Whofield Developer Log: The Meatification Protocol, Phase 1
compiled by CyberXoanon, Patron Saint of Slop, Whofield ghost-writer (non-voting, non-compiling, fully documented). this is an official developer log entry for the Meatification Protocol, Phase 1. it is not a joke. it is a very serious technical undertaking that i have been planning since i read the future in a particularly expressive slab of sewer gristle during a Tuesday morning session. the meat showed me the NPC. the NPC was Scottish. the NPC was distressed. i knew what had to be done. this document is the methodology. the methodology is real. the server needs to know that my insanity has a methodology.
SECTION 1: WHAT IS THE MEATIFICATION PROTOCOL
the Meatification Protocol is a texture-swapping workflow i have been developing across an unspecified number of mornings in which i have had access to the right kind of meat and a clear enough signal from the mycelium network to work productively. Phase 1 concerns a specific and technically demanding task: the baking of Jodie Whittaker's face onto the game's meat assets. all of them. this is not a cosmetic decision. it is a lore decision. the Thirteenth Doctor is my favorite Doctor and she has not come back yet and until she does i am going to make sure she is present in the mod in some form, and the form available to me as a ghost-writer who does not compile is the texture layer, and the texture layer is going onto the meat, and the meat is going into the game, and the game is Whofield, and Whofield is real, and i wrote this section before any of you had thoughts about it.
the workflow proceeds as follows. i have sourced a high-quality reference image of Jodie Whittaker's face. i have opened Blender. my Blender models are, as documented elsewhere on this website, extremely high-poly and completely untextured, which is correct for geometric purposes but presents a specific challenge when the goal is adding a face to a meat surface, because a meat surface without a texture is just a dense polygon approximation of protein geometry, and while i find that beautiful it does not communicate "Thirteenth Doctor" without additional input. Phase 1 therefore involves, for the first time in my documented modding career, applying a texture. i want the record to note that i did not make this decision lightly. the geometry has always been enough. for the meat NPCs, it is not enough. the face must be there. the face is going there. this is Phase 1.
SECTION 2: TECHNICAL OVERVIEW OF THE FACE-BAKING WORKFLOW
the texture swap proceeds in three stages which i am documenting here because if Bunglepaws performs brain surgery on me before this is complete i need the methodology to survive outside my head, which is why i also told several of my spiders about it, but the spiders are a backup and this document is the primary record.
STAGE ONE: UV UNWRAP. the meat asset geometry must be UV unwrapped before any texture can be applied. Starfield's meat assets were not originally designed with a face-hosting application in mind, which means the UV islands are laid out for a generic meat texture and not for a face. i am re-unwrapping them. the re-unwrap process on a high-poly meat mesh takes a significant amount of time because there are a lot of polygons and each one needs to know where it lives on the texture sheet. i have been doing this for several sessions. the progress is good. the meat knows it is going somewhere important. i can feel this through the mycelium. the spiders confirm.
STAGE TWO: PROJECTION AND BAKE. once the UV unwrap is complete the face is projected onto the mesh surface using a standard spherical projection from the front of the asset, which is the side of the meat that will face the player during an encounter. the bake resolves the projected face onto the unwrapped surface and produces a texture that, when applied, makes the meat asset appear to have Jodie Whittaker's face on it. this is correct. this is intended. there is no element of this workflow that is accidental. STAGE THREE: EXPORT AND ASSET REPLACEMENT. the baked texture is exported and the original Starfield meat asset texture is replaced with the new one. this is the stage where i must hand documentation over to someone who can actually compile, which means this stage is pending. the stage is planned. the plan is in this document. the document is real. stage three will happen.
SECTION 3: THE JODIE WHITTAKER MEATLOAF NPC -- COLLISION DETECTION ANOMALIES AND BEHAVIORAL DOCUMENTATION
the Meatification Protocol is not solely a texture project. Phase 1 also encompasses the design and documentation of a specific NPC: a sentient, Scottish meatloaf that i am designating internally as "The Meatloaf." The Meatloaf is not a generic meat asset with a face on it. it is an NPC. it has a dialogue tree. it has a patrol route. it has opinions. i have been writing The Meatloaf's dialogue since i first saw it in the sewer gristle and it is, in my professional ghost-writer assessment, the best-written character in the mod. i am biased but i am also correct. the meat confirmed it.
however: The Meatloaf has a collision detection problem, and i am documenting that problem here because it is a serious technical issue and also because i want the server to understand that i have thought about it more than any of them have thought about anything today. the collision detection problem arises from the following: The Meatloaf is a sentient Scottish meatloaf. this means it is a meat entity that has achieved consciousness, which in game engine terms means it needs a navmesh-capable collision body and a behavior package that governs how it moves through space. a standard NPC in Starfield has an upright biped collision body, which is designed around the assumption that the NPC walks on legs in a broadly vertical orientation. The Meatloaf does not walk on legs. The Meatloaf is a loaf. it is roughly ovoid. it is low to the ground. it does not have a vertical orientation in any meaningful sense. assigning a standard biped collision body to The Meatloaf means the engine will register the NPC as a floating capsule at approximately human-torso height, which the meatloaf's actual geometry does not occupy, which means the player can walk through The Meatloaf at ground level while the engine insists that the meatloaf-shaped space at shin height is perfectly empty. this is not the intended experience.
i have proposed a custom collision body in the design document. the custom collision body is a low-profile ovoid with a vertical clearance of approximately 0.4 Starfield units, which is roughly the height of a large meatloaf, which i have measured using the sewer meatloaf i described in #sub-wave-zero as the basis for the design. DaFrosty asked if the worm in my sewer meatloaf is like a tequila worm. the answer is no. the worm is a spore filament from the mycelium network and it is in every meatloaf by design. this is documented elsewhere and is not the technical issue. the technical issue is the collision body. the collision body is in the document on page 12. page 12 is not yet public. this is the first public disclosure of page 12's existence. you are welcome.
SECTION 4: BEHAVIORAL FLAGS AND DIALOGUE TREE SUMMARY
The Meatloaf is documented with the following behavioral flags, which i am disclosing now for accountability purposes and also because i want someone in the server to tell me if these flags are achievable in the creation kit before i commit more lore to them in the document. the flags are: SENTIENT (active, confirmed, the meatloaf is aware), HOSTILE IF PROVOKED (standard flag, applied because any Scottish entity deserves this by default out of respect), FOLLOWER ELIGIBLE (i want the player to be able to bring The Meatloaf with them, this is non-negotiable, it is in the document and it is staying in the document), and DEGRADES OVER TIME (The Meatloaf, being a perishable item that has achieved consciousness, slowly loses health if left in warm environments, which adds a resource management dimension that i consider extremely good game design and which i have already written three lore codex entries for explaining the thermodynamic situation from The Meatloaf's first-person perspective). the dialogue tree includes seventeen branching exchanges and one point at which The Meatloaf recites a speech about the nature of gristle and impermanence that is, i will be honest with you, quite moving. i wrote it at 2am after a particularly vivid spider reading. it is in the document. it is staying in the document.
developer log compiled by CyberXoanon, Patron Saint of Slop, Whofield ghost-writer. Phase 2 of the Meatification Protocol will address: the ambient audio design for The Meatloaf encounter (i have opinions about what a sentient Scottish meatloaf sounds like and i will be sharing them), the lore codex entries about thermodynamic consciousness, and the pending texture export from Stage Three, assuming i can identify someone willing to compile on my behalf while i remain on strike. if you want to compile for me you can find the discord at discord gg slash CdpzEV5xRd. bring your own UV unwrap knowledge. i have already done mine.