Prototype

Kemoverse game

A screenshot showing the interaction system on one of the early builds (ver 2) of the game.

This article is WIP.

The Kemoverse game is my attempt at realizing part of the Kemoverse and the pre-Tuner story as a playable game.

The basic idea is that the game will be an online social experience, much like Second Life with less customization, but also like The Sims with less God mode. The primary focus will be interactions with your co-players through emotes, mini-games and other cooperative activities. It will also focus on exploration and interaction, so the world will be detailed and have almost all of it available to walk on to. There is a visual novel side to the game as well, providing a world and characters from the Tuner story to let you dwelve in to the Kemoverse.

History

V1 (Uni of Furries)

Reference sheet 1.

Reference sheet 2.

First version of the game featured a very rough outline of the desired interface, gameplay, environment and a player model. It was my first foray in to Unity and Blender so the models were simplistic. At this stage, I had a vague concept of the scenes, items and features that should be available, but they lacked a common theme except for the fact that this all took place at a school. The school idea stems from an earlier project that I had worked on many years back -- Furry Summer School, a renpy-based visual novel with drawn images. The FSS project failed beacuse I got overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to be done.

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  The very first 3D Paru to ever exist. (April 2017)

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  Testing Unity integration

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  Rough concept design of interface and model. (October 2017)

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  Indoors

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  Outdoors

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  Bookcases and computers (November 2017)

Around this time, I realized I needed a stricter and more coherent reference sheet to base my ideas of, so I tried to specify the idea on canvas. The basis for the game was born -- it would be a social online experience, backed by a visual novel for progression. I determined for sure that it would feature the Tuner cast as the story. With the help of User:ForwardIterator, a basic cat model took shape based on three planned races: Felinae, Canidae and Doragne. However, Forward went offline for quite some time with an unfinished model, which I ended up modifying to my needs (adding eyes, texturing, etc).

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  Forward's model with my clothes.

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  Comparison with the (fucked up) original model (December 2017)

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  Test import to VRChat (January 2018)

I kept adding various items and special effects over the course of a month, eventually adding up to two populated rooms. The code starting to suffer since I had not anticipated this direction in development, so I decided to redo everything in one new project.

V2 (Kemoversity)

For this version, I re-imported everything in to a clean workspace and made sure everything looked and behaved consistent. I polished the look, adding a bit more details, and generally just streamlined everything. I also developed more on the UI, adding loading screens and other useful elements. Paru model got a few different hairstyles and further improvements on the look. The outside world was dropped for the time being. Other than that, I did not introduce many new scripts or items, so it's fairly empty.

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  Re-import of every item.

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  Looking good. (March 22)

V3 (Vara)

Current status.

In the summer, I got busy with life/school and dropped this project in favor of others. However, in December 2018, I took a look at my project once again and decided that it needed yet another reboot due to the new Prefab workflow in Unity that fundamentally changes how you create premade assets. The Editor itself had also matured, which contributed to my decision. So far, I've re-made the user interface to be sleeker and more fitting to the theme, reorganized the scripts to be more aligned to the component design model, and generally improved everything. The plan is to make a formal design reference sheet for the entire game.

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  Overview of interface.

Outline

Story Student at Vara College (pre-Tuner era) Goal is unspecified, but story is led by Tuner characters Gameplay Visual Novel style story progression No questing, cutscenes aplenty Unlocks activities and features Freeroam exploration Variety of scenes Interior: class, kitchen, etc Exterior: forest, lake, playground, etc Odd: dreamscapes, trash grounds, caves Rooms are separate map levels Give a sense of realism Heavy animations with lock Slow-paced navigation In-game phone for inter-character communication Local radius chat Draw with a stick on ground/pen on a whiteboard

Features Emotes Built-in emotes: dozing off when AFK, etc External emotes aplenty Emote builder, piece together parts of external emotes Duo emotes: hug with someone Interactable items Lots of interactable items Push, pull, carry, kick, interact with characters/items Customization Draw on player texture Face/Body adjustments Activities LARP fighting: PVP Improvised weapons in an imaginary setting Minigames Fishing Racing User Interface Red and black main theme colors Vector/2000s style: tiled backgrounds, aliased interface... Computer interface inspiration: marching ants, etc

Music Main identity, real scenarios: down to earth, indie rock-ish Xylophone: co-lead Light synths: feelings of harmony Snare drums: good backing rhythm Slightly distorted guitar: sense of relatability Secondary identity, abstract/mindful scenarios: Xylophone → Electrical interference samples/8bit Weaving, stronger synths: feelings of abstraction Semi-distorted guitar: feelings of a busy mind The more serious the situation, the stronger it gets Unreal scenarios, shock and disbelief: Xylophone → Bells: something impending Same as main identity More rhythmic (heartbeat) tempo Removed guitar: sense of confusion Letdown scenarios, sadness and regret: Xylophone → Harmonica: nostalgia Drawn out guitar riffs: sense of being drawn out Stupid and silly scenarios: Xylophone → Kon bark sample Trombone

Sounds Exaggerated noises Static noises: Cellphone interference, fridge, CRT, powerline, lamps .. Natural noises: Footsteps, gripping… Atmospheric noises: Wind, airplane, distant cars, water, trees… Complete silence at night Voiced grunts and sighs of the main characters Voiced lines for important cutscenes Network Low (50-100) player count Server-client with client authorative network model