What color are my eyes?

"Eye see what you did there."

We are working on two major releases today. The first is the Founder's Sancturary where Founders, Kickstarter Backers, Alpha Testers, and Closed Beta testers will be able to go get their rewards in a single, breath-takingly beautiful shrine floating in the clouds. Also, Zhoom and the coders have a major bug fix coming for Apple iOS players which will solve some of our longest standing load/crash/freeze issues. But for this short post....

How about we talk about eyes?

This is a bit of an embarrassing story... (as all the good ones are.) Because today, I discovered that I was one of only two people working on the game that knew that our character's eyes were secretly color customizable. O_O

This is the Unity 3D IDE (Or in this cause, hehe... the EyeDE)

Wait, what!?

So a long time ago when we added facial expressions, I must have asked Xero if it was possible to break the eyes onto their own layer so we could make them color customizable. He did it! I was excited when I found out... and I only found out because I was playing around in the editor and saw a public property that exposes the eye color. In my joy I think I even made a design notes post about how it was coming. But Xero and I forgot to do one little... tiny... eeentsy... weensy... little thing.... >_> We did not tell anyone else.

In all fairness, there are a ton of major critical game components being worked on that are taking full focus and priority.

OUR SECRET EYES!

So the next question is... how do we make it possible for you (and also our NPCs) to use this feature? Great question! It is a little bit of work, but updating the database and game would go quick. But why settle for this? (My fellow team mates reading the design notes just felt that sinking feeling in their tummy... god I love my job.) What if we could customize lip color, add blush, or maybe some other face customizability? So instead of intrupting the upcoming class, stats, & combat improvements to rush this one out, I am going to meet with Oishii and Xero and see what else we can do with faces first. Over the past few weeks we have been working on new a new design for our character's heads... mostly on the female model which currently looks a bit alien-esque (The Gray, not Xenomorph). The ultimate goal is to have a unique style that feels like an inspired 3D version of DragonFable, but brought forward with our new level of skill. Like how Dage drew Senna and Kord below.

In my spare time I have been doing a lot of research on face structure. (I have also been taking a C# programming course... but that is a story for another time.) There is a lot more to an expressive face than just a forward facing character. The entire body, from posture to the subtle curves of the lips and eyes, to the angle of the head must be coordinated to truly bring your character to life. Have a shared vision with me here for a moment... you walk into Yulgar's Inn. The entire place is busy and bustling... full of life, laughter, the warmth of the fire, and the band's music inspires a random bar fight. You meet up with friends who's characters personality match their style... you sit around a table sharing a stein of (well, we are rated T now... so whatever the heck you want. I am still going for the Moglinberry smoothie though, Mmmm). I want to walk into this place and see you hanging out... with tons of weird and fun things to do. So much fun that it might escape your mind that this is also a giant sprawling world filled with interesting and characters and monsters that is growing as you sit there.