Inner Circle Update for August 25 2017! (Patreon)

Hey guys! 

I mentioned it in a comment on the last post, but thanks again for being patient with us taking a few days to finish up this sprite lighting system! I have a crap ton of stuff to talk about and a lot of new things to show off, so here we go!

V0.06 Map Progress

Ubercharge was out of town the week after the last IC update, but once he got back he banged out most of the work on the first map you’ll see in v0.06. This is the alley where Neon and Malise leave their bike as they venture into the Void. It won’t look quite this fancy for v0.06, as we determined without sprite reflections the puddles look kind of wonky. That being said, we haven’t ruled those out for the new URGE engine, but more about that later on in the post :D. The cover image for the post (full size here) is a perspective view of the area, showing the details that we can get with the new rendering engine a little better.

In addition to that I wanted to show off the latest diagram of the map area for v0.06. For the first time, you can see how we intend for the city to be a non-linear world space, and in part explains why I wanted to finish the story in order to get the map design elements right.

New Sprite Lighting System!

This is the big one @_@. I mentioned the basics of this in the last update, but now we actually have a prototype working within URGE (the new engine we’re building)! This consumed a lot of time for all four of us, but thanks to APL for setting up the test environment within the new engine and to Ubercharge who proposed the idea and helped calibrate it! Before I get into things I want to point out that the super pretty version of this that I’m about to show off will only work in URGE. V0.06 will have a version of the system, but since RPG Maker can’t do some of the more complex blending operations we need it will be simplified. Anyways, I should show the results first I guess, and there’s an album at the end of this section for those of you who want to see additional screenshots and details as to how this effect is achieved.

Here’s a simple test GIF showing the lighting system actually working within URGE! If you recall, I mentioned the new system utilizes multiple sprite layers to simulate lighting. Here’s a second one that better shows the sprite layers being lit independently.  Apologies for the crappy GIF quality, the screen recorder I’m using apparently doesn’t know what 60 FPS is. Oh, and obviously characters won’t be sliding everywhere with the new system. Unless you want them to. Because I can make that happen >_>. 

Some of the benefits of the new system are as follows:

• Colored lighting
• Able to simulate dark areas much more accurately.
• Layered sprites with dynamic and independent shading for each layer
• Multi-layered sprites add the potential for glow maps (Neon's armor could for instance glow in dark areas instead of being darkened with the sprite).
• While not technically part of the sprite system, we’ll be introducing a new layer to the maps to better incorporate sprites underneath things such as light glares / haze / static fog. Here’s an example.
• Surprisingly low performance cost (maybe even improves over the old shading system in some situations ). 

Check out this album for the technical details and additional screenshots! 

Artwork Overhaul Mood Board

I threw together a quick mood board sampling inspiration for the direction I envision MATM to take during the artwork overhaul. The purpose was to translate my ideas to the team visually, but I think you guys might find it interesting also. You can see a lot of it coming through already in our recent designs. The new look is more cinematic, and will feature a blend of dark cyberpunk / outrun / retro styles, which I think work well with the fact that MATM Is a retro RPG. It also doesn’t hurt that these things are coming into their prime in modern pop-culture, so it would be neat to be working on something artistically relevant. 

A Vision of MATM’s Future!

Well, of the map scene at least. Now that you’ve seen some of the inspiration I’m using for my vision of MATM’s style, I’ve got some eye candy for your eye holes! I’d like to show off some images that represent what MATM may look like in the new engine after the artwork overhaul.  I’ve been doing these mock-ups at various stages of our experimentation with these new rendering engines, and these are the first ones I feel like are awesome enough to show off. Some of the elements in these screens may actually make it into v0.06 (revised portraits for instance are now looking like a possibility since there’s no way the old ones will mesh with the new maps and battle backgrounds), however these screens are all 1080p and include some effects not possible with RPG Maker. 

Anyways, here’s the album! Obviously, this is a place your feedback would be highly valued, and I’d also love to hear ideas about what we could do stylistically to improve things. 

Oh, and there aren’t plans to make Onyx playable :D… she’s just the one character we’ve got fully calibrated with the new rendering engine.