March 2021 Progress Update! (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

We have a lot of new work to show off!

Last week's $10 tier release features the new H scene gallery, as well as the first H scene for the FemCop character.  We're currently working on a release for all tiers that will contain a second H scene for her, some additional bug fixes, and whatever else we can squeeze in.  

As usual we've been doing a lot of work outside the releases, and this month we have concepts for three new enemies, modeling/rigging progress, and even work on our new water FX system to show off.  I'll also be discussing a bit about our animation retargeting process I worked out this month to show how we're managing H scene conversion for other characters.

Topics for this Progress Update

• Bunny Girl Enemy Concept
• Male Cop Enemy Concept
• Tank Cop Enemy Concept
• Mecha-9 Model and Rig Complete!
• Animation Retargeting
• More Female Rig Improvements
• Water FX System
• Fan Art Page!

Bunny Girl Enemy Concept

They may look harmless, but these bunny girls are actually affiliated with New Babylon's Syndicate, blending in at their establishments within the Red-Light district.  You can expect to find them in the club portion of the level that we're in the early stages of developing!

A unique aspect to their design is their blackout form, where they become like UV painted devils when the lights change.  When in this form, they become much more dangerous! 

Male Cop Enemy Concept

Limbo and I revised the standard male police officer's design from MATM to give him a more cohesive feel for PO.  The original design was largely constructed from kitbashed models, so this one is truly unique.  Since it was also originally designed to use physically-based textures (more realistic looking), we simplified the design to work well with PO's style.  Even after removing a lot of details, he still turned out to be pretty complex @_@.

Shield Cop Enemy Concept

Limbo first created this character design (minus the shield and handgun) all the way back in 2019, but at the time I wasn't sure what to use him for.  Fast forward and I feel he has the perfect look for a heavily armored tank archetype.  

He'll function a bit differently from normal enemies, in that attacking him from the front will damage his shield.  The color of the energy barrier will transition as it becomes damaged.  Alternatively, Onyx can maneuver around him to hit him from behind.  Perhaps we'll add a skill to disarm him of his shield in this manner.  

Mecha-9 Model and Rig Complete!

TK has finished the Mecha-9 enemy's hi-poly model, low poly model, and rig!  I'm still in the very early stages of creating materials for it in Unity, so expect some more polished Unity screens in the next update.

TK has however prepared a rig demonstration video, showing some of its features in action!  You can check it out here: Mecha-9 Rig Demonstration Video 

Animation Retargeting

This month's releases feature the first H scenes for a character other than Onyx, and I wanted to go into the process I developed for converting said scenes.  

The process is partially automated, but not entirely so.  It begins with a process called animation retargeting, in which the animation for Onyx gets mapped onto the new character.  The rigs share joint/bone names wherever possible, so much of the motion gets transferred successfully.  Any feature that is not shared between the characters however (different hair, clothing attributes, etc) must be animated.    

Our characters feature different body shapes and heights, as well as unique faces, something I think is important to preserve, but it adds some more steps.  I think with more R&D an automated solution could be developed, but right now manual realignment and adjustments are required to make sure all the body parts match up / look good.  

Earlier this month I trained Penapsquat on this as well as the animation export process, so he and I will be tackling this task together.  While it does take extra work, the payoff to effort ratio is definitely worth it, especially once we can break these scenes out of Gallery Mode and start integrating the conversions into gameplay.  

(sorry for the choppy GIF!)

More Female Rig Improvements

We have a couple of new improvements to the female rigs worth showing!  One is an improved and extended belly bulge feature, as it became obvious that we, uh, underestimated Street Lord Wraxe and no doubt future big bois (sorry for the choppy GIF -- I made it slow-mo but had trouble getting the frame rate to sync with the lower FPS GIF converter).  This feature is already on the new/upcoming FemCop animations, but will be transferred back to Onyx's scenes ASAP.

The second improvement helps with extreme poses around the hip area, such as the ones we have planned for the Chain Splicer's solo scene.  The change allows for scale to function with TK's corrective joints -- meaning we can re-inflate joints that deflate at super harsh angles.  

Water FX System

Brum has been focused this month on creating a water FX and shader system for maps with standing water, some of which will exist in the Sewers level, such as in last month's concept designs.  So far it's turning out really well!  I spent the last couple of days or so creating a material with the shader for the Sewers test map, which you can check out a demonstration of below.  We still have to add SFX however~

Water FX Demonstration Video   

Brum will likely be working on character reflections next, which are important not only for these water scenes, but to better ground the characters on regular maps as well. 

Fan Art Page!

We've added a page for fan art and commissions to the website!  As with the site itself, it's a placeholder until we find the time to upgrade it to a more feature-rich design, but it works for now :D.  We will update it periodically, so if you have any fan art you'd like to submit just message me or mention us on Twitter ^-^ (@EromancerGames).