Community Update - Dressing for Success (Patreon)

Greetings everyone!

It's been a while since we've done a community update so I thought I'd have a little fun and kick off a discussion. Today's topic - Clothes!

So one thing that tends to get brought up a lot (Like, a lot a lot) is the wardrobe system. When are we getting more clothing? Are there plans to expand the functionality? Why haven't you added more choices? Why don't clothes do more things? Where's my latex catsuit?

Well, the reason for the slow expansion of the wardrobe system is actually quite simple...

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It's your fault!

Clothing Implications

Well, not "your" fault, your fault, but specifically it's the main character's fault. See, with the impending artwork implementation, we have the means and desire to reflect all outfit changes on the MC. Doing so, however, comes with its own costs.

To give you an idea of what's involved, let's take a single shirt.

A shirt is, well, just a shirt. One image. The MC, however, can have a flat chest, small breasts, medium breasts, large breasts, or massive breasts. Each of those needs a variant. That's now 5 images for a shirt. Still not too bad, except, moving into the new art system, the MC will have 5 different physical body frames: Masculine Male, Average Male, Androgynous, Average Female, and Bimbo Female. Each body frame will need the top to fit differently, and each will have a different scale for the breast size, meaning we need 5 variants of a top for each of 5 different body frames, for a total of 25 different images for a single top!

That's 25 images per top and 25 per bra, plus the 25 nude variants. Not to mention the 5 variants each for pants, underwear, socks, and shoes.

What I'm saying is, due to the 2D hand drawn art style, a lot of work needs to go into just a single piece of clothing in order to accommodate the various player states. If this particular limitation wasn't a factor, the wardrobe would have the potential to expand rapidly!

So then I got to thinking...

Yes, the paper doll system is rad, and yes, it gives players even more agency in the MC. You get to change your clothes and see the results! It's great! But then, really, outside of the wardrobe screen and the mirror... how often do you see the MC?

How much does the visual representation of your outfit really matter?

Let's Think About This

So, after sitting down and really thinking about this, I came out with a couple of potential conclusions and/or solutions, and today I wanted to share them with you and turn it into a community discussion, and take a poll for good measure!

Option 1 - Change the approach to MC artwork

The only time the MC's body type and attribute sizes "really" matter is during the intimate moments in the game. Otherwise, the MC is more or less out of sight and the player can use their imagination to fill in the blanks. That in mind, we could fairly easily pair down the MC's visual representation to an average male and female avatar. This would mean only 2 different variations for every piece of clothing. Clothing would still need art assets, but the process would be significantly easier to manage. This is the best option, I think, to give players a visual representation of their character while keeping asset development manageable. The trade-off is that you wont get to see your huge knockers unless your clothes are off.

Option 2 - Just nix clothing visuals altogether

Sort of the opposite of Option 1. We'd keep a visual representation of the MC's body, but limit each body type to a single outfit. Much less work on the development side while allowing the player to better see physical changes in their character. Flipside is that it'll be jarring to see your character wearing the same generic outfit all the time, despite having them dressed in full BDSM gear...

Option 3 - Stay the course and live life in the slow lane

Of course, we could just keep things the same as they are now and clothing will just continue to take a long time to develop. To be honest, I don't know just how important this is to everyone, which is exactly why I'm opening it up to discussion.

Disclaimer and My Thoughts

First, a disclaimer. This discussion pertains entirely to CLOTHING, and not the MC's physical attributes during intimate scenes. While nude, the MC will always be represented as the player would expect them to be. We're just talking about the wardrobe right now.

As for my thoughts on the matter, to me, Option 1 seems like the best option moving forward. You get to see your sexy outfits at the cost of maybe using a little more imagination than you're used to.

But what do you all think? What's important to you? I've attached a single-choice poll just to gather some rough data, not to actually vote on a decision, but I'd like to see what you have to say in the comments as well.

While you're at it, do try to remember to keep the conversation at a relatively tame level do to the public nature of this post. Otherwise, have fun and give feedback!