Benie's Games Blog

While a group of people are trying to prove to the public that the government has been lying to us for decades (of keeping aliens and UFO’s in Area 51), a much more important event is brewing from this hot late September afternoon… the official release date of Cube World has been announced; and it’s coming VERY soon!
The official release date of Cube World, is set for September 30th, 2019. 10 DAYS!! And what’s even better than that, it’s coming on Steam!
So to Epic Store, I give you a..

You may’ve taken Borderlands 3 from us (for the time being), but we got Cube World. 🖕

To celebrate it coming in 10 days from now, Wollay also put out the release trailer for the game. And damn do I feel fortunate to live this long, to see this day happen.
It’s… extremely rare at this day and age with so much corporate greed of the AAA gaming industry, to see an indie dev care so much about their game, and wanting it to be the best as humanly possible for their fanbase.
This feels like a rebirth of indie gaming; to say, NO to unfinished content in favor of micro-transactions and loot boxes, and saying.. YES to making a game that gamers deserve.

Wollay, you are my hero. 😄 If only the AAA gaming industry was like you, and we can actually.. TRUST developers in keeping their promises. For you, have kept yours.
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And what’s even more awesome, since I bought the game back when it was in its Alpha stage, I now have access to a Cube World Closed Beta (happening on the 23rd in Steam. I got a key to participate). This means I’ll be able to play the game in three days (this coming Monday), instead of 10.
And I’ll be taking pictures– lots of pictures. SO HYPED!! 😎

Well, not “better” as in improving it (as I don’t think it can be), but being able to do…

THIS!! 😆
Yeah, I finally made it where the entire group can dance now! And it was easy to pull off! Damn surprised Unity allowed it!
So basically what I did is to take a GameObject, and then nest it with four
GameObjects (put them inside this one). The reason is you can only have one Animator per GameObject. I also made an invisible cube (that sits between the dancers), to act as the source of the music. And this worked just as planned (if not better, for Unity allowing it).
Still considering on making a stage for the dancers. As for a raised dance stage (where they’ll spawn ontop of it), I think it’s possible. Not sure if you absolutely have to have the dancers

And as special treat (for myself), I did this.

😊 So Cola was the hardest to pose. Well, not hard as in difficulty, but trying to find the ears (the 3.5 Best Boi ears that he added, instead of the default Best Boi 2.0 ears).
Now what *was* slightly difficult, was the tongue. See, I managed to grab the settings from his ear droop animation (to set the ears and the eyes). But the tongue, I couldn’t find the root of the animation (and had to manually set it).
And my goodness, his ‘extendotongue’ (a tongue that that can extend 4x its length) is quite interesting. Who knew furries had tongues longer than a giraffe’s. lol
Wanted to do something with the tail, but I couldn’t find its bones. Did find them later though, but I feel the tail is fine.

Right now (by request of a few people), I’m doing a clean rebuild of the system by putting BTD 4.0 in place of my previous model. But that’s not the only reason, as there’s a few of them whose songs I want to change.
Since I know no way to modify an existing VRC Inventory system, rebuilding it is the only option.

Yes folks, it’s finally happening.. a game that was very much assumed it had died out almost a decade ago (and the dev ran off with our money), actually has a release date now.
And recently, the reason why it took so long until it was slated to be released, was made on the dev’s official blog.
He has stated (that I seem to have forgotten), shortly after the Alpha release of the
game, the website got DDoS’d. And instead of making up some BS excuse of why it happened.. it brought him to tears of how much effort he had put into the game, only for his work to be treated like this. It caused him to have anxiety and depression, such as feeling like an update “wasn’t good enough” for his most loyal of fans, and apologizes for the wait.
The old saying of “it’s worth the wait” comes to mind, for he calls this: ‘Cube World
2.0’, and plans to do more updates in the near future.
I’m very glad Wollay is still working on the game, and glad that he wants it to be absolutely perfect for his fans.

Been busy somewhat half the day, working on dynamic bones and animations for the new BTD 4.0 model. Though it’s still not fully completed, that’s no excuse not to set up dynamic bones and animations for it.
Managed to get the tail animated (using BTD 3.0.1’s dynamic bone settings, which are based on Cola’s. The wings, I managed to do a flap.. since this is all I can work with. Apparently, wings (just like a human arm) have three bones– not two. So I cannot properly fold them up to do a ‘wing extend’ animation. But for him to add a 3rd bone, he would have to re-rig the wings (with weight painting), and I don’t want him to go through that hell again.
I also wanted to have this wing flap animation, as an idle animation. Don’t know how to.
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Getting an ‘Eye Closed’ animation to work, Did it like I did before with BTD 3.0.1. The only thing is there’s no ‘blink’ BlendShape, only vrc.blink_left and vrc.blink_right to work with. But an odd thing happens when leaving Preview.. the eyes stay closed (both at 100 when looking at the Body). But I didn’t think much about it.
Getting help from Wolves (him speed-teaching me how to edit the texture sheet in Blender to do a blush (due to him about ready to go to bed), that sadly I had forgotten most of it since then), I got that set up as I was shown by Kat.
Creating a new Animation Override Controller, I put the two animations in and expected everything to work…
…It isn’t. The fuck. Checked the animations, attempting to assure myself I didn’t do anything wrong. From what I saw, I got them set up correctly. So, what the HELL?! It isn’t me, so.. it’s got to be something with the new model. Problem is, Wolves never messed with animations in Unity. So, I’m kind of fucked here.
Thought it might be the eye close thing could be causing all other animations to cancel themselves out, so I took it out of the Blush one.. IT’S not even firing on command! Neither does adding a random dance!
All I can think is it has to be on Wolves’ end; some kind of flag he didn’t set (or is setting by accident), that are keeping hand gesture-based animations from firing on command. But he has absolutely no idea why they aren’t working.

EDIT: ..I was right, it was on Wolves’ end! But, as expected, never ever intentional. It was the BlendShapes, that he accidentally had some that weren’t “zeroed out”. He also said something about how BlendShapes are stacked, similar to modding a game (like
Skyrim); high priority ones (Visemes) are at the top, while lower priority ones (visual ShapeKeys) are at the bottom.
Makes sense to me. …But, when trying to explain to him how vrc.blink_left and vrc.blink_right are getting stuck at 100 when doing the animation, this doesn’t even feel like a solemn victory…. for the price to get them working, far exceeded any form of happiness (when I feel like an asshole to him for not just accepting the model as-is).
But anyway, here are the (now working) custom animations;


Half of me is happy that they finally work, but the other half feels “this is saying that you don’t care of the hell he went through of dealing with yourself and making this model for you”. That other half, is not true.. I do care.
And then it tells me; “you have a funny way of showing it then. Can’t just be happy and live with the model as-is!! If you had paid for the model, and it didn’t work for your expectations.. THEN you have the right to bitch!! But no, you got it for free.. and this is the way you ‘thank’ him for doing all of this work for you.
You, are a pathetic, piece of shit. Don’t be surprised if he never talks to you again.”
And this is what has made me extremely depressed, because I have nothing to counter it.

EDIT: It’s OK now, Wolves has explained that yes, it is worth money (another way of saying “this is the last time I do a free model”), but he has noticed the effort I have put in to make the Dutchie look like.. well, “me” (as a dragon); having to ask a few people to make attachments for me, and having Erodac to remove the Dutchie’s horns, wings, and ears to make it more like an actual fire-breathing Dragon than a cuddly Dutchie. Not to mention also getting him to have a scale attachment for the Best Boi 1.0/2.0 tail (and eventually an actual tail replacement for the Dutchie model).
Honestly, I wouldn’t really call all of that, “effort”. Just, having very nice, awesome friends who were willing to lend me a hand.
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Anyway, Wolves went on with how he sees I “really want to make models”, and I do. I actually want to learn Blender and STOP depending on others. And because of this, he feels I genuinely appreciate the effort (which I do.. this is one of the best things someone’s ever done for me). Not just making attachments, but props if I ever decide to get back into world building. Plus, I can use my Blender knowledge and reinstall ProBuilder.. to build houses or whatever I need (or even a world), within Unity.
So, it’s all cool now. He also sent me the .blend file, making me the owner of it.

Still wanna learn Blender (such as adding a 3rd bone and re-rigging the wings, so I can fold them properly), but he says it’s “a tad advanced”. Now I’ve added a bone in the
past, but weight painting.. can agree.
Problem is (and I just tested this), even if he was to do that, the dynamic bone script will not allow you to use a non-root bone (a root bone is ‘Bone1’). Trying to set “Bone3” or “Bone6” of a root bone, it will not allow …which is UTTERLY STUPID!!! WHY IS THIS A THING?! WHAT HAPPENED TO “CREATIVE FREEDOM”, VRChat?!
*grumble* I guess I should be happy I can even have a dynamic bone when the same bone is being animated. But this is KILLING a perfect, natural wing flap!!

The only thing a 3rd bone would do for me, is folding the wings more naturally. But it wouldn’t help with this.

A question I’ve been asked about for several months now, but kept avoiding answering it. There was even a few.. from last year’s Friend-A-Long, telling me I missed the one that happened a month or two ago, and saying they “missed me”.
Well, it’s to be assumed, my deed is probably no more (with most of my stuff taken by looters), Uma has probably ran away or been taken by someone, my bison (in Xanadu) probably have starved to death, and I assume my boats (along with Angry’s) have decayed.. but I, well, I just don’t have interest paying for a game that has lost mine.
And funny, it ended the same way; getting bored/fed up with the grind after an Impalong. It was also getting bored with having to make more mats for a redesign I may not even care for.
Just so tired of having to log in, just to throw more money in the token. Tired of the
fact, grinding to watch numbers slowly go up to 99.99, is the core of Wurm’s gameplay. And it’s gotten to the point where exploration isn’t even fun anymore, worried about the fucking damage to my weapons and armor!!
This is not ‘fun’ to me. It takes an insane, almost psychotic mindset to see the ‘fun’ in this. I don’t fucking CARE if they “watch a movie while grinding”! I can’t do it. I have tried that.
It’s also the threat of dying to trolls, because I don’t have enough fucking Body Control to counter them! And THAT.. is a pain in the ASS to grind all by itself!!

Honestly, you saw my posts. You saw I was quickly losing interest. You folks knew eventually it would happen. Yes I did care about my stuff being stolen, but selling it would be more complicating.
Who knows, I might come back in another 5 or so years, like before. But the only reason I did was the memories I had with Angry. This time.. this time I don’t think it’ll be the case. I’ll probably reflect on this post by then (if I’m even still alive, as that’s always questionable with my health) and see what a mistake it’ll be to come back.

So basically, you know that thing I was going to do almost a month ago.. and it ended with this being an issue?

Well, I’ve thrown that idea in the trash can, and set it on fire. ..For I have a brand new
idea (that actually works)! And best of all, no posing required. It’s from that other thing I said at the bottom of my latest post in the General blog– how to have a dancing avatar infront of me ..I made it happen.
Now the process is fairly easy to do (if you know beyond the basics of animation), but the only hard part (for me) was thinking of a folder system for myself… with two animator override controllers, two animations, and one animator controller, all going into doing just one song and dance. It’s crazy.

I would explain how I did it, but it may confuse ones that don’t know VRChat’s animation system works. I’m no expert, though; but I feel I know the basics and some of the higher level things of animation. Yet I still don’t know how to make my own idle (or
pose) animation (without modifying someone else’s animation keyframes), as that to me
is ‘expert level’ stuff. And who knows what’s even beyond that level.
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But I digress. Anyway, the stuff I mentioned (the animator controllers and whatnot), are all for toggling the dancing avatar, the song, and the dancing animation at the same
time, via a GameObject embedded inside one of the clones of my avatars (specifically set up for the dancing avatar).
The GameObject is what contains the three things required for the dance. It also serves as an anchor for the dancing avatar to always appear infront of me (or wherever it’s placed).
This is also how you can have multiple avatars hanging around you (like Kovo has for
his ‘bitches’. Heh).
It’s also possible to do more than one dance, you just need to make multiple of all the above. But as of now, I do not know how to anchor the GameObject to a RigidBody (so the dancing avatar will dance in place while you can walk around). I know it’s doable, I just need to be taught how. And when I do.. wooo the possibilities are endless. I can have them doing a suggestive pose, and they’ll be stationary (yet I’ll be able to walk around). It’ll be even more awesome when I get back in VR..
Heh. Heh. Heh. 😆 …I am a horrible person, yes I am. 🙃

It’s also not possible to set it to one of the 8 ‘EMOTE1/EMOTE8’ settings, as one.. it has me in the ground (in the animation pose), and two.. it cuts off too quickly. They have to be hand gestures to work properly.

So here’s some test pictures of when I was setting up the dances. Warning, they
are… suggestive in nature;



“Oh god.. Cola’s gonna kill me for this! 🤣“ -My mind at the time
But, Cola actually liked it! He was blown away and left speechless, but he liked it! He also told me he’s going to send me the full 4.5 updated version of his model (to see what it can do).
He loves me for doing this, which is awesome. I feel so, so much better now (and no longer have doubts).

…This one, isn’t suggestive in nature. As this one was funny and a bit of a pain.

The eyes weren’t attached to the head (for some unknown reason). Obviously something went wrong when I was moving the model over. But by doing so, it disabled the eye blinking. Meh, at least the eyes are properly parented to the avatar now.
And when Blue saw it (and the songs I picked for him), he was very, very happy. Also, of Blue sliding to the right, is part of the song. So I had to move the GameObject to the left where he would slide and start dancing infront of me.

EDIT: I now can have the dancing avatar, dance in place where I can walk around! I was taught how to do this from Ren Winter, and old buddy of mine from the Best Boi community era. And its process.. it is a headache (especially when songs you’ve
added, don’t work, and you have to go through hell to bugfix them). 😒 But I’d rather take this than debug weight painting.
This new system uses VRChat’s emotes (instead of the hand gestures), which makes it possible to do when I get back into VR. It also makes it possible to add up to 7 songs per dancing avatar (instead of 3)!
I won’t describe the process, as it’s long. But one of the three components needed for
this (called ‘VRC Inventory’), you must run this for every. song (if you add a new song to the list), or the ‘Disable ALL’ toggle does not work. That is.. SUCH a headache!!
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For example, BlueBio’s new dances, all worked fine (even the Disable All toggle).
Cola’s, the dances worked fine but the toggle wasn’t working. And Red Fox (that took THREE. FUCKING. HOURS to debug), all of his new songs weren’t firing on command.
I had the system completely set up right, but for some reason the avatar would not spawn in!
I completely redid the system.. STILL NOTHING. And I was doing this at 2 in the morning. My father actually came to my room, catching me screaming over the frustration I was having (and that’s always demoralizing).

Now being forced to stay calm (while still greatly annoyed this damn thing isn’t
working), I continued redoing the system from scratch. Did finally fix the issue with Cola’s dances not being canceled.
Soon, I finally fixed it. I was.. this close to saying “if this doesn’t work, I’m going to bed before I really lose it!” And, I saw him spawn in. Again I’m trying not to scream (for joy this time) that perseverance paid off!
I then decided to have a ‘little fun’ with this, and discovered I can have him dancing on a bed in Moody.

Okay.. this has potential. 😁 Free lap dance, anyone? 😋 I should set it where the dancing avatar spawns really close infront of me. This way I can choose where it’ll dance (since I can walk around it now).
Also tomorrow, I’m going to be slightly redoing the audio source for every dance (to hopefully make it louder for everyone around me). I really, really hate the new sound system. Don’t understand what was wrong with the old one.

Oh.. oh god. What I have I done?! They’re.. multiplying!!


..Ok. Blue seems norma– OHH GOD!!

EDIT2: Now using cola’s new ‘Jagar 4.5’ model (with full permission) for his dances. But it came at a cost that nearly jeopardized my work. I don’t know what the fuck happened, but it did something to both Red Fox and cola’s old avatar. The armature was.. fucked. That’s all I can say. That and somehow, cola’s avatar got mixed in. It looked like a painful (but invisible as the mesh was broken) pretzel.
It also messed with my (and BlueBio’s) eyes; resetting the texture to default (but thankfully not the settings). …And removed the material on my avatar’s scales.
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Not knowing what the fuck I did that got me to this point, I was forced to write
down every. single. transform setting of Red Fox’s whiskers (of his scene file), then flip projects and hand copy/paste the settings to the pose scene. This took I would
assume, 30-45 minutes. Ugh. But incase this issue happens again, I’m keeping the
settings.
After re-adding the dynamic bones and hand colliders, I felt I was also going to be forced to redo the system because of this…
I was pleasantly (and thankfully) wrong (the system gladly accepted it, as every single dance worked)! Did the same thing for cola (and his new avatar), and it worked too!!

Cola’s model (compared to what I had to work with before).. looks SOOO much better! Just had to fix one of the dancers facing the wrong way.
Sent the above image to cola, and the first thing he said was “i want to see that”. Ohh, you
will. 🙂 Fixed the problem and joined cola, where I spawned the clones infront of him. He was absolutely blown away, saying it made his day. But I told him “these clones will never replace you, cola. You will always be the one and only.” I wanted to say “you’ll always be my one and only”, but it never came to mind.

Anyway, all I need to do now is continue redoing the system for Blue’s dances (as I was originally doing before receiving the new model from cola).

EDIT3: That’s now done. And, I got some news.. I’ve found the culprit to the audio being too quiet!
Doing this…

…allows the 3D Sound Settings (in the Audio Source) to actually work! Was testing this out with cola’s dances, not expecting it to work.. not only did I have to turn down the volume in my headphones, the distance it can be heard was actually using my settings!!
Can’t believe that little thing being the reason why it was so freakin’ quiet for me and my friends, was hiding from me for hours of thinking it was something else.
Wow. But yay! This is how you get around that shitty audio update they did!