Goodbye SPM Hello Unreal Engine
After a few days of solid thought, I decided to completely shelve SPM for now. It really breaks my heart, but I’ve gone over my contract with a fine-tooth comb and there is most likely no way to break it since I’m in the US and they are in China. I signed my rights away. Thank goodness I didn’t do that with Aden’s Adventure. The thing with Zoe’s is it’s actually pretty generic. Unless my editor, who has mysteriously vanished like a side quest NPC, can talk me into continuing, I’m done with SPM.
Update: I talked to my editor and decided that I’m going to finish the current storyline, then shift into the endgame—when I’m back in the mood for writing again. So, SPM will update once more, but I’ll wrap it up with a thrilling, full-stakes, all-or-nothing, multi-team battle royal. Think Hunger Games meets Mario Kart chaos.
In the meantime, I’ve moved on to a new project: Zanden’s Unreal Engine Clothing System.
Below, I've included images of the development of the bare-bones clothing system. At the top is the UE 5.5 mannequin wearing the nightshirt and wig I whipped up in Blender. It only took me about two hours from start to completion, but then it took another half hour or so to get it into Unreal. Updating the 4.27 blueprint to 5.5 took an additional two hours. Below that, on the left, is the clothing in the third-person blueprint. The right-hand image shows the clothing in-game. I could have made a camera boom or adjustment to zoom it in, but I want to keep the initial state of the template as much as possible so future users can buy and study it.
Since an old friend never replied, I’m assuming he either vanished into the void or got swallowed by a wormhole. It’s been pre-Covid since I heard from him, so I think it’s been long enough to officially claim rights to the clothing system we worked on together. With ChatGPT’s help, I’ve updated it to version 5.5. Now, it just needs a polish pass, a shiny interface, and a fail-safe to prevent people from doing silly things—like adding multiple hairstyles at once. (Because we all know someone would try.)
After browsing the marketplace, I couldn’t find a quality clothing system. That’s my cue. I’m thinking of offering two versions: a basic version for the casual devs and a pro version for the hardcore creators. Who knows? Maybe this is my ticket to finally making something worthwhile—and profitable.
Keep an eye on my BlueSky for updates at insanexade.bsky.social, and if you’d like to be part of the testing or just want to drop by and say hi, you can catch me on my Discord server at discord.gg/JKKQENM. I’d love to hear from you!