Inner Circle Update for June 18 2019! (Patreon)

Hey guys!

We all took a few days to unwind after the last release, but have been back at it this past week and have quite a bit to show already.  

One of the more important updates is that we have dynamic physics working *on character skeletons*.  In short, this should mean far less animating work with better results to boot.  You can check out some examples of it working on Onyx's hair and jacket in the video above -- but keep in mind we've only had it working a few days, so we need some more time to resolve glitches / tune it and integrate it into our animations/workflow.

We also finally have some female enemy concepts to show off!  Take a look at all the details below :D.

FemCop Concepts 

Here are the first sketches for the female cop enemy concepts :D.   

Spine makes it relatively easy to have separate skins for a character, so I've been messing with a bunch of variations in hopes we can utilize that further.  It's easy to go overboard here, so I'll probably select two or three and see how it goes before committing to too much.

• FemCop Concepts 1 
• FemCop Concepts 2 
• FemCop Concepts 3 
• FemCop Concepts 4 
• FemCop Concepts 5 

Syndicate Assassin Concepts

The second female enemy concept is a Syndicate ninja/assassin.  She'll be a highly evasive enemy that can switch between katana and kunai depending on her range (or maybe we'll break them into two enemies).  I'd love to try out more hair styles with her when there's time -- especially now that we can animate it all automatically @_@.

• Syndicate Assassin Concepts 1 
• Syndicate Assassin Concepts 2 

Dynamic Physics Details

Mr. Kittyhawk has made significant progress with his AI system, but we spent the last few days trying out a Unity plugin that is going to save us a ton of work (and produce better results).  The plugin offers a higher level of detail from Unity's physics engine, in that it allows us to enable physics on any bone chain in a skeleton, meaning hair, boobs, jackets, and even jiggles for skin can be completely dynamic.  

Currently things freak out when the pose changes radically, since right now we don't have animation blending on.  This should work itself out as we add that in, but in the meantime we will need to code a fix for it.  Another thing we need to add is more flexibility, since in some animations we may simply not want physics on, or want different settings.  We will add this into our animation metadata system once we get to it after the AI. 

Animation Progress

Originally the plan was to show off some new H scene artwork for this update, but I got sidetracked helping with the new female enemy concepts  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) and got a bit behind.  That said, I've been bouncing back and forth between four H scenes and two struggle sequences.  One has really come together, and with some luck we can have a release for you guys next week to show it off. 

Lastly, TK has been rigging and I've started animating the boss' moveset.  One thing I hope to experiment with soon is 3D blade trails, since doing them in Spine isn't quite working out.  It works great for chopping motions, but for any attacks that need to convey depth it's lacking since the animation can't be in front of and behind multiple characters simultaneously.