I'm just about wrapped up with all the technical work required for the shader update so I figured I'd share how things are going. Suffice it to say that this has been a time-consuming process but I am confident that it will all be worth it in the end. I had started writing this devlog a few days ago with the intention of sharing the few remaining glitches I needed to fix, but I'm happy to report that they are now all solved and this shader update is nearly ready for public release.

Below is a side-by-side of the new shader (left) versus the old shader(right). You can see from this clip and the screenshots that follow that this new shader has a more of an "anime" feel to it. The differences may be subtle when it comes to visuals, but they are incredibly significant when it comes to the technical side of things. If you've run the game in its current version, you've likely noticed the blobby shadows and strange lighting that is so prevalent with the old shader. The video below has just a hint of real-time shadows applied to the skin of the waifu as she dances; even though I will likely disable these shadows from rendering on her skin in the final version of this scene, I left them in for this clip to give you an idea of how crisp and clean the new shader handles shadows. Gone are the frustrating requirements of doubling up on lights and using a hacked method for spotlights; Playlist mode now uses less than half the number of lights it was using before and (at least in my opinion) looks much cleaner all around. On top of that it is much, much more performant, and I am seeing a fairly significant reduction in processing requirements all around, which holds doubly true for the Playlist mode scene.

The advantages that the new shader offers are hardly limited to lighting. Below you can see just some of the new features I've added to waifu customization, including color wheels with accompanying saturation and vibrance sliders for choosing any skin or hair color you want. I've separated facial details and makeup options as well, so you can now keep freckles on the waifu while also adding a makeup option on top of it. On the technical side of things, another huge plus is that the waifu's body and face is now rendered in a single draw call, whereas the old shader required 6 total. Gloves, stockings, and even the new tan lines concept, are all rendered in a single pass, and the same extends to the rendering of everything that makes up each waifu, including the new highlights option for hair. Multiply this by 6 or 8 waifus in a given scene and it's easy to see the impact that this will have on overall performance when it comes to Sandbox and Story modes.

This all comes together to not only provide a massive visual improvement that I am incredibly happy with but also means the game will be more performant and/or able to run on less impressive hardware. The anime style that I've always wanted to implement is nearing completion, and I'm getting pretty psyched to wrap things up and share it via the next update.

I plan to spend my weekend going through and tweaking lighting, post-processing, etc. Once that is done, I'll push the first draft update for the new shader so that you can all play around with the new options and see first-hand how everything turned out. I'll then be making more minor tweaks here and there to improve visual fidelity while also ensuring that this all translates well to Sandbox mode. I'll publish another update shortly thereafter, which leaves me with a fairly short list of to-do items for getting Sandbox mode prepped for its debut. During all of that, I'll need to go through and update pretty much everything; every screenshot I've taken for background images, every image and video used on the store page... the list goes on and on. It's going to be a lot of work, but given all the new options that this update has provided, coupled with all the new stuff I now have the technical freedom to do, the game is going to be so much better for it in the long run. Thank you all so much for your support and patience, I am confident that you'll agree it was worth the wait.