Chapter 70: Group assignment done right

After the 1-on-1 fan meeting(?) slash collaboration meeting with Rosy ended.

Jina took off the VR headset and immediately rebooted her computer.

“Hoo…”

Heat had properly risen.

Both the computer and Jina’s head.

Jina tilted her head back slightly, leaning her body against the chair’s backrest.

After staring blankly at the desktop wallpaper for a while, she finally seemed to have organized her thoughts and moved the mouse to launch the game engine tool.

“Well then, shall we begin.”

Her low murmur held a hint of fatigue, yet also a strange anticipation.

The VR TRPG, which would be the first step towards that absurd goal.

The path ahead was distant and long, but Jina didn’t particularly dwell on it.

As always, confidence that she would somehow manage slowly raised its head in a corner of her mind.

“Let’s start with the design first.”

Facing the familiar workspace, Jina let out a languid sigh and began tapping the keyboard.

The first thing to do was organize the overall structure of the game system.

The existing ChatRPG ran in a web browser, but the VRTRPG they intended to develop would run in virtual space, so the entire structure needed to be redefined.

AI system design.

World composition.

Implementation of NPCs, including Yoo Da-hee.

Interpretation of voice and chat input.

Linking avatar motion and gameplay.

Balancing freedom and limitations.

Besides that, various other things.

A list of tasks was simply drawn up in Jina’s mind.

Soon, several folders and scripts were structured within the engine tool.

For now, the building’s framework was established.

---

After establishing the project’s framework, the very first task Jina undertook was none other than creating the main heroine, ‘Yoo Da-hee’.

In the first place, the title of this game is ‘Saving Yoo Da-hee’.

Even if the quality of other models drops slightly, Yoo Da-hee must be made in such a way that one would want to protect her somehow, even at the cost of one’s own life.

The option of leaving even the heroine’s appearance up to the user’s discretion was boldly discarded.

‘Still, I’m pretty good at female character design.’

It was the pride of a female character artisan, confident that her aesthetic sense far surpassed the imagination of the average user.

“As a lovely heroine, not a burdensome nuisance…”

The start is the JINA model.

If one decides to create a high-quality female character, this is the starting point.

“Height not too tall, not too short… chest size, about Winter’s size should be appropriate…”

Inputting various parameter values that determine the appearance, she roughly set the hairstyle and body proportions.

“Since it’s a world on the brink of destruction, a calm adult image would be better than a cute design.”

At the same time, Jina thought a sacred atmosphere would suit better than a realistic one.

She hoped the setting of a saintess wouldn’t feel childish. She wanted to express a subtle beauty that was both holy.

On the pure white hair, she applied light reflection properties implemented based on spherical harmonics.

She meticulously wrote the formula so that light would gently spread whenever the hair moved.

The facial line was neatly sculpted.

Of course, if it’s too sharp, she’ll look malicious. She’d be called a villainess or an Amazon warrior. She adjusted it appropriately, with good sense.

The eye color was decided as clear purple.

She painted a dreamlike color that felt like you could be sucked in just by gazing at it.

“The basic design seems to have come out well with this much?”

Even after finalizing the parameter values, Jina rotated the camera here and there, refining the avatar.

Her hands were busy tweaking things like eye size, nose bridge, and lip shape.

As if carving a new VTuber avatar.

As if crafting another daughter, she poured her heart into it.

“The hair texture needs a bit more transparency, and the outfit… well, since she starts as a country girl, match the concept…”

Shabby clothes and shorts that properly press against the thigh flesh.

An outfit reminiscent of a certain alchemist who insists she’s an ordinary country girl.

Besides that, she prepared various clothes like outing clothes, a black nun’s habit, and a pure white saintess robe.

The system for changing outfits was brought over directly from the one applied to Han Ari’s avatar, HANA.

“Come to think of it, I need to add the autonomous costume change system to the Seasons’ avatars too…”

Of course, there was still quite some time left until the promised 1st anniversary.

For now, it’s Yoo Da-hee.

After finishing the appearance creation work, she wrote guidelines assigning Yoo Da-hee’s personality and main behavior patterns to the chatbot.

Yoo Da-hee is a calm person.

She must maintain an unwavering attitude even in a world on the brink of destruction.

Yoo Da-hee has a strong spirit of sacrifice.

She is a considerate person who prioritizes others over herself.

Yoo Da-hee is a resolute person.

She is someone who defends what she believes is right until the end, even in the face of death.

Here… she mixed in a little sadness.

She added the setting of having lost precious people in the devastated world.

“Well… if I set it up like this, Rosy-nim will probably structure the dialogue tree well on her own.”

While expressing sadness, she also set the basic emotional facial expressions as unit presets called blendshapes.

Not just crying.

She hoped Yoo Da-hee would show diverse reactions like getting angry, frowning, being surprised, and being terrified.

And sometimes, very occasionally.

…She hoped she would smile brightly.

Hoping that Summer would eventually see Yoo Da-hee smile at the end of this game.

Hoping she would be moved upon seeing that sight, Jina painstakingly crafted Yoo Da-hee’s ‘smile’.

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She had forgotten while focusing on the appearance of the character Yoo Da-hee until now.

But actually, the biggest hurdle of this VR TRPG lay elsewhere.

It was building a system where the user could freely create 3D objects through chat or voice commands.

“This is really difficult…”

What Rosy pursued was infinite freedom within a limited scope.

It might sound contradictory, but Rosy had succeeded in implementing this to some extent in the existing ChatRPG.

She actively utilized the dice system.

She had the chatbot learn the level design of Dungeons & Dragons thoroughly.

The creation of valuables or key devices that critically affect Yoo Da-hee’s life was completely blocked.

Rather, if users could create overly nonsensical items, that itself would be ‘unrealistic’.

Even if the user created a powerful weapon, the storyline was structured such that the weapon would instead kill Yoo Da-hee.

The fact that Summer, who was a ‘f*cking strong, overpowered munchkin hero with a Dragon Sword’, tore off the saintess’s arm with her overflowing power is a very good example.

Like this, Rosy had planned the session more meticulously than expected.

‘Raising Yoo Da-hee’ is surprisingly a well-balanced, in-depth Souls-like game.

“Of course… even this is just a problem-solving method from the chatbot’s perspective.”

Moving into the virtual world, the constraints need to be set even more meticulously.

If the user referred to themselves as a hero with a Dragon Sword.

Whether it made sense balance-wise or not, the modeling for knight’s armor and a Dragon Sword had to be generated first.

Even if Rosy set the overall game constraints.

Jina needed to set the constraints related to 3D modeling.

“But what should I do?”

It’s sudden, but Jina isn’t a planner.

She thought daily about how to make female characters hotter, but she had never particularly pondered game systems and balance.

If she had time to think about such things, she would have rather carved one more underwear model that isn’t visible on the outside.

“I don’t really know… Should I just throw it in and see?”

Jina scratched her head, then lightly brought in the DreamFusion model and connected it to the game system.

An AI model that generates various 3D models solely from text.

However, the problem is that the quality of the resulting model is very low.

“I could attach an AI model that improves the quality of 3D objects here, but…”

Then it takes too much time to generate one model.

“Then it’s just trickery again.”

Even if it’s a shoddy 3D model with a low polygon count, it looks quite plausible if you just apply high-resolution textures well.

Of course, UV mapping had to be redone, but honestly, this wasn’t even a problem.

It doesn’t cause delays in generation time, so this amount of effort is nothing.

Behind the 3D object generation model, she attached an auto-rigging algorithm and a motion generation AI to lay the foundation for implementing simple animations.

“This seems roughly done…”

Jina entered the sentence [There is only a bed placed haphazardly in the room] into the debug mode console.

Well… to rest comfortably with Yoo Da-hee, there should be a bed, right?

…It’s really just for resting. Because the floor is cold and hard. Because your back will get scraped.

No other intentions, really.

After about 10 seconds, a queen-size bed popped out thump- in the middle of the 3D space on the monitor.

“Oh- Not bad?”

The position was appropriate, and there were no objects overlapping on the floor or walls.

The fact that the generation time was vaguely long bothered her somewhat, but she trusted Rosy to handle this somehow at the text level.

This is the taste of collaborative work, carrying the log together.

“Next is… an object with animation.”

This time, she entered the text [What appeared before Yoo Da-hee was a dragon with burning red scales].

A slightly longer time passed than when creating the bed.

Soon, a red dragon revealed itself before the pure white saintess.

The dragon flapped its wings, letting out a silent roar.

The moment she saw Yoo Da-hee making a horrified expression.

“…!”

Jina unknowingly clenched her fist.

‘Just watching it through the monitor is already so realistic…’

‘What if I see this not on a monitor, but in virtual space?’

‘What if voice is added to this?’

‘Furthermore…’

‘What if I am standing next to Yoo Da-hee?’

“…Killer.”

Jina eagerly awaited the day this game would be completed.