Initial character assets have been produced, including base body graphics for multiple genders and sizes alongside six distinct facial variations. The technical framework has transitioned to a new layered character appearance system, replacing legacy texture-swap methods with a moddable pipeline. This implementation includes the CharacterAppearanceService for generating persistent appearance recipes and a unified CharacterVisual component for both player and AI actors. Recent updates also finalized documentation for the appearance data structure, corrected head anchor specifications for modders, and removed deprecated assets to streamline the game’s file architecture.
Raw Patch Notes
UPDATE 2026-04-16 #076 - Character body graphics - Created base character images for later character generation, male, female, and thin, regular, large. UPDATE 2026-04-17 #077 - Character face graphics - Created base character facial/skull types, with 6 variations, for later character generation. UPDATE 2026-04-18 #078 - YouTube Devlog - Created and uploaded the first Devlog for Shogun Exodus UPDATE 2026-04-19 #079 - Layered Character Appearance System - Added a new moddable character-appearance pipeline under `Data/Characters/` with merged slot definitions, part catalogs, and generation profiles for player and AI visual generation. - Added `CharacterAppearanceService` to generate persistent appearance recipes, composite per-render-group images (`body`, `head`), downscale them to world textures with Lanczos filtering, and cache the baked results. - Added `CharacterVisual.gd` and converted the player and AI actor scenes to use the same layered visual component instead of the legacy single-sprite texture-swap setup. - Removed the legacy player texture state path (`stand`, `walk`, `sit`, `sleep`, `dead`) from gameplay rendering, while leaving gameplay state behavior and the player-only `shogun` buff intact. - Updated damage/death helper scripts to work with the new multi-sprite visual setup, and normalized the base-scene player instance so player and AI now share the same visual scale path. - Updated current docs for the new appearance data, runtime flow, and modding hooks. - Files: `Data/Characters/appearance_slots.json`, `Data/Characters/appearance_parts.json`, `Data/Characters/appearance_generation.json`, `Autoload/GameDB.gd`, `Autoload/CharacterAppearanceService.gd`, `Scripts/Characters/CharacterVisual.gd`, `Scripts/Player.gd`, `Scripts/BasicWanderAI.gd`, `Scripts/DamageFlash.gd`, `Scripts/DeathHandler.gd`, `Scenes/Actors/Player.tscn`, `Scenes/Actors/AI/BasicAI.tscn`, `project.godot`, `Data/assets.json`, `current-game-setup.txt`, `mod-guide.txt`, `update-log.txt` UPDATE 2026-04-19 #080 - Character Appearance Cleanup Follow-Up - Removed leftover temporary debug image files from the appearance alignment investigation. - Corrected the modding docs to match the shipped human head anchor contract (`661px` from the right, skull `bottom-right`). - Corrected the current setup notes so death handling no longer claims a special dead texture swap. - Removed additional unused legacy character/test images, moved the intro-screen test character art into the UI folder under its new intro-specific name, and updated the start screen to use that relocated asset. - Files: `Config/_tmp_debug_character.png`, `Config/_tmp_debug_character.png.import`, `Art/Actors/*` legacy cleanup files, `Art/UI/IntroScreenSamurai.png`, `Scenes/StartScreen.tscn`, `mod-guide.txt`, `current-game-setup.txt`, `update-log.txt`
*This is an automated post, using Python and LLMs to summarize game updates. Mistakes, while rare, may happen.
Reply