PURE ONYX - Announcement and Trailer

Hey everyone! 

We've got some big news, and I don't want you to get a false impression, so please read this entire post. This is one of those points where your feedback is highly valuable, and I encourage you to ask questions and discuss! 

Right now, we have no other source of income than from Patreon, and it's creating a problem. We're cutting our teeth on something both advanced and unique, and every decision we make is inherently risky. That risk is basically being pushed entirely to you guys, which isn’t good. We're also doing a ton of world-building, writing, concept designs, and all this meta stuff on top of our technology overhaul that's obviously become a drag for a lot of people. And all the while we’re significantly understaffed for a project of this scale. 

As necessary as it currently is, I don't want patrons to feel obligated to continue supporting every month when there's not new playable content. The solution however is difficult because MATM has a long way to go before it will see retailers, meaning if we continue down this path we will continue to rely on you guys for a long time to come.

We've therefore come up with a plan that should alleviate all of these problems and more.

The goal is to take part of the team and get a very fun and accessible side project built in Unity with a much smaller scope than MATM to you and to retailers ASAP, all while we clear the technical bottlenecks from MATM's development. As it so happens, we currently have the golden opportunity to do this, as Steam has opened its doors to adult content. We all know that the adult game world is fickle, and that these doors of opportunity often close, meaning we have to make this move now. This in no way means we’ll sacrifice quality – it just means we’ll be very busy!

The game will take place in MATM's world, and act as an introduction to MATM's setting, the theme, the denizens of New Babylon, and even some of the characters. It will require MUCH less overhead development time, and what you'll see in this update is from only three and a half weeks of work.

This will do the following:

• Allow us to get a stream of playable content to you much sooner
• Provide us the funds to grow our team further, without making you feel like you're being held hostage while we thrash away at not fun but necessary stuff on our main project
• Give us time to build assets for MATM, and for TK and APL to finish the tech transition / rigging technology we need for MATM
• Allow us to push forward with MATM's world-building, enemy and character concepts, and setting, all while we work on this new project.

WHAT IS THE NEW GAME?

The game will be called Pure Onyx: A New Babylon Tale. It will be an arcade style beat 'em up game (Final Fight, Streets of Rage, etc.) developed in Unity. It will be fully animated, with animated in-game H content, and with the messy finishers you’ve come to expect from us. The game will take place during part of the story of MATM that you don’t get to see from Malise and Neon’s perspective. You'll play as Onyx while she traverses the mean streets of New Babylon, fighting enemies including the Splicer gang, the Syndicate, biomonsters, and more. 

The game will contain approximately 5 full, varied levels, and if the reception is good we will consider expanding it in a variety of ways.  

HOW WILL WE DO THIS?

We're drawing this bitch by hand! Sort of. 

We'll be using a combination of 3D and film techniques we've learned over the course of working on MATM to support what will be a mostly 2D game (check out the action in the game Dragon’s Crown, then think about what it would look like as an arcade-style Ghost in the Shell / Akira inspired game). The characters will resemble an anime version of the old art style of MATM, just more professionally done and much less awkward >_>. The goal is to use a style that has less back-end overhead and doesn’t require additional complex 3D models for characters. This game will have a much smaller scope than MATM, and thus will require fewer assets in the long term, making brute force techniques like hand-drawing more practical.

As it turns out, Mr. Kittyhawk is proficient with Unity and C#, and since this genre is so well-defined he already has many of the core mechanics and systems functioning. Limbo will likely be joining us full time as soon as possible. He and I will be drawing the characters, and I’ll be using Spine to animate them (you can see an example of my first efforts in the teaser video). We will be using our 3D character models where applicable for assisting us in posing and shading. Ubercharge will assist with rendering 3D elements that we can use in the level design compositing process.

This Patreon campaign has always been dedicated to our current and future games, and therefore the current structure should remain the same; you’ll just be treated to content for both games.  We’ll continue to update you on our MATM progress as usual.  And, on that note, expect the MATM monthly update in the next couple of days! We don’t want to overwhelm you :D.

One more thing!  At the time of Pure Onyx’s release, any patron who has pledged the retail price of the game (to be determined) or greater to this campaign will receive the game for free. 

WHO’S GOING TO DO THIS?

All of us will likely contribute, but the core team will be myself, Limbo, Mr. Kittyhawk, and Ubercharge. AltairPL will continue his work on MATM’s URGE engine full time, and TK will continue his work on the Maya transition for MATM. I’ll obviously still be working on MATM as well, as will Ubercharge, but our primary goal is to get playable content to you and secure additional funding as soon as possible via Pure Onyx.

HOW LONG WILL THIS TAKE?

We’ll have a stream of playable content ready for you much sooner than it will take to get the next major version of MATM ready. In fact, we are planning for the first playable demo to be ready in time for next month’s update (perhaps sooner for the Inner Circle crowd).  Give us a couple weeks to get our boots on the ground and develop a rhythm. This has already come together a lot faster than we were hoping! We were originally planning on working on this behind the scenes for a while to assess the situation, but I decided against it since this is on your dime, and you should know about the process as soon as possible. 

SHOW US THE GOODS

First off, we will be posting the first gameplay video tomorrow, as well as a supplementary FAQ.  The video will show our progress with basic animation prototyping and engine functionality, as well as what you can expect the game to play like. 

In the meantime, here’s a bunch of stuff we’ve developed from the past three and a half weeks of pre-visualization. The overall theme is in line with what we’ve been up to, but the style will resemble 80s/90s anime, including some of the trashy aspects like color palette and seeing it on old CRT screens in VHS.  We’ve been heavily referencing the original Ghost in the Shell anime and works by Shirow Masamune. 

Onyx Styling

Here’s how the Onyx sprite will likely be drawn. We were considering giving her entirely hard shading to be more in line with the retro anime theme, but figured a concession was in order since soft shading simply looks way more polished for hentai. 

• Onyx Sprite (sorry for the missing nips :D)
• Onyx Test Animation using Spine 

Onyx Poses

Limbo has been working hard on sketches for Onyx’s poses. We’ll need to draw her sprite a bunch of times to create the base poses, which will then be broken down into layers and animated with Spine.  We'll be using these sketches in gameplay while we work on getting combat feeling good, at which point we will begin refining the artwork and adding detailed animations.  

• Onyx WIP Pose Set #1 

Enemy Sketches

Limbo has also begun working on some of the Splicer enemies that you'll encounter.  As with Onyx, the goal is to create drafts of their movesets so that we can refine the animations and learn what intermediary frames we need to draw before we build the more complex animated skeletons.  

• Splicer Sketches
• Enemy Scene Sketches
• Splicer WIP Pose Set 

Environments

These environment tests are the closest thing to what we expect the finished artwork to look like. The environment artwork will be constructed in 3D, at which point we will do multiple render passes to assist us in painting the final artwork. We're getting close to a process that consistently works, though I'm sure we'll improve on it as we get some more practice. Details impractical to create in 3D will be painted by hand.  

• Rooftops Game Environment Test 
• Street Game Environment Test 
• Sprite Blending Test 

Original Style and Lighting Mock-ups

Here are the original mock-ups I made for visual styling. We were originally considering a black and white game, and while more stylish I don’t think it’d work well for hentai. We were also originally considering using full perspective, but decided the classic beat-em-up camera angle is better for retaining the feel of the genre.

· Original Style and Lighting Mock-ups

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That’s about it for now. We’ll be showing off some in-engine footage tomorrow when we post the supplementary FAQ!  Also, just to repeat, expect the MATM monthly update in a couple of days.  It obviously won't be as robust as usual, but APL and TK have been making steady progress on their end.

Obviously, I don’t expect everyone to be thrilled with this whole idea (especially those of you who may not like the game genre or Onyx), but from a practical and financial standpoint I feel knocking out a project like this is the best course of action to give us time to round out the back-end stuff with MATM, as well as springboard us into a position to work on it at a more satisfying pace.  Ultimately, this is what we should have begun with all along.