Inner Circle Update for October 19 2019!

Hey guys!

Mr. Kittyhawk has been working hard on updating the remaining combat system code for the 3D conversion, and it's given me some time to focus on environments and FX.  We'll hopefully have some combat footage for next week's update :D.

Attack FX 

One of the bigger accomplishments this week for Mr. Kittyhawk, TK and I was finally getting attack FX rolling (shown in first image above).  The system we've built is very flexible for creating all sorts of attack trails and texture-based animations.    Since these FX are in 3D and have actual depth, they should have far fewer issues than our initial 2D tests. 

The ones we've made so far are pretty basic, but I'm excited about the possibilities, especially since it can be used in conjunction with our particle FX.  

Environment FX

Firstly, I highly recommend checking out the high quality video of the example scene shown above!  Sorry that Patreon doesn't allow for embedded videos within posts :(.  

I spent last weekend experimenting with particle FX systems for livening up the environments, and am extremely happy with how it all turned out.  I think we'll need far less heavy duty work animating the pre-rendered backgrounds simply because of how much movement the particle FX add.  

In addition to what's shown with this sewer example, I've created some fog, rain, and storm effects that I'm excited to show off with an outdoor map soon :D.

Environment Lighting System

Uber has put more work into his automated map generation system, this time focusing on lighting.  

The goal of this part of the workflow is to give us the opportunity to create multiple palettes and versions of maps without needing to re-render anything.  It's an important step in our procedural level generation system that we have planned for Mission Mode.  

It's a very similar system to the lighting system we showed a while back for the MATM battle sprites, in that we render lights as separate groups (daylight, ambient, artificial, etc).  The natural colors of the environment are also maintained, allowing us to completely change the entire palette and intensities of each light group independently for a natural look -- all in post.  

To boot, this system also automatically blends the edges of the map tiles, cutting down on a lot of manual work.  I've posted some WIP examples Uber created using one of his sewer tiles.

Vertical Parallax

High Quality Video Example 

Since we've been knocking out all this other environment stuff, Mr. Kittyhawk took a break and tackled adding vertical parallax to maps.  When I was studying Dragon's Crown's maps I realized they were using this to great effect to make their levels feel bigger, working especially well on maps with many background layers. 

Larva Worm Enemy Progress

Here's the first of two enemies we've made significant progress on this week!  This guy has actually been the most frustrating enemy so far to get right in this style.  

This enemy was originally only going to be very small, and come in packs that Onyx has to stomp or knock out of the air when they jump at her, but I've decided on doing a bigger version as well.  We may go back and simplify the smaller version a bit since they get really detailed when scaled down.

Biohound Enemy Progress

We've made progress on the Biohound's 3D model as well!  This guy still needs significant texture work I think for him to shine.  Since we've loosened the strict cel shading style a bit, I'm considering adding gradients across his body like in the concept.  Also his belly and claws will be colored differently.

Here's the Biohound concept art if you missed it before.  The Biohound's main feature is that his primary head can be sucked in and exchanged for weird mutations such as tentacles for grabbing Onyx from a distance and pulling her in, or a hand of sorts for gripping her.  He'll also have more standard H attacks, so overall he should be a very versatile enemy.