Oi Oi Gamedev and or Gamer!

Hello there, long time no see eh, lol. Well, as i mentioned in my last post, way back in......... i cant remember, January? Anyways, i said i was going to focus on the 8BCC and post when i had something to be 'released'. Sadly i don't have any 'released' as such but i do have an update on the 8BCC and i really didn't want to leave it any longer to make a post here. It's been so long i didn't want you to think i have disappeared completely, because i havn't, i have been working away everyday since my last post.

OK, so here how things are at the moment:

The 8BCC has been going through some changes in its structure. The biggest change is how the sprites now come together from how i used to do them. At the start sprites where generally built with 'minor' changes with pretty much a simple base. 'Head', 'Body', 'Hair', 'Legs'. I eventually added some 'female' elements which gave me two genders for the characters. This was good progress, however i wanted to do more, and have more customisation for the characters that could be built. This lead me to breaking things up with more 'modular' elements to what i already had. This has been huge process over the last few months, not just on an 'graphic' point of view, but coding also, to make these new changes work. I am pleased to report i have managed to get a good chunk done and whilst it is not perfect, and still have a very long way to go, it is coming together.

Now the 'elements' are as follows: Head, Hair, Body, Pelvis, Legs, Feet, Hands,

There are some extra elements added to these new modular parts which allows for more 'body types', such as 'Abdomen' and 'Breast'. Breast is pretty obvious on what that changes, but the Abdomen gives larger body sizes.

Legs, Feet and Hands are now treated in a 'dexterity'. You can select Left or Right when selecting those particular elements.

There is a 'toggle' to swap between Male and Female body types, identified by the Gender Symbol. Dexterity elements are marked 'R' for Right and 'L' for Left.

You can build up your character from scratch by navigating through the 'Element' sections.

There are of coarse 'Presets' inside the 8BCC. there are only 2 at the moment, 1 male and 1 female.

More 'Presets' will be added over time, but if they arn't quite what your after you can just change things using the 'elements'.

The 'Elements Bar' is designed to show what has been selected that builds the character, and split into 3 sections. Clicking on those icons will bring up the icons for that particular element. It also brings up 'sub menus' for quicker/easier navigation.

A 'Text Bar' has also been added in. When the mouse rolls over an element it will give you a description of that element. This is not perfect as i havn't really given much thought to the description formats, but its implemented.

I have also added some 'page' navigations. (end of text bar). As there is more elements now, a 'more page' function needed to be added. This is evident for the 'Body Types', but will be needed for other elements as more things get added over time.

All characters i have created have been built using this 8BCC in some capacity or another during its lifespan. All characters will feature inside the 8BCC itself, alongside some others i may not release. The driving force behind this 8BCC was so users could modify and change what i had already done and create characters more to there design ideas.

The 8BCC is at a point where this functionality can be seen to be working. Whilst not all my characters and elements to date have been added yet, i can give an example using the 'Explorer' character.

Selecting the 'Series' icon will bring up the characters, also with the sub headers displaying the RPG series where those characters can be found.

So here he is. :) 'Explorer' for the 'Fantasy' theme.

Now we can use the 8BCC to change him a bit. Notice the elements section shows all the elements being used.

Here i have changed his hat. :)

Here i have taken his jacket away. :)

Here i changed his hat back and made him a little over weight. :)

Now, I never released a female version of the 'Explorer' character, but we can have one very easily now. We will use the female preset to do it.

There you go, there is now a female character of the 'Explorer'. i suppose this could be a 'Release'. lol

That's all the good bits, now for the bad.

Due to the changes i am making i have had to disable a few things inside the 8BCC. You can only view your character in the South facing position right now, and the animations are disabled as well. There is still no export function yet either. I have greyed out most things that don't work, but anything in blue should work as intended. Not ideal, but i wanted to be able to show you whats been going on and i needed the 8BCC to be in some form where it works reasonably well, and that progress is ongoing. You can try it out now as it is, but you don't necessarily have to download it anymore. I have received comments that the file was being flagged on Itch.io, or that peoples anti-virus was flagging the download as malicious. Unfortunately there's not really anything i can do about those external things, and i wouldn't advise anybody turn their Anti Virus off just for the download. Maybe this new download will work better, i don't know but just incase:

Whilst i have been working on this windows application build, i have been working on a HTML5 version as well. Sort of in tandom with each other. Now a HTML version comes with its own caveats, and doesn't always work like a windows version does, so occasional work arounds may be needed to get it to work. I have managed to get an HTML version to work, but whether it works well will depend on many factors, again not necessarily things i can control, but at least it takes the worry of malicious software being downloaded, and you should still be able to get a feel of the 8BCC so far.

How far i can push a HTML version is unknown at this point, but it will serve as a great Demo opportunity. :)

Just to note that this is an Alpha Demo build, so expect bugs and don't click to quickly with the mouse, give a few secs for the elements to load. I forgot to implement a user control function. but i will do it for the next update.

That's all i have for you. I hope it was worth the waiting, and just time for me to say thank you for your support. Any questions, don't hesitate, and i will get back to you as soon as possible. :)

Chaser :)