit of time working on the character creator so that you can tweak Rain a ton.

Catgirl Care Chibi Release

Catgirl Care Chibi releases on November 1st (the day after this is published)!

I've decided to release the game at $3.50 with a $7.50 extras set for those who want to support my work. I've discussed releasing the game for free before but due to the work involved and the recent itch adult content delisting, I feel a small upfront cost fits.

The game will be available here once it's released:https://furrgroup.itch.io/catgirl-care-chibi

What's Next?

While I really want to get to building environments for the catgirls to run around in, the next step is more tooling for catgirl customization. Development has definitely sped up now that I'm out of Blender, though! I'm hoping that I can get a ton done this upcoming month.

Catgirl Care Chibi's release is overdue so I'm excited to see how people respond to it! I'm hoping I can get some good feedback there to help me improve Catgirl Care proper.

-Thanks again for your continued support! It's a tough time right now for adult-oriented art but I've been able to stay steady and focused thanks to every one of you who supports this Patreon. I'm hoping for another productive month as we go into November. Keep an eye out for more updates and more art!