Hello! First up: sorry for my unplanned absence! After dodging it for two years I finally caught covid, along with the rest of my household. I ended up being primary care giver for a little while while everyone (including myself) got over it. It kicked my butt for a while, but I'm at a solid 95% now and everyone else is over the hump, with no long term symptoms showing up (Yet, fingers crossed ...
2022-10-30 07:41:15 +0000 UTC View PostLab Rats 2 has made the move to being open source! If you're technically minded you can check out the public repo on gitgud.io!
You can read all of the details about what being open source means and why I'm doing it for Lab Rats 2 in this post 2022-10-08 15:24:25 +0000 UTC View Post
In an example of perfect timing Gitgud - the site we have just started using to host the Lab Rats 2 repo - had a major (and as far as I can tell, unprecedented) outage. The cause seems to have been a security update that resulted in a version mismatch of two important systems, and then the whole thing crashed hard enough it took two days to get it going again.
Gitgud is now back ...
2022-10-05 07:40:14 +0000 UTC View PostThere is no new version of LR2 this month, but there is a major development for you all to hear about: Lab Rats 2 is moving to an open sourced model! There are technical details at the end of this post for anyone interested in getting into development, but first let's cover what it actually means for this to be an open source project. I'm aiming this post at s...
2022-10-01 10:52:09 +0000 UTC View PostHere it is, a demo of the work-in-progress Live2D rendering system! I want to stress that this is very much a tech demo, and not a new version of LR2 intended to be played for any significant amount of time. It is buggy, incomplete, and unoptimized.
Do I still have your attention? Well, here are your links! (Android users
Hey, I'm finally here to give you an update on what's been going on with LR2 and my work on it's Live2D update! This progress recap is a little later than I had been planning - about three weeks, actually - because I've been slamming my head against a whole bunch of development issues without making much progress. There have been two main categories of problems, so let's go through them:
...
2022-09-14 13:22:59 +0000 UTC View PostIt's been a busy few days IRL days, which has unfortunately meant less coding time than I would have liked. I was still able to get some work done and smooth out more coding issues with the upcoming Live2D display system.
Most of my work went into solving a major performance issue linked to displaying Live2D models. In my original implementation a new model was created every time a charac...
2022-08-02 10:49:45 +0000 UTC View PostJust a quick update for today as I continue to work on the new character display code for Lab Rats 2. With the move to Ren'py 8 (and with it Python 3) complete I've gotten back to refining the code that actually displays characters throughout LR2.
I've had the basics of the display system figured out since the early Live2D demos. The hard work was introducing that system in a way that pla...
2022-07-21 10:30:28 +0000 UTC View PostThe recent release of Ren'py 8 moved from Python 2.7 (which has been depreciated since 2020!) to Python 3. I decided it was a good idea to get this shift done sooner rather than later and have spent the last couple of days sorting out minor issues. I'm happy to say the transition has been mostly painless and I'm able to get back to work on the Live2D rendering system now. If you're interested i...
2022-07-17 08:30:26 +0000 UTC View PostFirst, an update on how the LR2 display work is going! After a few days of ironing out issues (and fixing bugs that were, on review, painfully obvious) I have the basic clothing and character display code working. It properly grabs character faces, hair, and clothing, and applies only those images from the Live2D model. Next up I need to add support for all of the body parameters, which will me...
2022-07-12 09:33:21 +0000 UTC View PostI'm back from my trip! I had hoped I would have had time to check in here, but I ended up being swamped with other things to do. There's nothing to really report (I haven't been working the last week or so), but I'm feeling massively energized to get some work done now!
The current goal is to hammer out the code for handling all of the character display stuff, handle some special cases fo...
2022-07-03 07:59:17 +0000 UTC View PostIt's time for another progress update! I finally have the full Live2D model for the stand_1 position with all* of the clothing items finished! Now I can start writing the final code for LR2 to load, colour, pattern, and display this model.
I had planned (drink!) to put this model into a little demo to show it off, but I've got a long-planned trip to head out for and I've complet...
Another short update for today. Right now I'm at 103 of 121 clothing items for the "Stand_1" position added to the model. At current pace that's 2 more days of image setup, and then I can get stuck in on the Ren'py side of things.
One thing I've learned while working on this is that the tedium of trying to add dozens of clothing items sets in after 10-15 items and my motivation just drops...
2022-06-06 11:03:36 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone, I'm here to give you another progress update to keep you up to speed! This should be a short one, as all of my work has been on one task: Live2D model construction.
As of writing I have added 53 of the planned 121 clothing items to the basic stand Live2D model. I now have a good method for editing, meshing, and gluing items, and progress is speeding up as I go. A quick...
2022-06-01 12:30:50 +0000 UTC View PostWork on v0.52 and the big shift over to a Live2D centered display system continues. I had hoped to have another demo to go along with this update, but progress had been slow and I figured a dev log is better than nothing! My recent work can be divided into four categories: Experimental stuff, Ren'py stuff, Live2D stuff, and Rendering stuff.
First up: experimental stuff. I spent some time ...
2022-05-24 11:11:17 +0000 UTC View PostAbout a week ago I released a demo to patrons to show off some of the progress I had been making with my Live2D work. This is that demo, now being released to the public so that everyone who is even a little bit interested in the new tech can take a look! The demo is a short walkthrough of the new tech, using a single character and pose to show how the model can be manipulated and animated usin...
2022-05-08 10:17:39 +0000 UTC View PostWork continues on the Live2D version of Lab Rats 2. A few days ago I released a second short tech demo, and I had planned to have a very limited version of that same system integrated into LR2 in time for my normal release schedule. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be able to hit that timetabl...
2022-04-30 06:37:45 +0000 UTC View PostI've been hard at work figuring out the full pipeline to go from 3D renders -> Live2D -> Ren'py, and have another short demo to highlight some of the progress that has been made. Check it out for yourself !
A few days ago I put out a quick-and-dirty demo of a new image/rendering system I want to move over to for Lab Rats 2. If you haven't seen it yet go check out the demo, I also have a full writeup for how it works, the issues it solves, and the new things it will enable!
The move to Live2D will r...
2022-04-09 17:23:13 +0000 UTC View PostLab Rats 2 v0.51.1 is Live! Get it Here!
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.51.1-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.51.1-Mac
Android: 2022-04-08 14:01:56 +0000 UTC
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This isn't v0.51.1 (come back in a couple of days for that!), but it is a Ren'py file with some cool stuff to show off. This is a tiny tech demo to show off the key character display functionality I need for LR2 that I have gotten working with Live2D. Want to jump in? Download it now!
Lab Rats 2 v0.51.0 is Live! Get it Here!
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.51.0-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.51.0-Mac
Android: 2022-04-01 14:51:33 +0000 UTC
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Alright, let's try this again! There were a couple scattered references that were missed in the last wave of refactoring and apparently computers don't like that. v0.50.3 fixes the date crashes, city rep interaction crashes, and miscellaneous breast-related crashes.
PC: L...
2022-03-17 11:16:44 +0000 UTC View PostSorry for the longer-than-ideal wait for a bugfix on v0.50.2! I wanted to make sure I squashed all of the bugs that had been reported in addition to rolling in a large patron-provided patch. You should notice the interview UI provides more information depending on the level of recruitment knowledge policy and that the recruitment criteria function more correctly, among other changes.
... ...
2022-03-16 14:05:02 +0000 UTC View PostLab Rats 2 v0.50.1 is live! Get it here!
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.50.1-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.50.1-Mac
Android: 2022-03-08 12:26:58 +0000 UTC
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Lab Rats 2 v0.50.0 is Live! Get it here!
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.50.0-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.50.0-Mac
Android: 2022-03-01 13:53:53 +0000 UTC
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There were a few bugs in v0.49.1 that have been fixed up. The download links have all been updated to the bugfixed version v0.49.2.
If you've already downloaded v0.49.1 and don't want to redownload the image library you can apply this patch file. Unzip into your game folder so...
2022-02-09 11:14:03 +0000 UTC View PostLab Rats 2 v0.49.1 is Out! Download it Now!
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.49.2-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.49.2-Mac
Android: 2022-02-08 11:20:36 +0000 UTC
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I've fixed up most (hopefully?) of the major issues in v0.49.0. The download links have been updated to point to the new version.
If you've already downloaded v0.49.0 and don't want to redownload the entire image library you can grab a patch-file here: 2022-02-03 13:30:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Lab Rats 2 v0.49.0 is Out! Download it Now!
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.49.0a-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.49.0a-Mac
Android: 2022-02-01 12:49:43 +0000 UTC
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