April 2019 Progress Update! (Patreon)

Hey everyone!  

The next Pure Onyx release is finally near, and with it most of the barriers that have been holding us back will come down!  The majority of the work on this release went on in the back-end <_<, but here's a rundown of what you'll notice:  

• Scenes no longer freak out when loading. Music doesn’t start and stop and post processing doesn’t go in and out.
• We now have true dynamic physics, and have retooled combat to function around it.
• Characters no longer hang up or fly into infinity when they collide with borders.
• We now have a reworked animation queuing system so that characters can’t be in multiple states at once, meaning no more “two Onyxes” bugs. 
• Particle FX for H scene liquids have been added
• The combat H system has been added
• Splicer Thugs will have two H scenes (we’ve barely had any time to test the H system in-game since Mr. Kittyhawk is coming off the Unity overhaul, so until we get complex transitions sorted we're splitting the one long complex scene into two simple ones)
• Enemy AI has been added!  They will no longer home in on you like punchy torpedoes.
• Updated enemy animations
• Pressing F1 will enable the developer UI overlay, which currently shows FPS, actor states, and collision geometry.

We were expecting to have it ready this week, but the other day we found some significant issues that only occur at low frame rates and Mr. Kittyhawk has been addressing those.  He still has a list of other things to get ready, but the animations are at a point where we can pop it in and calibrate it as soon as things are stable.

In other news, we've been pushing ahead with enemy artwork, as well as Onyx's move set art and animations.  We've also made progress on environments, and after this release we'll be able to open up the pipeline for adding these new levels in-game. 

Contents for this Update
(*** = new or updated since the Inner Circle posts)

• Vioreaper Animations and Art ***
• H Artwork Preview
• Onyx Style/Artwork Updates ***
• Wraxe Boss Update ***
• Stage 1-2 Map Complete! ***
• Vioreaper Nest Progress
• Mr. Kittyhawk’s Unity Overhaul 
• Weapon Concepts
• Mastermind Concept

 Make sure to check the attachments for the full high resolution artwork folder.!

Vioreaper Animations!

Kitsune has done a great job with the first Vioreaper animations!  We're continuing to develop our skills with Spine, and this guy served as a great opportunity to start working with multi track animations.  The Vioreaper's Idle pose is actually playing 4 animations simultaneously. The wings, hovering, and tail/stinger motion are independent of the actual idle animation, meaning we should get some truly dynamic looking results once they have AI.   We'll also be experimenting with procedural animations so that they can aim their stinger.

We haven't gotten to test him in game yet, but he should definitely be in the release after this upcoming one.

Also, below you'll find some additional pose artwork completed by Limbo in this past week.  

• New Vioreaper Pose Artwork 

H Artwork Preview

Here’s a preview of the finished artwork for the second part of the Splicer Thug scene :D. I’m experimenting with multiple sets of face artwork here -- something we should be doing to get the most out of our Spine rig. 

• H Artwork v1 
• H Artwork v2 
• H Artwork v3 

Onyx Style/Artwork Updates ***

A focus of mine this month has been to get back on the Onyx move set artwork.  Our artwork has gotten way cleaner since we did these, so I'm updating them as I break them down for Spine.  Here I am showing the changes to the Idle and Walk poses.

The general goal has been to improve consistency in brush strokes and detail size, improve anatomy, and to simplify some aspects to better fit the retro anime style. 

• Onyx Idle Pose Comparison 
• Onyx Walk Pose Comparison 

Wraxe Boss Update ***

TK and Limbo have put some time into the Wraxe boss artwork the past couple of weeks. TK has created a 3D body and posed it for each pose we need along with the weapon and armor assets Kitsune modeled, and rendered them out to help us with shading and anatomy. Here’s one of the (nearly) completed new poses that Limbo has shaded :D.

• Wraxe Boss New Pose 

Stage 1-2 Map Complete! ***

Ubercharge has been back on Stage 1-2 to work on the parallax backgrounds.  We've got a preview of the train platform he's been working on!  Check below for an example of the full map.  

• Stage 1-2 Full Map 

Vioreaper Nest Progress

Since Ubercharge is more of a hard surface guy, Limbo learned Z Brush this month so he could help sculpt the organic models that we need for our biomonster nest levels.  He got a really good start on the Vioreaper nest as you can see below.  Ubercharge also further refined the biomonster goop materials he's been working on, and in doing so was able to cut rendering times by 75-90%. 

• Vioreaper Nest Map Sculpt (WIP) 
• Vioreaper Nest Asset Sculpts  
• Biomonster Enviro Materials 1
• Biomonster Enviro Materials 2  
• Alien Meat Man AKA "Gary" 

Weapon Concepts

Limbo had some time between tasks, and used it to work on concepts for weapon designs.  Now that we have the hang of Spine I'm pretty excited to see these implemented!  A couple of these designs could fill multiple roles, so let me know what you think. 

• Handgun / SMG 
• Pump Shotgun / Energy Weapon 
• Automatic Shotgun / SMG 

New Enemy: Mastermind

Since Limbo has gotten started with Z Brush, he's been planning on doing 3D sculpts of enemies to help provide references for posing/shading.  Not only is this helpful for Pure Onyx, but it should give us a big head start on 3D monster assets for MATM :D.  The first sculpt he's been working on is a potential design for a new monster that, for now, we're calling a Mastermind (Masturmind?  Eh?).  

Limbo originally planned for him to control Vorepup swarms, but now we're thinking he could add a level of complexity to biomonster encounters by buffing / shielding / berserking other biomonsters.  Another idea is that he could go Psycho Mantis on you with a channeled attack and scramble your controls until you interrupt him.  

As for the H aspect of things, consider the possibilities of telekinetic grapples and multi-teaming ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉)

• Mastermind Sculpts  

Mr. Kittyhawk’s Unity Overhaul Update

Hi everyone, glad to see you're still here. I've been hard at work this month cleaning up our code architecture. Refactoring and architecture improvements are very unsexy business, but it's necessary to insure future builds are stable and have only minor bugs in them. Since this work doesn't have a whole lot that I can easily show you visually in game, I'm going to share a peek behind the curtain on how the components make a game fit together.  Perhaps more importantly, it should give you some sense of the work that’s gone into this overhaul.

I've documented about half of our code into a class diagram. This is a roadmap I use to remind myself what tools I have available to me while I'm building the game, and also where those features live in relation to what I'm currently working on. This diagram doesn't show everything, but it should give you more than enough detail to understand our architecture.

Sections of the combat system and unit definitions that I'm currently working on don't have finished documentation yet.  We also won't be spoiling how the H system works before our release in the next few weeks. To get started we'll examine a small subsection of the graph and explain how to read the individual pieces, and then I'll leave you with a larger view of how the game works under the hood, and what our systems are capable of doing. Hope you enjoy!  

• Diagram Tutorial 
• Overview 
• Unity Components