Graphics Update (v5.0) is Coming!

Hi all! Apologies for the radio silence. I've been busy working on the graphics update and have some exciting features to show off! But first I also want to mention that I am active on the Official Discord and have been posting a lot of random pieces here and there. But now that the graphical version is almost ready for release, I'll be opening a lot more patron polls and suggestion requests.

Wardrobe Overhaul

To start things off, I want to show off the new wardrobe, which has some useful features that didn't exist previously.

First off, there are no more predefined clothing groups. Instead they are organized into categories, and then top level items, and finally into variations of the top level item. This way you can mix and match to create all sorts of effects--you can see two skirts in the image above!
For ease of use are 10 color presets you can pick colors to for easy access, seen in the bottom right. If you are running Chrome or Edge you can also use copy-paste features in the color picker, as seen in the next picture.

Speaking of the color picker--! Whereas Bondage Club's engine only allowed for recoloring with simple hex codes, this system not only allows for hex codes but also features 5 additional sliders, allowing you to alter the color balance and contrast to whatever you want. You can take a black asset and color it, or you can increase individual red, green, and blue channels beyond 100% to intensify colors that would otherwise be too muted.

Finally, as a quality of life feature you can control your character's pose and expression, both in the wardrobe and ingame, so you can have total control over your damsel's predicament.

Displacement Maps and Clothes Distortion

Now, that's fun and all but this is a game about bondage, not just dress-up. On that front, one of the exciting new engine improvements I'm really proud of is the displacement map system. The way it works is that individual restraints can distort clothing. This can stack indefinitely due to the lack of a group system, so now a set of restraints such as tape, ropes, and an armbinder can all seamlessly exist with each other. This also helps show off your new outfit designs from a different angle, allowing you to enjoy fully clothed bondage for all you clothed bondage enthusiasts.

Of course there's nothing stopping you from going with a skimpy outfit too, if you prefer.

X Ray Feature

I've also improved upon the existing X-ray view feature. Now, instead of just hiding assets, it directly applies a filter to the player outfit, allowing you to see what your character is wearing underneath her clothes. That way you can enjoy a nice outfit at the same time as a set of kinky devices.

Lighting Engine

The advantages of the new graphics engine doesn't just relate to the character art, it also lets me do some neat things on the map. The key limitation here is that the previous engine ran Pixi.js in legacy mode, which preserved the Bondage Club rendering system but also locked me out from using many of the advanced Pixi.js features. Now with full webGL rendering I can apply shaders to desaturate out-of-sight areas, represent hidden-but-heard enemies with outlines instead of a ghostly faded self, and apply smooth lighting to tiles.

Also, you can note here that the character icon is replaced with a chibi version. It may need some tweaking, but this is promising as it will let me render enemies on the map dynamically as well when the time comes to add in private jail features.

Finishing Touches

Most restraints in the game have at least a placeholder asset if not a final one. Considering a lot of restraints were simply recolored versions of BC assets I think that there may actually be more variety than before, especially amongst gags. However, there's still a few that I am waiting on the art on, and they're somewhat important, so I'd prefer to wait for those to be finished instead of releasing with invisible assets.

Also, while there's quite a lot of variety in different pieces of clothing, etc, they all come from a handful of specific sets. Ive got assets for at least 12 outfit sets made but not all of them are implemented yet as Ive still been sorting out the layering between parts and which pieces need cutouts at what places.
For the most part though, expect the graphical version to be out within the next 2 weeks unless something terrible happens. After that I'll be taking a few weeks off for personal reasons before resuming in late December.