Not so weekly update

Hi everyone, figured an update was due on what I've been and will be working on:

I. Simultaneous releases

As you likely noticed recently I've been pairing up concepts for mod releases when characters / banners happen to coincide.

This is for one main reason: it allows me to pour a significant amount of time into polishing up details for the outfits, including modelling, texturing, working on lightmaps, normal maps, high poly normals baking etc.

I'd say there's a very noticeable difference between mods released let's say a year ago from the ones released recently.

While not all games benefit just as much from it, I still try to implement this type of stuff the best way I can (: ^ In the refence above you can see how those details vary from game to game, for example WuWa handles this the best, by far. As it takes full advantage of materials, diffuse, normal maps, roughness maps etc. Closely followed by ZZZ, then Genshin and HSR coming in last.

This is very noticeable if you compare Firefly's and Phrolova's releases. Most recent HSR mods I've made are actually already using some super high-grade copium lightmaps to try to emulate normal maps, since HSR does not have native support for them.

Normal maps, for those unfamiliar with them, tell the engine how light should reflect on a surface to the engine, so they really help with giving more detail to textures and handle things like edges, indentations, patterns, etc. Without them the models tend to look a lot more "flat".

With the nerdy explanation out of the way, that's mainly the reason. Doing all of that takes quite a lot of time.

II. Releases Schedule

If you wanna have a rough idea on how I release mods for on-banner characters. If there's a new character releasing then you can expect a mod for that characters to be released in that same week. Tho it might take longer depending on the complexity of said character, looking at you WuWa and ZZZ.

This might change tho, I'll probably skip them if they are male characters, NSFW of them is not allowed on GB or if I'm simply not interested in them.

While the other rate-up character might get a mod later in the month. Asides from banner realted releases I usually release two mods per week, for example one week you'll prob see a Genshin and HSR mod, and the next week a WuWa and ZZZ mod.

III. Maintaining older mods

Just like I did for HSR after 3.2, I'll be updating and reuploading GI and ZZZ mods. It will not be just ini updates but also texture updates as I do want them to remain usable for those who still enjoy them. I have been waiting for a good reason to go through all that cancer again and with the recent change in ZZZ to SlotFix and the updates to ORFix in Genshin it'd be beneficial. It will prob take a long time to complete but it will probably improve the life span of those mods (:

On the subject of lifespan, I've marked a lot of old mods as Deprecated, that doesn't mean they are dead in the water now tho. I did it preemptively in case another modpocalypse happens and they cannot be fixed by a script. If that were to happen then yes you might consider them as completely obsolete as I already spent way too much time manually fixing them the last time.

The main reason why I marked them as deprecated in the 1st place is because they are "merged mods" (several individual mods stitiched together), and those have inis that are absolutely miserable to work with and even worse to try and fix. They are marked appropiately in a separate thread on my Discord server in the Public Archive, and it the description of the files over on GameBanana.

Completely different from XXMI style mods, which have a very streamlined ini and I don't have an issue maintaining. Note that I have still been fixing mods marked as deprecated since so far they have only needed a little bit of ini work.

IV. Looking for moderator(s)

It'll probably be just one, two tops. Note that I don't expect nor encourage moderators to try and help fixing complex/niche issues since things can get confusing quite fast. Is mostly pointing out quick fixes or pinging me for help.

If anyone that is currently / has been a patron is interested send me a private message. I'll be choosing by the end of next month most likely.

I will take into account things like the amount of time you've been supporting me and interactions in general if they exist.

V. Random stuff

In the future, I'll be completely revamping the futa tier category. Main issue right now with this is not that I don't like doing them, is the amount of work it takes even a finished mod into futa. I don't like just chopping / adding penis and balls, I've seen many examples of this before, I have to modify the model quite a bit, and by doing so it means I have to redo all the modelling and weighting on those areas, which happen to be the crotch, aka one of the most time consuming areas to weight in order to prevent clipping as much as possible.

That's why you don't see many of them at the moment :(. Ideally I'd wanna make one single mod per month that includes a lot of variety. I

Anyway, I don't know when this is gonna happen since I still have some mods awaiting release, but it should be within the coming months.

I'll probably also rework the UI menu I use, hopefully commissioning someone to develop it. To make it more minimalist and streamlined.

Lastly, I'll be trying my hand at making a very short animation in the near future. Will be posting it once it's ready.

That's all, sorry for the small wall of text (just realized it takes a lot of scrolling to go thru all of it D:) Have a nice day (:

Levi