Okay, so first of all, sorry for almost a month delay for this update. Initially this update was supposed to be released 2 weeks back but unexpected delays and some real-life problems caused this delay.
However, this delay gave us more time to try our hands on some more experimental features, fix some bugs on them and bringing one of our most crucial features near release - Animation Motion (see below).
Lets get straight to what the new v6.19.2018 update includes
Settings
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Settings are finally available. Most of the settings are self-explanatory with tooltip messages to show what each setting does, but feel free to ask in community discussions if you are confused about any setting or want any particular setting added.
There are a few settings missing right now which we will add by this weekend, including:
-Last Used Mascot
-Windows Startup
-Auto Hide Mascot (when playing a steam game)
-Reset Mascot Position (specially useful when Motion Animation is released)
-Reset Mascot Form/Area (if for whatever reason you take it out of screen)
-Single Animation Mode
-Motion Animation
-Change Language (Interface)
-Individual Audio Volumes (AI Voice, Mascot Expressions and Audio Effects/others)
The Show Mascot Outline option in debug section is really good to get a visual idea of how big your mascot play area is (as it affects performance and cpu usage).
System Tray Icon
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Finally, we were able to make this work without breaking the Mascot's rendering engine. You can now Minimize the main interface like a normal window or Close/Hide it to the system tray.
Just to clear any confusion, the Exit/Quit ("X") button on the interface menu will close the interface and hide it (and the taskbar icon/button) to the System Tray. You can open the interface again by double clicking the tray icon or right clicking it and using "show interface" option.
To actually quit the Desktop Mascot Engine, you need to use the "Quit" option/button from the System tray Icon (right click on it).
New Characters
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4 new characters added again. Decided to add a new Mecha mascot character again due to popular demand.
We have also added some new Dancing animations to the human mascot characters (which use our new Animation system).
New Audio Responses
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We have added some more and new Audio Responses to the Anime Charas for more Animation States (happy, sad, tired, playful). We will be adding Voice Expressions for some more animation states in coming days.
We will also be adding some experimental Voice Expressions to the Mecha/Robot and Zombie charas.
Further, we have added some music effects for particular animations (guitar playing, gangnam style dance, chicken dance).
Localization
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Some localization improvements were done and localization was added for settings and tray icon texts.
Please report and help us improve the translations in community discussions if you find something wrong.
Upcoming stuff, what we are working on
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1. Workshop
=> Workshop has been our priority since start but we want to make sure we implement this right and not break anything. Workshop is taking time as we need to add sanity checks for anything and everything the users will submit/upload and to add proper curated content checks to transition the workshop easily to open content model.
2. Motion Animations
=> Almost done. We hope to release this feature in a day or two and this will spice up your mascots more as they will be able to animate and move around your desktop rather than animating at same spot.
Static Animations animate at a single position
Motion Animation will allow the character to move around as per its animation's motion
3. AI Assistant
=> We have slowly started working on the AI Assistant side by side. We expect to keep releasing it in small parts along with our next updates.
Expect a working Conversational AI Assistant in coming days. For starters, you will be able to converse with the AI and get a feel of how it would work and respond once we start adding services and functionalities to it.
For now, we are adding some casual conversations, question-answers, jokes, etc. that you can ask the AI.
4. Performance
=> This has been reported a few times by Intel CPU users about the Odd high cpu usage on low-end (G4560) and high-end (i7-7700) cpus alike. So far, we have tracked down the problem to be specific to direct-X related and are working on finding a fix for it (tbh, its quite related to how DX and Unity work with each other). We will be exploring openGL to see if it can improve the usage.
5. 2D Characters
=> Since many people have been asking for it, we will start working on adding our very first 2D character soon. We will also provide guides and tutorials to customize and submit your own charas.
Moving forward, we will now be focusing more on features and small utilities rather than characters.
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Last but not least, please report any bugs or problems and provide your valuable feedback and suggestions in our community discussions-
https://steamcommunity.com/app/821060/discussions/