July 2020 Progress Update! (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

This has been one of those months where I could use a clone @_@.  

We have a lot of pieces in motion as we work toward implementing many of the designs we've been building up, and keeping the pipeline full while tackling these different elements has been challenging.  

I've personally been learning ZBrush so I can better direct character progress at the high-poly sculpt level and help keep designs in line with their concepts.  I've also been working through UI and loot/power-up designs to facilitate the programmers' steady progress :D.  As usual there's been a lot of character development work as well!  

Here are the topics for this update!  Those marked with ** are new since the most recent Inner Circle update post.

• ** New UI Designs
• ** APL's Inventory Screen
• FemCop Sculpt Finished! 
• Onyx Rig Updates   
• New RoboBadCop Boss Concepts 
• ** Police Boss - Finished Design!
• ** Police Boss Sculpt 
•  Splicer Boss Progress! 
• ** Splicer Boss Animations
• ** Loot System Progress!
• ** Loot Drop / Power-up Designs
• Ubercharge's Environment Progress

New UI Designs 

Things are finally clicking for me with the UI design!  I generally have to let complex designs marinate for a while, but after a while the individual elements begin to fit together naturally.  

These designs are still mock-ups. but APL is on a roll with the UI back-end and we will likely push the rest out pretty quickly.  

AltairPL's Inventory Screen 

On the functional side of things, APL has developed the first iteration of the player inventory screen and  associated back-end this month.  The listed items are just goofy placeholders, so expect things to be more fleshed out soon.  

I still have to do the more finalized design (matching the status screen I'm showing off today), but the bones are here, and they are working in-game.  One thing still missing is equipment stats, which we should get in before the next release. 

FemCop Sculpt Finished! 

Happy Otter finished up the FemCop enemy sculpt at the end of last month, and made a set of renders for you to check out :D.  I'll have a preview of her inside Unity soon! 

Onyx Rig Updates 

TK has finished rigging Onyx's genitals!  Not much more to say about this -- we had a lengthy video to show off the capabilities but it keeps getting taken down =_=.

New RoboBadCop Boss Concepts 

The new Police faction boss has a lot going on, and Limbo did a bunch of additional sketches so we don't grind gears too much with 3D revisions. This time, he's focused on the accessories such as the jet packs, missile launcher, ammo feeders, and fist cannons.  

The boss fight should become a bit more clear here, as these new sketches show a range of capabilities and attacks.  To elaborate, some of this guy's combat features include:

• Combos combining fist attacks with his retractable cannons
• Aerial and ground modes  
• Ability to glide along ground via booster jets (think Armored Core)
• Missile pod delayed AoE attack (laser guidance indicators appear on ground before they rain down)
• And what you're all interested in I'm sure -- mass field holographic restraints (AKA photon density fields (AKA "magic"))) for H attacks ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 

I plan to animate his jet packs so they can obtain different configurations that help the player better read his stances.  Since this would be a pain to design with mechanical joints, I came up with the concept of these joining to him via superconducting electromagnets.  This allows them to float freely.  

As for H attacks, we have a lot of leeway here, but I think an aerial H scene is a must.  Let me know what ideas you come up with :D.

Police Boss - Finished Design!

I finished up Limbo's police boss designs early this month, as I wanted to focus on bulking him up to give him that oversized beat 'em up aesthetic.  I played off Limbo's design elements and we ended up going with sort of a street samurai meets Japanese mecha theme for him.

Police Boss Sculpt WIP

As mentioned above, I started learning Zbrush more seriously this month, and have been helping Limbo and TK with the police boss design.  There were a lot of minor edits on the Splicer boss that slowed things down, so I decided to get my hands dirty here and set up a camera system to help us better use the concept references.  This should cut down on the minor edits we have to do in Maya later.  

Splicer Boss Progress!

The Splicer Boss is finally ready for animations! He's proven to be the most challenging enemy from a technical perspective yet, but I think we're really zeroing in on making these shaders pop. 

I've been studying Arc System Works' style for Guilty Gear Strive, and based on that I added a new technique to the shader process to get better edge highlights on materials like leather and metal. The result is a much better sense of depth without sacrificing the cel-shaded aesthetic.

Splicer Boss Animations 

TMX has around half of the animations for the Splicer Boss in functional order.  I still have to add secondary motion for details like his armor and cape bouncing, but he's getting close to where we can start prepping to put him in the game.  I'm really excited to work on the FX for this guy's attacks, and with SFX he should be really impressive.

Loot System Progress! 

AltairPL and Mr. Kittyhawk have been working on the back-end for the loot and power-ups system.  More specifically, APL did the RPG database interface for the system, while Mr. KH has been developing the graphical side of things, such as loot spawns and animations.

Reward spawns come in four varieties -- loot (goes to the inventory), power-ups (used instantly), currency and score bonuses, and temporary weapons.  The player must interact with loot, power-ups, and temporary weapons in order to activate them, while Onyx can simply walk over cash and score bonuses to snap them up.

Mr. Kittyhaw's system will cover all of these, and will also double for other interactive objects within environments (switches and so forth).

Once he finishes up here, he will move onto destructible containers and environment props.

Loot Drop / Power-up Designs 

While AltairPL and Mr. Kittyhawk have been working on the back-end, TK put together some model designs for loot and power-ups.

The goal here was to create abstract designs that work for the entire loot category.  This system is heavily inspired by the original Phantasy Star Online's loot system -- which I always thought did a great job of giving the player proper visual cues without creating tons of visual noise or relying on text-based colors like drops in many action-RPGs do.  When Onyx approaches a loot container or power-up, the player will get a pop-up window in the corner that gives more details.  Unlike loot, currency and score bonuses will mimic tangible items -- briefcases full of cash, electronic devices and the like.  

So far I only have a few concepts for loot graphics done, but it should be enough to get the system rolling --very likely in the next release.

Ubercharge's Environment Progress 

Ubercharge has been working on the night version of the Mech Bay map tileset this month.  He still has to render out the tileset, but I've posted a finished quality tiling example, as well as a big board of WIP preview renders and concepts we've done!