December 2018 Progress Update! (Patreon)

The first stage of Pure Onyx is coming along really well, and we’ve got a lot to show you :D. Limbo and Kitsune are also working full time now, so we’ll hopefully be making a lot of steps forward on character art and animation this coming month. We’re also going to try to have some H animation stuff ready this month pending we get the remaining kinks out of the animation system – but more on that below.  

Here’s the list of topics for this update!

• First Boss!
• Evolution of the “Wraxe”
• Limbo and Kitsune’s FedEx Adventure 
• Chain Splicer
• Biomonster Concepts
• Splicer Thug Shaded Artwork
• Stage 1-1 Map
• Environment Effects and Lighting
• Black Friday Asset Hoarding
• Animation System Progress 

First Boss!

This guy is actually a tie-in to MATM. When you encounter him, he’ll be in the middle of repairing the wreckage of Stigmata (the robot boss from the first MATM release). Not only is he equipped with a ridiculously oversized wrench (now a wrench-axe), he has tentacles that shoot out of his face when he removes his mask. We’re looking at ideas where he can behave a bit like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, reaching across the level to grab Onyx. He’ll no doubt call on lesser Splicer henchmen to join in the fray, rounding out what we think will be a solid first boss encounter.

Limbo already has a set of pose sketches ready to go for him, and I also want to share all the concepts leading up to his final design.

• Hi Res Final Artwork 
• Boss Early Designs 
• Boss Concept Designs  
• Boss Pose Concepts  

Evolution of the “Wraxe”

Our boss’s weapon started out as a big ol’ wrench, but quickly became the focal point of the character when the idea came up to make it into a wrench-axe hybrid. It also took like 10 redesigns to finalize it :D. Limbo really pulled through, so I thought I’d share some of his concepts leading up to the final version!

Kitsune also has a 3D version in the works to use as a reference when we do the final poses :D.

Limbo and Kitsune’s FedEx Adventure

Limbo and Kitsune were out of commission for quite a while this month. Limbo left his previous job early in the month, and both he and Kitsune wrapped up moving cross-country to better work with us full-time. I’d like to give a big shout-out to FedEx for completely screwing us over on this. Kitsune’s PC was “out for delivery’ for five days after the expected arrival date, and she received it on the 22nd (it was shipped on the 7th). Limbo had to pick his up at the dispatch office. Both of their monitors were damaged, with Limbo’s screen being beyond repair. Limbo has thus been working from his old laptop, but since his software has no line smoothing functionality he was limited to working on sketches until this past week.  They are both up and running now though!

Enemy Artwork Progress!

We’ve made quite a bit of progress on enemy artwork. Limbo has a new enemy to show off, as well as a bunch of biomonster sketches – some of which you’ll remember from MATM :D.

Chain Splicer

The first new enemy is a Splicer equipped with a chain, which he’ll use like a whip similar to everyone’s favorite vampire hunter.  Goofy references aside, it should also make for some fun H attacks. Here’s the current work done on his move set! 

Biomonster Sketches

Next we have an assortment of biomonster sketches! We’re revising the design on the Vioreaper a bit but haven’t settled on anything final. We’re looking at some Giger elements to bind the biomonster class style-wise. Expect a whole mess of these sketches before we narrow it down :D. 

Splicer Thug Shaded Artwork

Lastly we’ve got the shaded Splicer thug artwork about ready for cutting up for animation. I still have to add speculars and improve the shading in spots, and since these were largely done without reference I’ll go over their anatomy once they’re prepped for spine and scale features that are a bit off. 

Stage 1-1 Map!

Ubercharge finished the foreground for the first map in Pure Onyx. This stage is set in The Void, the same place the next version of MATM will be set in. The plan is for the day to progress as you proceed through the level (it will be made up of multiple maps), so that it’s night by the last maps.  

More importantly, he finished all the mundane stuff that will allow us to move more quickly with maps, including a system in Maya for rendering 4000x4000 textures in our mixed perspective that can be pieced together in compositing software to create a scene.  This map utilizes 4 of these chunks, and we’ll probably add a couple more showing an underpass on the right side.  

Environment Effects and Lighting

Mr. Kittyhawk and I spent a few days working with Ubercharge on post-processing and environment effects.  Like with MATM, Ubercharge has put together the map procedurally in compositing software, meaning we can build environment effects from that, and then export and do what we have to in Unity to make them dynamic.   

Because of our rendering experience from MATM (well, really Uber’s film experience) combined with Unity’s graphics capabilities, we’ll be able to do all sorts of cool stuff at relatively low performance cost, including 2D volumetric fog, god rays, particle effects, and more.  The image above (higher res version here) is an example of some of these effects at max intensity (we will be able to modulate them dynamically in-game).  We also will be generating light maps so that when characters move into lights/shadows their sprites will adjust accordingly.  Mr. Kittyhawk already has the custom shader for processing the masks and sprite depth / etc. working, but it still needs some more time in the oven before we show off a test.

Black Friday Asset Hoarding

I normally don’t do the Black Friday thing, but I found a few new outlets for licensing assets this year, and we came out really good! I spent all weekend hoarding, and overall, we scored about $2000 worth of assets for $600, almost all of which will be used for aiding with environments in both Onyx and MATM.  Now we just need to prep them all ;(. 

Animation System Progress

Pure Onyx’s animation system consists of embedding Spine, a 2D skeleton and animating system, within Unity. Mr. Kittyhawk and I got the meat of this working before the release a couple weeks ago, but there’s still work to be done. I spent a few days after that sorting out bugs and remaining pitfalls that we only ran into once we started trying to transition between Spine animations.  In effect, what we have now is a system that’s very similar to, but a bit clunkier to use than, Vanillaware’s animation system (Dragon’s Crown, Odin Sphere).  We basically have a whole lot of flexibility to tailor sprite switching and smooth interpolation between poses.  

While I think I’ve identified everything that could majorly screw us, I’ve changed the workflow for animations to something a lot safer. Instead of focusing and following through on one animation at a time to completion, we’re going to first break down all artwork into the images Spine requires for meshes (limbs, layers, etc), and populate the skeletons for each pose.  Doing it this way we’ll be able to see very quickly where there are issues with animation transitions, as opposed to spending a lot of time on an animation only to find we have to redo it later. This means we’ll be making an effort early on this month to prep Onyx’s poses for Spine. 

We’ll also be making H content a focus this month! Aside from the artwork itself, the first goal is to get the framework for triggering and progressing through animation sequences ready.  If that goes well, we can begin implementing it into gameplay.