First look at Pom, the boss of Neos. (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here for the weekly update. This week was entirely dedicated to rigging, animating, and programming the boss. Things are still a little rough around the edges. This boss is definitely more in-depth than the others, and requires a little more time to finish up. That being said progress has been great, and I'm actually further along than I thought I would be. The base rig is done, most of the code is in place, all animations are done, and many of the special effects are in place. Without further ado, let's look at the animations of the attacks!

First step was to rig the model

I did some simple auto-rigging with Rigify for this, along with some minor additions and tweaking.

Next was just setting up a Simple 2D face animation in AnyPortrait.

This will likely be expanded upon, and was mostly just so I could get stuff in place. I then set up a script to properly position these face components onto the face.

It will basically just rotate the components properly. The positioning and such will likely be tweaked in the future.

Then comes the animation.

Let's just try and show them off with the indicators in place when I can. Some of these gifs are going to be large, so they might take a bit to load. 

We'll try and do things in a logical chronological order.

Pom has different attacks whether you are in front or behind her. Let's start with in-front.

These attacks require a bit more code to function so I will show the first few from the animator window rather than in-game.

First up is a simple swipe.

From this position, Pam will spin towards the character, and upon escaping, she may revert to the other side.

Another attack if you are in front of her is her fireballs. This one is still a bit in progress. She will likely have a different facial animation here, and the effects may be tweaked. In this form she will track the player.

Let's jump to what she's like when you are behind, and some global attacks. She may do these attacks while you are in front as well.

When you are behind she will likely have a straight forward sequence of Summon -> Slam -> Slice. With Slice resetting her angle to be facing you again.

Start with Summon.

During this she will summon Neos specific enemies to attack the player. Upon summoning 6 enemies, she will begin to slam. Slam is a low attack that you must go up to dodge.

And finally Pom will throw a explosive powder into the air, igniting her hand (effect not in yet), and slicing through causing a high explosion. This can be dodged by going low. As mentioned, this attack will reset her, and she will be facing you again.

and before you ask, yes you shoot off her clothes to beat her. There are red gems around her. One on each sleeve and stocking, and 4 on her leotard.

Which leads to the question... what happens when you shoot her clothes off?

This part's function isn't quite implemented yet, but some drones will hover in front holding some restraints. By destroying these drones, you can pin Pom. These animations once again will be back in animator view:

You can see where this goes.. A Machine will spawn behind Pom. Upon shooting the machine it will wind up. The more you shoot it, the faster it goes.

Slower Speed:

Faster Speed:

The faster it goes, the faster her health will deplete. This may take a couple cycles depending on how quick you are.

That pretty much sums up where we are at with the boss... there is still a bit of work to do, but given where we were at at the start of the week, I am happy with this progress.

Next week is going to be wrapping up the last components of this. Hopefully I can bang that off early on in the week, so I can finish up some other things that need attention before the Friday hits. The goal is to have the build completed by Friday, so we can get some testing in before it launches on the 1st, but there is a good amount to do overall still.

Anyways! Thanks again everyone! I'll catch you next week!

-Regulus