PURE ONYX December 2022 Progress Update!

Hey everyone :D!

The Pure Onyx release this month should be ready on the 31st!

This month we've made further progress on Onyx's equipment models, as well as the visual equipment system code.  It's going well enough that may begin seeing some results implemented in-game with that as early as next month.  Also related to that, we've made more progress with the improved clothing damage models.  This will be integrated with the same system that handles visual equipment.

I personally was dealt a setback this month when my brand new workstation's processor bit the dust (the memory controller died, as far as I can tell).  Diagnosing and repairing it ate about a week =_= but we've managed to put together a decent release I think.  It contains a bunch of combat fixes, a greatly improved turning animation system, and a new map.          

As for new H scenes, the Bunny H scene storyboard progress and posing is underway!  We've also started work on concepts for Semi's H scenes.  Xxoom and Limbo have completed a bunch of concepts that are available on our Discord.

Topics for this Update!

• December Release Details
• Onyx Equipment Models (Tier 4)
• Visual Equipment Progress
• Improved Clothing Damage
• Semira Combat Animation Concepts
• Semira's Boss Map Concepts
• Improved Turn Animations
• Mr. Black's Rig Completed!

December Release Details

Tentative Changelog (** indicates items added or being added since the October 25 Inner Circle test release):

• ** Added SFX / liquid FX for Onyx's 3x Vioreaper scene
• ** Added Spider Cavern map and associated test mission to the world map
• ** Turn animations no longer eat enemies' attack windup animations
• ** Wraxe no longer sometimes skips his turn animation after attacks
• ** Onyx can once again Dodge while defending.
• ** Bosses no longer slide if they are stunned while navigating.
• Added error handling to new loading system (game will now properly show error and exit instead of loading eternally if errors occur during startup)
• Added turn animations for the Bunny Girls
• Replaced all turn animations with improved versions that don't glitch out partway through.
• Enemies almost always play turn animations when intended now, as opposed to just flipping in a single frame when they change direction (still at least one case to fix for Wraxe).
• Enemy turn animations no longer get interrupted early by subsequent actions.
• Enemy turn animations can now blend/crossfade into other actions.
• Edited playback speed on various turn animations and walk cycles
• Added footstep SFX to turn animations
• AoE attacks now always knock characters down in the proper direction (exploding barrels, Blade Bunny whirlwind, Charger ground stomp)
• Multi-hit protection no longer prevents H attacks from connecting with the player
• Fixed an issue with Bunny Girls' engagement zones that would make them just follow Onyx around
• Attacks that don't stop movement no longer interrupt and reset in-progress attack combos
• Attacks that don't stop movement also don't grant multihit protection (taking fire damage will no longer protect from normal attacks or h-attacks)
• Collision detection for fire attacks (traps) happens on consistent frame intervals so that DPS can be consistently controlled regardless of number of fire sources
• Bystanders and H scene participants no longer receive fire damage from traps.
• FX related to H scenes are now properly cleaned up when the scene ends

Onyx Equipment Models (Tier 4)

Kame has completed Onyx's Tier 4 equipment sculpts!  As with the Tier 2 set, the colors shown aren't final, but it's a good example of one of the possible palettes we may add via the Wave Shifter system.  

Kame's done a fantastic job this year, so he's been taking a much needed break the last couple of weeks. He'll likely continue with Onyx's Tier 6 at the start of the new year ^-^.

Improved Clothing Damage

Demonu has made solid progress on clothing damage models this month, this time focusing on the improved version of FemCop's, as well as making progress on Syndicate Girl!  

You may or may not have noticed that right now when FemCop's clothing is damaged the entire mesh simply disappears.  This was intended to be a placeholder solution, and we're now getting around to making better looking damage.  And no worries, a nude variant will still be possible!  

Visual Equipment Progress

Up next we fittingly have AltairPL's progress on the visual equipment system!  Here's a writeup he made to explain his progress ^-^.

What's visual equipment? Basically the ability to make Onyx and other actors' visuals change depending on equipped items, their state, and other situational factors.

Doesn't sound too complicated, but as usual with stuff like this, complexity is much higher in NSFW game, and a lot more stuff needs to be taken into consideration to make it work and look good. This includes stuff that isn't currently handled by the game at all, or is handled in a way that's not viable/maintainable long-term... just to name a few:

• ability to enable/disable adult content requires some kind of override/fallback for explicit visuals
• visibility of some body parts, like nipples or genitals, and some liquid FX stuff needs to dynamically change depending on visible items and their state
• gaining access to some body parts during sex scenes needs to change depending on visible items and their state, both type and amount

My work on visual equipment started few months ago with a lot of research, experimentation, testing, and making extensive notes. Actual implementation was constantly pushed back though due to other stuff having higher priority, but now that the second set of Onyx clothes is almost ready, the time was right to bump up the priority for it.

Anyway, looks like all those preparations paid off, since in just 2 weeks I managed to get majority of the 2 most important parts up and running, namely:

GameDB structure and configuration:

• visual actors
• visual slots living under visual actors
• visual items living under visual slots
• zones configuration being part of a visual item
• states configuration being part of a visual item zone
• rig references being part of a visual item zone state

Scene GameObject component:

• combines GameDB visual slots settings with available rigs to set up easy to use and robust means of handling all the necessary visual changes
• handles assignment of items to slots, item state changes, adult content changes, etc.

Whole system still needs a lot more work before it can be actually used in the game proper. Here's a rough list of stuff that still needs to be done:

• assigning visual items to player equipment items - easy
• integrating player equipment item changes with visual equipment - relatively easy, but responding to item damage/destruction may be tricky
• adding/improving integration of some existing systems, like liquid FX or visual damage, with visual equipment - some of it will be easy, some will not
• figure out how to deal with actor variants like female/futa to minimize configuration/data duplication - hard to say - have few ideas, but haven't thought about them much
• figure out how to deal with all existing actor animations which currently store curves for all visibility and blendshape changes, which are colliding with visual equipment system big time - very hard due to sheer amount of animations, complexity of both animation and rig structures, destructive nature of required processing, and the fact that not everything can be automated
• making sex scenes aware of visual equipment and adjusting sequence playback according to current state, like playing/skipping specific undressing animations - very hard due to all the stuff that needs to play together nicely

Semira Combat Animation Concepts

One of Limbo's major goals this month was to draft animation concepts for Semi's combat abilities.  Here's a load of ideas he came up with!  Let me know which are your favorites ^-^. 

• Semi's Drop Kick

The classic drop kick!  Good place to start I think.  Semi has a few dashing attacks, making her dangerous at a distance as well as within grappling range. 

• Chair Throw

This may be one of my favorite attacks, as it relies on a temporary weapon being thrown into the ring by bystanders.  Onyx will naturally be able to use these as well -- probably not like Semi AKA Maximum Mommy though. 

• Dashing Head Lock 

Something not shown that I'd like to add is a rope bounce turn, so that she can take additional passes at running Onyx down if she dodges.  That goes for all her dashing attacks really.

• Faux Down and Counter

If you think you've knocked Semi down, watch out!

• Sword and Axe

If Onyx gets critically knocked down she'll have to struggle to get back up before Semi can pull off one of her famous Sword or Axe techniques from the ropes!

• Block and Counter

Semi may block an attack like many other enemies, but after the first block she may launch an AoE counter that knocks the player away.  The player will need to pay attention so as to not land blows after she begins blocking.

• Throws

Lastly, Semi has a variety of throws that she can surprise Onyx with!  

Semira's Boss Map Concepts

Limbo's other task this month was experimenting with concepts for Semi's map!  This is turning out to be a very fun boss battle to design simply because the wrestling ring arena theme naturally lends so many ideas.  

• Drone Cameras

Drones will occasionally hover around the ring to film the action, but these can tentatively act as projectiles if Onyx smacks them across the ring.  Watch out, because enemies may be able to do this as well :D.

• Screens with Dynamic Footage

The screens in the background will feature dynamic content related to what's going on in ring.  It'd be awesome for this to be fully real-time based on what the drones see, but I strongly suspect there will need to be some artistic fudging, especially for performance reasons.  

• Ring Girls

Another idea we want to look at is adding ring girls or an announcer-type character to the scene.  The potential for situational background H scenes is huge :D!

• Enemies Climbing Into the Ring    

Lastly, surprise enemies joining the fray (either Syndicate or Splicer baddies), would add another layer to the chaos!

Improved Turn Animations

As goofy as it seems, this turned out to be the most difficult animation task we've accomplished since the early hurdles we faced getting the animation system rolling.  Both Unity and Autodesk fought us every step of the way because they have their own theories about how they should break your animations on export/import. 

Unity animates between frames, so that if the game slows down/speeds up, animations still look smooth.  There is however no support for importing stepped animations, meaning you're stuck with this behavior, and any animation event that has to take place instantly (such as mirroring our characters during turns) -- well, you're out of luck.  The result was a very obvious glitched frame that you can see in the November releases.

AltairPL wrote a script that overrides the edits Unity attempts to make to imported animations, and in doing so it allowed us a lot more freedom with animations in general.  He thus extended upon Brum's animation importer script and made a new GUI with presets that will help us overcome some previous animation problems as well.  Anyways, once the technical side was sorted, we still had to rework and re-export/import all 40 or so turn anims (a few for each character), so it was quite the chore!

It wasn't all bad though, as some of Unity's animation related things APL worked through to solve this problem helped him out in his visual equipment work :D.   

Mr. Black's Rig Completed!

Last but not least, TK has finished Mr. Black's rig!  This one had some difficult features, in part due to the giant orb in his belly.  His spine must both stay attached and deform properly around the back of the orb when his torso bends and goes side to side.  Another unique feature is the ability to spread open his coat to show his wares like in the concept art.  This will be done using a mesh swap with a secondary coat specifically designed for these animations.