January 2021 Progress Update!

Hey everyone!

A lot of our energy this past month went into the two Pure Onyx releases, but we've done quite a bit of other work as well that wasn't visible in these.  As usual,  I'd like to focus on that for our update, and what to expect in the next upcoming release! 

Here's the list of content for this update:

• The Next Release!
• Splicer Blockbanger
• Junkyard Enemy Concepts!
•   - Tall Man
•   - Ghoul
•   - Mecha-9
•   - C-K3R
• Combat Animation Progress
• APL's Equipment Progress
• Workflow Optimization and Automation

The Next Release!

Our primary goal for the February release is to add the first double team H scene to the game! It's in progress, and is an extended scene containing the Splicer Runt and Thug.  A secondary goal is largely backend-related, and is to update the original Splicer Thug H scenes to use Onyx's latest skeleton.  Not having to support the old skeletons will simplify the process of adding H scenes as we move forward.

There's also a possibility that we will add the Chain Splicer by the end of the month!  TMX has been making solid progress on his combat animations, and TK has the chain whip rig functioning great as well.  I'm excited to add these guys back in since they force the player to focus on positioning, to utilize block, and are a great deterrent to jump kick spam.

There will also be the usual assortment of feature upgrades and stability improvements from APL.  I'll post a more detailed list once we're closer!

Splicer Blockbanger

TK and I have finished the Splicer Blockbanger character (formerly the Splicer Grenadier) -- he's now ready for animation!  

Not much new to say here, other than the design of his grenades has changed some.  Since some maps are dark, I figured it was important for these to be self-lit so that they're always visible.  The color will likely indicate the type of the grenade (we went over some ideas for these in the previous update :D).

Junkyard Enemy Concepts!

The Junkyard is one of the six major zones in PO.  It's heavily populated by machines, one of the four main types of enemies in the game.  Up until now we've focused pretty heavily on humanoid and biomonster enemies, but this month Limbo Limbo and I have been working on fleshing out concepts for mechanical ones. 

• Tall Man
• Ghoul

Sentient self-replicating robotic constructs, the Tall Man and Ghouls are results of an anomalous rogue AI that has appeared in New Babylon.  

The Ghouls wander the Junkyard wasteland in packs, relatively dormant until attacked.  Once damaged, their shells break away to reveal their frightening innards, rendering them berserk.  

Positioning is vital for Onyx to single them out, and unless they can outright destroy a pack of Ghouls, area-of-effect attacks are a sure way to for Onyx to be quickly overwhelmed.  Area-of-effect traps or friendly fire from enemies can come as a surprise, berserking large packs of Ghouls and quickly turning the odds in the enemies' favor.  

Sometimes these packs are made more dangerous by the presence of a Tall Man, a slow but towering enemy that the Ghouls gather around.  Agro-ing a Tall Man before his Ghouls are dealt with is dangerous, as his long arms can swipe across the battlefield, shocking his Ghouls into action. 

• Mecha-9 Guard Hound

The machining companies housed in the Junkyard district often protect their stockpiles with the Babel Mecha-9 robotic guard hound.  Strangely enough, these units have also recently become corrupted by the rogue AI spreading through the Junkyard.   

The Mecha-9's primary weapon is far more potent than a mere bite -- their entire upper bodies are comprised of a high power energy weapon, able to launch a beam of highly charged particles across the battlefield.

• C-K3R Scavenger Drone 

This abhorration is the result of a corrupted construction/scavenger drone used by scrap companies to collect parts throughout the massive mechanical waste piles of the Junkyard.

The C-K3R shifts between two behavior profiles.  When undisturbed, it will behave as a roving scanner, aided by a giant search light at night.  Upon detecting something of interest, the drone will perform a 180 maneuver, showing its true eye.  Its heavy-duty mandibles and motorized tentacles descend, making this repurposed scavenger drone into a formidable combatant.

Combat Animation Progress

When Penapsquat hasn't been working on the transitions for the upcoming H scene, he and I have been working on animations for the upcoming police enemy.  We're still working our way through figuring out her moveset and combat role, so there's been a lot of experimentation with different combo patterns.  

TMX has been hard at work on the Chain Splicer combat animations, and as you can see he's done a solid job of replicating the concept we had for him in the 2D version of the game!  

APL's Equipment Progress

AltairPL has been back to working pretty heavily on equipment loot related backend mechanics and organization.  

One of his early accomplishments this past cycle was adding the loot table to our game database (it was a simple hardcoded script before).  Right now it's still very basic as it only operates globally, and will go through another major iteration once we add leveled lists.  Leveled lists will allow for loot to change based on some factor such as Onyx's level.  This will be important once we add chests, as well as reward drops from breakable containers.

APL's prepared some bullets that describe his progress on the equipment side of things.  Progress partially related to equipment items overhaul:

• I made a lot of changes to base item structures making them more versatile and functional.
• Made a lot of changes to item effects (things like add stats, add to kick damage, etc.), including their separation based on whether the effect should be instant or permanent.

Directly related to the equipment items overhaul:

• Made boatload of structural changes to GameDB equipment, including much better, versatile, and modular use of item effects, along with their integration with equipment item and upgrade levels.
• Completely rewrote in-game equipment structure and initialization
• Coded from scratch almost everything needed for equipment items upgrading, including in-game effect states used to determine the look and feel of the effects requiring certain upgrade level
• Added to items screen WIP item cards used to display equipment item effects - one for selected menu item, and one for equipped item used for comparison purposes
• Coded from scratch effects comparison of two items, which is used by item cards

Workflow Optimization and Automation

Much to his dissatisfaction, I've stolen Brum away from the exponentially more fun UI animation work to focus on our character animation export scripts for Maya.  

Currently, our export workflow works great for a single character, but for long H scene animations with multiple characters it becomes a lot of work.  Brum is eliminating the manual steps from the process, and automating it so that we can export animations for all the characters in a scene in one go.

TK has also been working on a workflow optimization project -- one that will speed up physics simulation for character animations.  Baking physics into animations for best results is a time consuming process, especially when Onyx has so many jangly and jiggly bits.  Her hair alone can take a couple of hours to get right for a single lengthy animation, due to having to experiment with simulation values.  

TK has thus created what's known as a proxy rig -- a lightweight version of Onyx that we can apply our base animation to, bang out simulations very quickly on, and then bake those results back onto the real Onyx rig.  It's a bit of overhead that he's working on automating, but my test showed that Maya simulated a 300 frame animation in 8 seconds on the new proxy rig, when it took two and a half minutes originally.