To follow up on some of the discussions we had last month on our designs, we’d like to show off a few of the things we’re working on. Please keep in mind, as it often is: everything you’re seeing is still a work in progress, not a final product. Without further ado, here’s a sneak peek!
First let’s take a look at some old familiar faces, now updated with a fresh new look! We’ve made some slight adjustments to their features while attempting to maintain the original vision. Our goal is to preserve what we liked about their original design, while adjusting them to feel more “at home” in our world.
The character models in My Time at Evershine have seen a massive jump in detail compared to our previous titles. We want to make them feel more real, to bring you closer to the characters in cinematic cutscenes and close-up shots we can now do with a higher polygon count. We can now better capture their expressions, eyes, and their emotions with nuance and impact; we hope pushing this direction will help with immersion and feeling real connections with the characters.
This ambitious vision has not been without its setbacks. The hair demo we showed on Kickstarter worked fine at the distances we were using at the time. But as we started going for those close-up shots, the hair was creating issues, blurring into a flat mass that… let’s say: “takes you out of the moment.” During our playtests we’d be running these highly emotional moments and then… exploding crazy hair out of nowhere… everyone bursts into laughter… moment ruined.
So… we decided to rebuild it from scratch using “hair cards.”
This wasn’t something simple like just swapping textures; we had to reconstruct the entire rendering pipeline: materials, strand grouping, dynamic behavior, everything from the ground up. The first Alpha build showed off those growing pains: hair that floated and bobbed too easily, clashing with the rest of the art. Our Alpha testers spoke up, and we agreed… which led to staring at parameters day after day to try to find the right balance.
Hair turned out to be far more demanding than we’d anticipated… Tuning how strands bind together, how they flow during movement… Distribution, curl patterns, even just stylistic direction required a ton of attention, but more importantly: resources. Our costs for hair alone have ballooned to several times the original budget.
We’ve been trying our best to preserve the style showcased on Kickstarter. After all, that’s part of what made you believe in us in the first place. But we also want those details to hold up under close-range camera scrutiny. That’s the bar we’re chasing.
So… are we getting there? Tell us! We’d love to hear your thoughts!
One of the things we’ve always wanted to deliver on is giving you the ability to customize your character’s body size, and in Evershine, we’re making it happen.
The reason we hadn’t done it in the past is that in Portia and Sandrock, the base structure limits and art pipelines meant that any change to the player model would break tons of stuff: cutscenes, how clothes fit, animations, interactions with just about anything… The amount of work required to make all those adjustments by hand would have been massive.
But now, in Evershine, thanks to the incredible support from our Kickstarter backers, we’ve rebuilt our entire character framework from scratch; what was once impossible is now possible.
That being said, there are still some limitations as to what we’re able to do…
Trying to strike a balance between resource efficiency and freedom, we’ve implemented a skeleton binding system that currently allows for a body difference of about 15% up or down from the default body height + size.
The torso and limbs adjust very naturally, but smaller details like hands and feet don’t scale. This means if you build a particularly tall or muscular Governor, for example, the hands and feet might be slightly smaller comparatively.
Clipping is another huge issue that body adjustment creates. Riding mounts, hugging your spouse, these types of instances take time to correct. We’re still fixing things like… an extremely buff Governor’s Pen-like pectorals clipping through an NPC when they lean in for a kiss. Fixing this kind of stuff and optimizing the immersiveness you care about is a top priority for us moving forward.
Our character customization won’t hit all the marks you might find in AAA systems, but we’re doing our very best to implement these features and chasing after the highest standard possible.
In any case, what kind of Governor are you planning to create? We’d love to hear about it in the comments.
The frontier feels different depending on what kind of sky you’re looking up at. With dynamic weather, the mood in the settlement will shift from dark, gloomy overcast to blue skies that glimmer in the reflections of the rushing rivers.
Everything you see here comes straight from our current dev build, as we slowly implement all the little details that make a place feel truly lived in. Our goal is to move way beyond just a pretty picture: we want you to build a settlement that feels warm, cozy, and absolutely worth fighting for. We want Evershine to be your next favorite My Time home.
That’s all for now. Catch you in the next one!