eromancer

Battle Test Release 3.5 (v0.0563) / April Progress Update! (Patreon)

Published:

2018-04-03 11:55:28

Edited:

2018-04-03 12:05:38

Imported:

2021-05

Content

Hey everyone!

Battle Test 3.5 is ready! This is an updated version of Battle Test 3, which was released for the Inner Circle a little over a week ago.

You can download it here!

This month’s update is smaller than usual since it’s only been a couple of weeks since the last one, but I wanted to get back to posting at the beginning of the month. Aside from work on the battle test, there’s been a lot of progress on Ubercharge’s latest map since the last Inner Circle post, as well as on the Splicer overhaul and Ven’s armor conversion.

There’s also a section at the bottom devoted to goals for this month and some info on when we will start getting back into the H content.

Check it all out below!

Contents for this Post

Battle Test 3.5 Release Notes
Bug Report Instructions (Updated)
Flat User Interface Concept
Procedural Automation Network
Ubercharge’s Map Progress (Updated since IC post)
Splicer Overhaul Progress (Updated since IC Post)
APL’s Coding Progress Report
Remodeling Ven’s Armor (Updated since IC Post)
To Do List and Goals for this Month

Battle Test 3.5 Release Notes

Battle Test 2 > 3 Change Log

Overhauled targeting system / fixed targeting bugs
Fixed all known and some unknown issues
Malise has been updated to the newest version (shown in the March update)
Added the first stage of lust sickness portraits for Malise.
Fixed holster rigging / guns now properly holstered in applicable Malise poses
Portraits were re-lit using our new battle/portrait lighting rig
Added HDR bloom
Added HDR grading and chromatic aberration for the retro cinematic vibe I’ve been tinkering with in the recent promo artwork
Police basic attacks now add lust to Malise only (for testing purposes)

Battle Test 3 > 3.5 Change Log

The ATB "During Action" speed setting was incorrectly being used for the remainder of the battle after the first action was performed. It is now only used while an action is in progress.
In very rare circumstances the game could crash listing invalid file permissions as a reason. This has been fixed.
Improved wet skin material.
Removal of chromatic aberration (the “retro” effect). Will investigate this again once we’re in full HD and more of the game’s visual elements support it.
Re-lit Malise’s portraits with better light textures. Will do the same for Neon once I re-render her portraits for Battle Test 4.
Identified a couple minor issues with the holsters (clipping) and Malise’s suit zipper tabs (floating in space). Obviously, this is really minor; we fixed some but the real fixes won’t appear until later releases.

We’re now using Ubercharge’s battle/portrait lighting rig; the goal of which is to help us quickly and easily light the portraits to match any environment. We’ve obviously been changing this up with every test release, but we’re not simply treading water. It’s largely growing pains as we develop this workflow that will not only produce good looking results but make for speedy development of future environments. The reason that getting this correct now is important is that even though we can change the color and intensity of the lights in post with Uber’s new system, we can’t change the texture of the lights without re-rendering (like I did for Battle Test 3.5).

With the above graphical changes, some things have changed on our end as well. I’m now using procedural 32-bit compositing for all portrait/battle related artwork, just like Uber has been doing for maps recently. Hopefully you can see the difference in how well the graphical elements mesh with each other. The grading also preserves the vibe of the darks without that overly contrasted look BT2 had.

One relatively minor sacrifice I’d like to point out is we’re changing how we go about showing “terrain” in the pose artwork (currently only visible with the K.O. artwork). In previous releases we had it so that little plot of ground that shows up in some pose artwork would match the environment. We’re changing this to a generic look (currently just a polished black material for now) since having unique textures/versions is technically incompatible with our new workflow. We tested some other ideas that didn’t work too well, but we might come up with something better later.

As far as issues go – the tutorial pop-ups don’t have Japanese versions yet, but these will probably be in Battle Test 4. As always, let us know if you find any bugs or anything unusual! For anything major, don’t forget to follow these procedures:

Bug Report Instructions (Updated!)

I would like to ask a favor from everyone who stumbles upon a bug. Most of you who have played the game haven't mentioned encountering any bugs at all, which is a good thing, but it also means that bugs still out there are very hard to find and fix, so we must rely on you to provide us with as much information as possible! It takes only few minutes to create bug report, but it can save us hours to fix a bug with minimum amount of info. Please follow these few steps when reporting a bug to make our lives (or rather, our programmer's life) much easier:

If game screen is not empty make a screenshot (preferably with error message out of the way),
Add a description; where the error occurs, what was the last action (or few last actions) -- the more details, the better. It doesn't have to be a novel, but every detail counts,
Send description along with compressed 'User' folder and optional screenshot to us (eromancergames@gmail.com).

Flat User Interface Concept

Reskinning the user interface for the new art style is something I’ve been struggling with for a while now. It needs to fit within our technological constraints, possess a theme that carries the visual style in a lot of scenes, and ideally be more functional than our last iteration when requirements weren’t as clear.

I’ve been trying to find a UI designer, and thus had multiple designers come up with some quick concepts but I didn’t feel like moving forward with any. One however had started a concept for a minimalist flat UI. While I wasn’t super fond of the minimalist thing, I thought the flat aspect had potential, so over the past couple of days I tried out my own and have been working almost exclusively on it. All of us actually really like the result, which is kind of unheard of :D.

Flat user interface design is a modern philosophy which focuses on color palette, hard shapes, and transparency (Windows 10’s UI is a good example), and generally eschews gradients and glows. It’s a big contrast to the concept UI I did a month or two ago.

Here are a few test images of my work so far (keep in mind this is in 1080p, not 720p that the game currently runs in).

The most obvious change is the lack of multiple colors. Varying saturation of red is used to indicate an element that demands attention, while transparency indicates the opposite. In place of colors, icons are used for gauges where necessary. Instead of being nearly arbitrarily colored, the tetra panel now has the “type” of panel displayed in text above it. This gets replaced by the escape widget when it’s displayed (though I may move it to above or even toward the top-center of the screen).

Active restraints and enemy holders appear in a similar location as before but once the double-teaming mechanic is enabled they will stack. Some of the details are likely to change once we test the system. The biggest change in this area is that “Grasp” is now shown as a number from 0 to 100. This removes the conflict of it appearing similar to actors’ Lust parameter (they previously had the same gauge color).

Player characters’ stats have also been moved toward the center of the screen so the player’s eye doesn’t need to dart around to either corner, especially while focusing on the tetra panel. This also allows for the bottom parts of the portraits to be visible, though I’m currently thinking status icons will appear along the bottom (though they could work at the top as well; beside the armor indicators). Since the scene is dark it’s not obvious, but a single black gradient is behind the main UI to allow for good visibility in brighter scenes (important since I’m trying to avoid outlines – I’ve opted for a simple solid drop shadow instead). The ATB gauges now use a 0-100 numeric scheme, with a word to describe the character’s status. APL did a mock-up with a fourth gauge that also has potential.

Lastly, not shown, but the top of the screen will be used for information for special battle events – which unless we mentioned it forever ago I don’t think we’ve talked about yet.

Also, thanks to Ubercharge for leading me back to the new font :D. He used it on his latest map, and I had apparently tried it previously since I had it installed but it totally clicked this time.

Let us know what you think!

Procedural Automation Network

Since BT3 was first released I’ve been working on a procedural automation network that will vastly cut down the time I need to prep and process portraits (new ones or changes to old ones). Changing to the new art style means some of my automation stuff isn’t compatible with the new workflow, but I never had automation for most of this stuff to begin with. I also didn’t have to deal with quite the volume of images as we’ll be getting into shortly, so it’s a necessary step.

I have the network functioning and have used it for Battle Test 3.5. I also ended up automating a lot more than I was thinking I could. I still have to connect Uber’s post-process light mixing system (which I’ll be testing for BT4 probably), but currently it handles all other post processing, positioning and scaling of portraits, and auto-cropping of portraits -- for all the game's portraits -- in a single click :D. It also allows me to plug the processes happening to one portrait into another instantly – something ideal for additional variations of portraits. And it's modular/scalable to boot! I’ll be adding enemy light mixing to it as well, meaning it will end up being a one-stop script for all things battle and portrait artwork related. I had to keep a bunch of notes and a mess of Photoshop PSDs for this previously, so I’m pretty happy with it. It also outputs in a way that I just have to run a batch script in order to rename files so they can be used by the game.

Ubercharge’s Map Progress

Ubercharge has made some stellar progress with the latest map. Not only do his procedural shaders look great, he’s also made some big steps forward with working in 3D volumetric fog. This is made possible by the ability to separate the fog out in post in order to use it to layer in our 2D assets. We already have a plan for how to make our sprite blending system compatible with it. In addition to this stuff, Uber’s figured out texture projection for adding details like text or paint without the need for UVs.

Here’s a set of images showing the latest progress:

Map Progress 1

Map Progress 2

Map Progress 3 (Texture Projection Example)

Splicer Overhaul Progress

Uber has enlisted the help of a new sculptor who is really good with Marvelous Designer—currently the best software around for making clothes. Up till now this is a skill we’ve been severely lacking. Her help gives us the ability to custom model clothing from scratch instead of relying on assets, so we’ve therefore been working on designing new clothes for the Splicer gang.

I have in mind a couple different major variations for v0.06, and in addition to that we want to be able to mix and match their clothing for story scenes so that they all don’t look like clones. The one you see above is a concept I pieced together from a combination of licensed assets and a concept jacket by the sculptor. So far she’s created a bunch of concept designs, but we’re beginning to narrow it down.

Alas, worry not, the old gas mask version from the early versions of the game will be around, and he will have a couple design changes :D (thanks Ubercharge for the concept drawing). Instead of a mechanical probe he’ll now have a tentacle that extends from his mouth… hole… thing… which is revealed when he removes his respirator.

Currently she’s fleshing out one of her lower body designs. Here’s the latest version of it (updated since the Inner Circle post a few days ago).

AltairPL’s Coding Progress Report

This was a really long and hard two weeks for me. The majority of things I did required a lot of testing, and TBH, I can't look at the battles anymore or I'll go crazy. Other than that, I think I've managed to make some pretty good progress.

Most, if not all, of known and unknown battle engine issues from Battle Test 1 and 2 and are now fixed. The only one that keeps eluding me, especially since I never knew sure-fire way to trigger it, is the one when characters sometimes use non-idle pose on battle results screen. Haven't seen it in a long while though, so with a bit of luck, fix for something else managed to fix this one as well.

This one was waiting for a long time, and I've finally started dealing with it. As I've already said on numerous occasions, till now, enemy holds were the least stable aspect of battles. The whole flow and data structures of holds were revised and recoded, and it's now much more clearer and cleaner. Part of the structure changes were made with double-teaming in mind, which is slowly becoming reality. There's still a lot of work to do to make double-teaming fully functional though. One of the most convoluted things will be related to adding new action triggers, states, and few other database things. I also didn't take into consideration a few more or less minor things while designing double-teaming, so I will need to deal with it as well. Last, but not least is the actual display of all character holders in the battle UI, but this will be a part of upcoming battle sprites overhaul.

The battle sprite class is a mess and requires attention sooner rather than later. Not only is it based on the vanilla RPG Maker class, but there's a lot of old test stuff, and even more crazy stuff... pretty much chaos all over the place. This will probably take me a while, so I didn't want to start it right before the Battle Test 3, but I was able to make some initial work and preparations. With some vanilla functionality moved to dedicated classes, like action animation and results, I was able to get rid of some obsolete vanilla stuff already. With this out of the way I could change the base class to my custom sprite class, which has some nifty functionality we could surely use for battle sprites, like automated positioning, automated sprite-sheet animation, etc. A lot more to do, but it will have to wait for after the Battle Test 3.5.

Since I still had time before Battle Test 3 and there was nothing left required of me for it, I decided to make some organizational changes. The first one was with the game proper in mind. Till now, all files saved by the game were stored in different folders, which was a bit of a mess. Now all such files, like saved games, options ini, and logs, are all stored in "User" subdirectory. Not only is it more neat that way, but will also make bug reporting easier - instead of picking files to send from a few different places, just pack up and send us the "User" folder and we'll have all we need to figure out what the problem is. Remaining changes are for us (dev team) only and are mostly meant to minimize amount of data sent between us. The exception from this is optimization of release build creation. I had a great idea of how it could be improved, but that idea kinda backfired. Thankfully I was able to make other improvements that minimize the amount of disk writes and dramatically decrease release build creation time, so I'm still happy with the results. And as a bonus, I made some notes about trying to move parts of this code to URGE C code, which should result in huge speed boost, but I don't want to that just yet, since I need to think about some related things first.

I was hoping for a day or two off from the work after Battle Test 3 release, but unfortunately some bugs were found that required my attention. Ain't no rest for the wicked ;). First one was causing ATB speed to be stuck at action speed after first action was performed and pretty easy to fix. Second was causing game crashes in very rare situations... quick and dirty fix wasn't enough, so I had to recode small part of the related code.

While testing the fix for the second bug, I accidentally launched the game in URGE and was greeted with a nasty error. Since I had nothing more important to do, I dug a little deeper and fixed this problem as well.

I honestly don't know what I will tackle now that the Battle Test 3 is released and all patched up. I should probably make this battle sprites overhaul and make double-teaming reality, but I really need a break from the battle stuff, so I'll probably try to find something else to work with first.

Remodeling Ven’s Armor

Unfortunately, Ven’s armor has the same issue that required us to remodel Neon’s armor – and that is that it uses displacement mapping for all of its geometry details. TK has therefore begun the remodeling process for Ven’s armor, starting with her leg armor. He’s able to use the same process he did for Neon’s, which involves extracting the displacement details to geometry and then modeling a low-resolution version around it.

I did some material testing after the Inner Circle update and even more unfortunately the textures don’t convert to physically based rendering well at all. Here are the results. While it doesn’t look terrible at first glance it can look way better with, at the very least, proper bump/normal maps. TK is now in the middle of making new ones.

To-Do List and Goals for this Month

The big deviation for this month is that unless necessary we’re putting the Enty launch off until we get some H content into the test releases. We figured it would be confusing for an audience who hasn’t played the previous releases to see the battle system without all the basic features included. With that in mind, it should be clear that I’m really trying to push to get back to including H content.

Currently I expect Battle Test 4 to include the (hopefully) final version of Neon, updated sound effects(?), the remainder of the non-armor damage portraits for the player characters, as well as re-lighting of the enemies. Again, while re-lighting stuff may not be very interesting from your guys’ perspective it allows me the chance to thoroughly test the complete workflow and hash out any automation that’s required, so I may as well include it. I’ll also be testing Uber’s post-process light mixing system, which I need to hook up within my automation network and do a bunch of renders for. I’m guessing that Battle Test 5 will feature enemy holds and armor damage.

Here’s the current to-do list, including the status of goals from last month.

Eromancer

COMPLETE: TAXES!!! Yes, I’m putting that here because itemizing all the game related stuff is a huge time sink and it keeps growing each year :D.
Work out a couple lingering kinks with the portrait automation system.
Update Neon’s base Daz scenes with the big laundry list of changes that have been piling up (similar to Malise’s recent edits).
Work with Uber and APL on implementing updated battle sound effects.
Run practical tests on Uber’s post-process light mixing system and extend automation network to include it for both enemies and player characters.
Pose and render remaining non-armor damage portraits for Battle Test 4.
IN PROGRESS: Work on the new UI design
COMPLETE: Update Malise battle portraits with her new version
COMPLETE: Create upper body exposed portrait versions for Malise once TK has the suit ready
COMPLETE: Work with Uber to recreate his battle/portrait lighting rig in Daz
Continue experimenting with Police H skill artwork
Splicer overhaul direction
Paint Malise armor damage concepts for TK
IN PROGRESS: Calibrate Daz lights for HDR processing (currently doing this in post and it’s resulting in degraded dynamic range)
COMPLETE: HDR processing on Neon/Malise’s new portraits.
Begin Ven character overhaul(?)

IN PROGRESS: Continue working on Ven’s armor overhaul
Make remaining fixes to Malise’s suit/holsters
Help Ero update Neon’s base Daz scenes.
Update Neon’s base Maya scenes.
Create joint correction morphs for Neon’s armor damage variation model.
Begin work on Malise’s 3D armor damage if time allows.
Help Ero with Ven character overhaul(?)

AltairPL

Battle sprites code overhaul
Double teaming implementation!
Reel in Ero when he suggests overly ambitious UI design ideas.
Add dynamic fog blending to the map sprite lighting testing environment / prototype.
Add map sprite lighting system to in-game proper
Implement new sound effects
Continue working on battle engine / URGE engine

Ubercharge

IN PROGRESS: Continue work on maps
Advise and assist with Splicer overhaul where necessary
Assist TK with sculpting Malise’s 3D armor damage.
Assist with sound effect creation.
Assist Ero with implementation of the light mixing system in the automation network.

Sculpting Girl

IN PROGRESS: Continue working on Splicer sculpts

Translator

Translate tutorials, controls, warnings and other miscellaneous remaining text to Japanese.

Miscellaneous

POSTPONED: Enty launchz

That pretty much covers it for now. As usual let us know if you have any questions or find any bugs with the test release!

Thanks guys!

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