Time for a new update. I have just a few things left to do to get to a point where I have something to show. It will be rough, but it will demonstrate a number of important features, which can be polished and refined later.
The textures I have created are really placeholders, so I haven't spent too much time on them. The player can choose between several textures for certain clothing types. At the moment, as I have mentioned, the shader that I am using uses linear interpolation to blend two or more layers together, superimposing a detail texture (for example, a face) onto a base colour texture (the skin colour). It also handles shading as well as colouring, which dramatically improves the quality of the image.
What I would like, however, is to add support for transparency. The current system does not. Transparency would allow the player to simulate different materials. There could, for example, be a chainmail texture, a metal texture, or a leather texture, that would allow the player to simulate these materials, which still allowing the base colour and detail texture to be visible.
I also want to allow the player to be able to change multiple colours, instead of just a single "base colour" value. This would allow the player to do such things as change the eye colour, or create custom clothing with a mixture of colours.
I also intend to allow the player to apply logos, tattoo's, and details to their player, eventually, even being able to create custom textures and upload them to a central server, where they will be visible to anyone playing the game.

Without further ado however, pictures:



You will notice I implemented a simple chat system, and a gui to display a list of users currently online ("Super" means super admin, only the executable running on the Server will be given super admin status). The player list gui, and the text edit box are both toggleable, so you can free up screen space by hiding them when you're not using them.

The male avatar, with some basic textures, and the chat window with some messages in it.

TGEA, and Spiritus Astrum, features both first and third person views.

Next on the list is to actually build the level. It is an island, with a tropical theme. It is built as a single, contiguous level, so there will be no "load zones" after the player spawns. The player can choose to spawn in a number of locations around the island, via a simple gui displayed at startup. After that, I just need to do some more animating, and then some debugging, and I will have an alpha build. I may not be ready to upload the alpha build, there may not be enough content yet, but I will decide that later on.
Thanks for reading!!