May Progress Update! (Patreon)

Hey guys! 

We have some fun stuff to show off for the $3 tier for this month! In addition to that, we nearly have the battle theme revamp complete (you can check out the latest version above)! I presented an early version of it to the Inner Circle crowd a couple weeks back, and the feedback was really helpful in figuring out the direction it needed to go in. Most of you liked the vibe of the original, so we stripped it back and tried to retain that while adding production value. Audio guy had a big deadline for another project, so he'll be doing the final edits/mix/master when he hasn't been awake for two days :D. I'll also be uploading another soundtrack demo of his later tonight or tomorrow for the $15 crowd! 

Progress on the New Engine

Your eyes don't deceive you!  That image above is MATM running in APL's new URGE engine (at a lovely 1300+ FPS)! 

This month AltairPL started out by focusing on file handling for the new engine. He ran into trouble early on when he had to sort out issues regarding non-ASCII characters in file names. After lots of cursing at Microsoft, he was able to resolve his issues by using Unicode throughout his code. After that he decided to see if he could actually get the game to run. Here's an update from APL about his experience over the last couple of weeks getting the game to run in the engine:

I decided to make a crash-test: running the actual game using URGE. There were a few problems and bugs, and I also had to disable some custom Ruby scripts and add workarounds for some not yet implemented things, but in the long run it was a success; MATM is looking and working just fine.

Not having any text in the game was making testing some things problematic, so my next venture was decided: implementing font handling and text drawing. All preparations and some very basic stuff was ready before Easter Sunday, and the plan was to finish this in the week thereafter. Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of work needed to implement font handling. At the moment only very basic font handling is implemented, but this will have to wait for a while. Currently, all my attention is directed towards text rendering. I had a lot of problems with making the italic/oblique style function properly, and this style is used in MATM only all the time. I've already managed to fix 3 major issues, but the remaining one is above my skills at the moment. I still have one more thing to try though. Slim chance it will solve the problem, but it's still better than nothing.

I don't want to sound completely depressing, so here are some screenies from the game working with URGE! 

Story Preview 

Early this month I decided I wanted to do something fun to show you guys a sample of my work on the game's story these past few months.  What I've created is a presentation showing off the first (spoiler-free) details of the game's backstory!   Let me know what you think!   

For all those that are surely wondering, story stuff is still the hang-up on V0.06 progress. I'm definitely on the tail end of it, however I got sidetracked with all of the following artistic projects the last couple weeks of the month. My current goal is to boil the whole thing down into what will likely be a 10-12 page summary that reads sort of like a Wikipedia movie plot write-up.  I was basically working at such a low level for so long that I didn't want to lose the forest for the trees, and with a few diverging but major ideas rattling around I decided I should take a step back to see how the various possibilities look at the high level.  Another benefit of doing this is that I'll actually be able to get critical analysis from other people without handing them a 100+ page document.  It's been in transition so much that the rest of the team doesn't even know most of the story :D.  I'm also writing the summary in such a way that, while explicit, it fails to mention the H content, meaning I can get critical advice from experienced writers who may not be all that into H-games.

Malise's New Hair 

This is one of the aforementioned artistic projects that I got sidetracked by :D. It's probably important to note that with AltairPL's new engine coming along so well, I've decided that when we transition to it (definitely some time after V0.06) I'll be doing an artwork overhaul on pretty much everything. This will be a great time to do it since the engine transition will require me to go through and prepare HD versions of the artwork anyways. This doesn't mean redoing everything from scratch or anything, but it does mean I get to take what I've learned since I started figuring MATM's art style out and make something really professional looking. 

As I've mentioned to the IC crowd, hair in particular is something I kind of half-assed originally and I know I can do better. I had initially intended on creating a new model for Malise's hair from scratch, but the IC crowd's feedback led me to try to improve upon the current one (with much success!). TK helped out by creating a prosthetic addition to thicken up the geometry in the back and ponytail.  She also has a hairline now!  I think the results are really solid, but it was definitely a chore fixing all the glaring issues.  I've made a gallery showing before and afters , and have also made a set of GIFs showing the same .  

I think you'll be surprised how much it was necessary when you compare the old with the new!  The crappiness of the old hair is a lot more obvious with the new directional lighting style and character shadows, and is especially obvious in HD/closeups.  

Character Shadows

So, this is actually a topic that I've been messing with for awhile, and it was bugging me enough that I decided that I wanted to knock out a solid implementation for it due to the aforementioned artwork overhaul on the horizon. 

One of the biggest issues I've had with the character artwork is that I've never been able to get a handle on until now is how to properly handle character shadows so that they don't only look consistent within the styling of the game, but actually add to it.  The goal in my mind was therefore to create an effect that leans toward an animated/hand painted look so as to mitigate the unnatural 3D feel that comes across in some of the artwork.  In addition, it needs to do what shadows should do, and that is add depth; something the character artwork is lacking in my opinion.  Lastly, it needs to work with directional lighting.  *All* of the character artwork has been lit from the front up to this point, and in some environmental situations it just doesn't look that great.  The reason for this is that directional lighting (up until now) does some gnarly stuff to the character shaders, basically making unlit areas look super flat.  I've finally come up with a low overhead process that, I think, fits the bill (and just as importantly, works universally).

I've made an album that you can find here that shows off some of the test results, as well as gives a brief description of the process.   

Once you're through with that, I've also uploaded a set of GIFs and images  showing some of the many early attempts and progression toward the current technique.  Keep in mind that Google Drive doesn't play animated GIFs, so you'll need to download them to check them out.  

Let me know what you think!