PURE ONYX April 2023 Progress Update! (Patreon)

Hey guys!

Apologies for the late update this month.  The week we spent at the beginning of the month patching and improving the March release really ate into this month's time D: -- nonetheless we have a good update on the way for you!  

We're finishing up the retargeted + improved version of the Onyx w/ Thug H scene, which will now work with the new rigs and thus support Onyx's 2nd outfit, bare feet, and H liquid.  It also has improved physics.  There are also a number of combat improvements, new SFX, and we're working on adding an early version of one of the Slums maps that should be in the first release next month!

There's also a lot of new art progress to talk about, so read on for details!

Topics for this Update!

• April Release Details
• Ring Girl Sculpt Finished!
• Combat + Animation Improvements
• Street Bike Model!
• New Labs Boss!
• UI Design Progress
• Hazmat Trooper Preview
• Environment Art Progress!

April Release Details

Tentative Changelog 

• Added Onyx w/ Thug retargeted H scene + improvements (New outfits / feet / H liquid will now work on this scene)
• Added SFX for BunnyBlade w/ BunnyBat standing pole H scene
• Added hit stops, camera shakes, and actor shake FX to combat 
• Improved walk/run animations for Onyx + remaining enemies with foot tracking. 
• Improved look of knockdowns. They now transition smoothly / no longer pop the character up in an ugly way.
• Fixed instances of enemies becoming stuck in DefendHit animation
• Fixed instances of Larva walking backwards
• Added backend framework for events based on the result of attacks (hit, blocked, knockedown, etc).  In the future can be used for parries/counterattacks/and more.
• Leaping Larva will now bounce off Onyx if she blocks them.
• Added ambient Spider Cavern SFX
• Added SFX for Male Cop
• Added new SFX for Charger's rock fall ability
• Adding support for missing blendshapes during H scenes for Tier 2 gear (shorts pulls, etc.)
• Adding H models for Tier 2 gear (pulled down shorts / raised up shirt)
• Dynamic physics improvements on Onyx to fix clipping + improve motion
• Fixed initial animation on actors being delayed at spawn (actors no longer spawn in T pose)

Ring Girl Sculpt Finished!

Demonu has finished the details on Ring Girl this month! I've included some closeups in the gallery above for clothing wrinkle and bevel enjoyers.

Combat + Animation Improvements

A big change this month is the addition of hit stops and actor/camera shakes to combat.  These changes make certain attacks feel significantly more weighty, and give satisfying feedback when a large hit is registered.  These systems work for future attacks as well.

The look of knockdowns has been improved, as enemies no longer immediately pop up in a single frame.  They instead follow more natural curves as originally intended.  Enemies can also cause the camera to shake when they hit the ground now, but we're reserving this for bigger enemies like the Brute, or when they are slammed down or against walls from (future) special knockdowns.

When Onyx blocks Larva during their Leap attack, they will now ricochet off of her, making it easier to retaliate.  The mechanics used here allow for other future events when attacks are successfully landed or blocked, such as parries or counterattacks.  More technically, the target can now communicate the result of an attack back to the attacker.

We've also finished foot tracking improvements on the walk/run animations, so characters' feet aren't sliding all over as they move now -- at least in horizontal motion.  We'll still need additional work with animation blending in order to accomplish this on vertical motion, as the beat em up aesthetic is unusual for 60+ FPS 3D (sprites with stepped animation conceal this better).

Street Bike Model!

Kame has finished the model for the Splicer Motobiker's first street bike!  He learned a new tool called Plasticity for hard surface modeling, which made for cleaner results faster than he could've gotten with just ZBrush.

UI Design Progress

Something we haven't shown any of yet is Zydaline's extensive work over the last couple of months on new UI design mock-ups!  I'm displaying here a small sample of a very big collection of concepts!  She's worked on everything from health gauge and status icon widgets to completely new sections of the UI, reskins of things like prompt windows and the inventory, and everything in between.

Keep in mind these aren't final -- we'll continually go over requirements (both game requirements and things like animation and transitions) based on the mock-ups then I'll get in there and start breaking things.  

New Labs Boss!

With the latest improvements to our environment art workflow, it's highly likely we can accomplish more than we previously thought.  We've had particularly good results with our AI improvements to hard surface (metal, manmade, mechanical) designs, and as such will likely be able to extend the Labs section beyond what we previously thought.

At any rate, we needed a second boss for the Labs (the first being the spider boss in the caverns section), and would like to introduce what we're currently calling "the Horror" :D.

This boss has a few fun features, notably an optical camouflage invisibility effect, a tentacle tongue, and the ability to morph body parts at will into biological abominations.

I wanted to make a special mention -- VenusKn0ws, a longtime $10 tier patron, originally came up with the theme for this boss, and even shared a fan doc in our #fan-suggestions channel on Discord.  Special thanks to Speedyshamrock, MangoFishSocks, and questionablyinsane for their contributions as well! So, thanks to them and the other patrons who devoted a lot of effort to helping us sort out ideas for content!

Hazmat Trooper Preview

We also have a preview of a new upcoming enemy from Kame to show off!  This is one of the Babel hazmat units that you'll encounter in areas with a large biomonster presence.  We plan on having a couple versions -- including one with a flamethrower!

Environment Art Progress!

This has been another very successful month in terms of workflow and R&D improvements.  Our AI setup has reached critical mass I think in terms of allowing us to get the style we need out of our environments in a timely way.  

We reported success in getting results last month on manmade objects / scenes (urban and high tech areas for instance), and it's gone much further this month.  Not only are we able to improve style on these things, we can now generate the large images we need for map backgrounds with far fewer nonsensical AI artifacts and in fewer laborious steps.  Increasingly interesting is the ability to create variations rapidly, and with far more variety than would be possible with other workflows. Anyways, please check out the Slums map we're working on at the top of this post for an idea of what I mean :D!

I've also made progress on stylizing natural and organic objects, and as such have made a lot of progress on the next iteration of the Spider Cavern map.  The goal here was to, as usual, bring the painting style and level of detail closer to what works best for our character style.  I had expected to have it in-game for this release, but with the speed at which things are progressing I already would like to do some upgrades, as I already have improved test results.  I have however shown an in-progress look at that rework above, along with some of the work we've done generating foreground elements.