July 2019 Progress Update!

Hey everyone!

We should have another Pure Onyx release ready for you next week!  Here are the expected changes:

• Completely reworked Combat/AI code that should clear up many of the existing known issues, as well as remove input lag and glitches.
• Splicer Boss grapple animation and first H scene.
• Added a wind up / grab animation for the Splicer Thugs' H attacks.  
• SFX for the boss and Chain Splicer 

We've also made a lot of other progress this month!  

One of the more important updates is that we have dynamic physics working *on character skeletons*.  In short, this should mean far less animating work (hair / jackets / anything requiring secondary motion can all be automated) with better results to boot.  I plan on using this on the boss H scene next week, but we won't have other animations retrofitted for it yet.  

On another note, we've figured out how to properly combine traditional animation with Spine's interpolated animation.  It should vastly improve our animations in the long run, and is the missing link for making believable transitions.

We also finally have some female enemy concepts to show off!  Take a look at all the details below :D. 

Contents for this update:

• Inner Circle Discord Channel
• Splicer Boss H Scene Preview
• Dynamic Physics! 
• FemCop Concepts 
• Syndicate Assassin Concepts
• Mr. Kittyhawk's Big AI Update
• Dedicated SFX Designer Joining the Team! 
• Onyx Stylized Hair Sculpt
• Syndicate Enforcer Concepts 
• Animation Progress 

Inner Circle Discord Channel 

As an added perk to the $10 tier, we will be starting a Discord channel sometime in the next week for Inner Circle patrons.  We'll be posting content as we complete it, as well as stuff that may not make it into the posts each week.  I'll let you guys know the details as soon as we have them :D.  

Splicer Boss H Scene Preview

Here's some work-in-progress art for the first boss H scene!  

After experimenting, we've increased the boss' size significantly since it provides for much more "dramatic" H animations.  We have a few days of work left on the art for the grapple stuff and first H scene, but it will be in the next monthly build for sure.  

I'm working toward better transitions and more interesting progression in the H scenes, and as mentioned above being able to use traditional animation elements makes this a lot easier.  I've never done traditional animation, so it's a lot to wrap my head around, but things have clicked for me and I feel good about it.  The GIF I included at the top of this post is an example of how we're using it in the boss H scene.   Utilizing frame-by-frame components will allow for more complex angles than we can do with Spine animation alone, and it only increases memory consumption a bit (only the boobers and belly require sprite sheets, not the entire character).

• Splicer Boss H Scene Preview 1 
• Splicer Boss H Scene Preview 2 

Dynamic Physics!

We spent a few days this month trying out a Unity plugin that is going to save us a ton of work (and produce better results).  The plugin offers a higher level of detail from Unity's physics engine, in that it allows us to enable physics on any bone chain in a skeleton, meaning hair, boobs, jackets, and even jiggles for skin can be completely dynamic.  

I made a brief video showing some examples on Onyx's hair and jacket 

Currently things freak out when the pose changes radically, since right now we don't have animation blending on.  This should work itself out as we add that in, but in the meantime we will need to code a fix for it.  Another thing we need to add is more flexibility, since in some animations we may simply not want physics on, or want different settings.  We will add this into our animation metadata system once we get to it after the AI. 

FemCop Concepts 

Here are the first sketches for the female cop enemy concepts :D.   Spine makes it relatively easy to have separate skins for a character, so I've been messing with a bunch of variations in hopes we can utilize that further.  It's easy to go overboard here, so I'll probably select two or three and see how it goes before committing to too much.

• FemCop Concepts 1 
• FemCop Concepts 2 
• FemCop Concepts 3 
• FemCop Concepts 4 
• FemCop Concepts 5 

Syndicate Assassin Concepts

The second female enemy concept is a Syndicate ninja/assassin.  She'll be a highly evasive enemy that can switch between katana and kunai depending on her range (or maybe we'll break them into two enemies).  I'd love to try out more hair styles with her when there's time -- especially now that we can animate it all automatically @_@.

• Syndicate Assassin Concepts 1 
• Syndicate Assassin Concepts 2 

Mr. Kittyhawk's Big AI Update

Well, it's more than AI really -- it's the entire combat system.  

Mr. Kittyhawk has finally gotten over all the hurdles of revamping the state machine.  If you recall the previous updates, the state machine is what keeps track of each unit's current action, and drives animations / combat logic / AI behavior.  In doing so, he's eliminated remaining input issues, such as the 3 frame lag we had to introduce in order to ensure the physics engine stayed synced.   The cooldowns on attacks are also much more solid now, and there's no more pose flickering between actions.  

Instead of having a separate state machine for the player and enemies, both are now driven by the same code.  He's eliminated the need for complicated coroutines (multi-threaded code) that were causing a lot of the bugs in previous builds, which should speed up adding new attacks and logic to enemies.

There's still some debugging, but the next major task is to convert existing enemy AI behaviors to this new system.  After that we should be able to finally move on to animation metadata, which will give us way more control over how animations play (very important for improving H scenes).

Onyx Stylized Hair Sculpt

Over the past few days, TK did a really great stylized sculpt of Onyx's hair based on the art I've been doing for PO.  I'll be using it in my 3D reference mock-ups from here on out to save time and sanity, as well as to better keep style intact during difficult transition animations. 

Dedicated SFX Designer Joining the Team!

I decided I need to delegate some audio work if we're going to get this thing polished quickly, and to fill the void, Lewd K will be joining us to help out with SFX.  He's worked on a bunch of other H games, including Cloud Meadow, Future Fragments, and Lewdest Labyrinth.  He already has the first round of combat SFX for the Chain Splicer and boss done, and we will continue to focus on this kind of stuff until we improve the audio framework for the H animations, at which point we'll start to focus on that :D. 

Syndicate Enforcer Progress

Aside from a few more elements to finish up, we now have a really solid 3D reference for the Syndicate Enforcer enemy.  TK has reworked and rigged the Syndicate coat model we made for MATM to match Limbo's design for Pure Onyx.  Limbo has started working on pose concepts as well.  

Animation Progress

This month I've been working on 3D mock-ups for four separate H scenes and two struggle scenes, but we've also been working on rigging and animating the boss' moveset.  One thing I hope to experiment with soon is 3D blade trails, since doing them in Spine isn't quite working out.  It works great for chopping motions, but for any attacks that need to convey depth it's lacking since the animation can't be in front of and behind multiple characters simultaneously.