Can someone please tell me how do I find the new DLC character? Thanks :).
Dude, why didn't you check the OP ? This is the first thing you should read when getting information about a release.
The DLC simply is
in the very first post of this very same thread. Grab a torrent for the Expansion Pack, as well as the latest update (or the MF/EMF Patch) and you're set.
Question and sorry if this was answer before but do I need still need the '12/26 : Additionnal Data + Studio Ver.6 (hotfix)' on the first post or just the MF patch? And in the event that there is a new update or DLC where do I download them?
The MF and EMF Patches already include the latest update. If you use the patch, you don't need to download nor install any update. You can check
the first post of the MF + EMF Patch thread to see a list of all the included content.
As I just mentionned to 1Rai, if you're looking for the first Expansion Pack / DLC (the "Active / Lively" additionnal personality), it's
in the very first post of this very same thread.
Now if you're looking for the second DLC, it barely was announced, and we don't even know the release date yet. I talk about its content later on this post, so keep reading if you want some insight. Else, come back and check this thread next Friday around 10AM JST (Japan Time is UTC+0900) : as soon as new information emerges, they'll be posted and discussed here.
In the back of the scene on the left side the girl's face is white framed. So you can see her face but it is surrounded by some cloth, still her hair is above this cloth. Or is she wearing a
balaclava and a wig?
Judging from her gauntlets, that girl is wearing some damn weird sexy medieval knight outfit, so my bet would also be on some head guard. Something akin to boxing headgear, but made out of metal (hence the shine).
I honestly doubt that this is a real-world item... More probably, this is what happens when heroic-fantasy meets uninspired 3D modelers : they invent things like topless metal balaclava.
About the new DLC: [Keep Calm and Remain Cautiously Optimistic]
All in all, the good news to me is not about the content that they'll include, but the fact that they're still announcing content for a game that is now 5 months old : habitually, they stop supporting games three months after its release. It's also really rare for Illusion to release two expansion packs in a row : so far, only games like AG3 and AA2 received such treatment. In the meantime we had 6 updates with a Studio app, new maps (the classroom), new clothing sets and accessories (nun, miko, goth-loli, Santa...) and there probably going to be a couple more coming with the next DLC. It's great to see them take their time and actually capitalise on their success instead of always rushing things.
Now, as Aastaroth underlined a few pages ago, we shouldn't expect anything groundbreaking coming out of the this ExPack. There's nothing to be hyped about, but what they've preannounced is still very welcome :
- The new hairstyles, clothes and accessories are probably going to be updated models taken from old games, with a bit of recolouring and retexturing. Even if there's already plenty of mods available to further customise our girls, having some additional variety is nice (especially for hair).
- The "chara-synthesis" or "chara-composition" feature may be a new tool to save and reuse presets for face, skin or body customisations : take the body proportions from this girl, the face from that one, the breast from this other one and boom, composite character. As far as I'm concerned, this would be really useful : the less sliders I have to tweak, the happier I am.
And if this feature turns out to be even better than this and allows for fine customisation of the models (like creating new face types), or comes with a overhauled UI, I would be even happier. Let's keep an eye on this and our expectations low as long as we don't have further information.
- The new personalities are new personalities : the more, the merrier. I hope they'll introduce some more mature types because cheeky bitches with high-pitched voices can be tiresome in the long run.
- The new "multiple" and "extreme maniac" positions are surely retargeted animations coming straight out of the Play Club Append Disk. And, ho man, would I love that. But what I'm curious about is their impact on the girls feelings : I hope it will work nicely with their personalities and traits (eg. having a tsundere be the "auxillary" girl in a threesome would make her mad, using "extreme" positions would radically influence the session outcome, etc).
- The new Studio... is some kind of a hit-or-miss thing. I'm not really familiar with those, but from what I recall, PPD Studio Pro is still the best posing app they ever released. I'm sure a lot of you would jizz their pants if they could have some kind of "HoneyStudio Pro". And would be really pissed off if it's simply a slight update of their current and somewhat wonky software.
Personally, I really hope that they'll step up their game and make something actually engaging for the "average" player : spending hours toying with clunky controls simply to grab a few screenshots requires a lot of passion and dedication (that most players don't have).
So, there's nothing much to be impressed, but still a lot of nice additions. They'll probably throw in a couple new maps for good measure, slap a 8,800 円 pricetag on it and put that on the shelves right before Spring break.
Now, do you remember the "new shader" that came with the PC Expack ? I hope they'll do that again.
VR Kanojo includes the Alloy PBR plugin for Unity and uses 4K textures with subsurface scattering, so it would be really nice of them to update
Honey Select to use it and have 4K texture support out of the box.
their next game should just be an Idol Studio game, where you take pics of them posing and h scenes. They only thing that's really keeping honey select alive is the studio (and mods). So if they build a game center around studio (instead of an after thought) they could have a long running game.
I would love to see Illusion experimenting on this kind of concept : it would tremendously help broaden the audience of their Studio apps.
As I stated above, my main grief with the posers are their "high effort / low reward" nature. You have to spend a big amount of time to pose your characters, select animations and states in clunky nested menus, fight with broken IK rigs and their crappy gizmos, install truckloads of often conflicting mods to fix things that should work from the get-go... simply in order to get a few screenshots at the end ? (Seriously ?)
If Illusion had to make a game where the goal is to pose characters for pictures, it would certainly push them to refine their whole approach : it would force them to make the posing process actually engaging and enjoyable for the "average player".
They would need to nail a proper implementation of the basics : an IK rig with enforced constraints, that actually uses roll joints to prevent deformations, and can be piloted from a slick UI. Once they have this feature set, a "posing idol" game could be built on top of it without too much hassle. And be actually enjoyable for players.
This is something that is truly lacking in their current system, and as long as they don't fix it, their Studio apps won't pick the interest of the mass : most of us are playing games for fun and we really can't be bothered having to fight our way through poorly-designed user-experiences (kudos to the Studio masters out there actually going through all this shit to create scenes, by the way).