July Progress Update (Part 1)!

Hey everyone! 

This was my first full month back working on new content since finishing the game’s story, and there’s a whole lot to report. So much in fact that I’m dividing this update into two parts; the second of which I’ll post tomorrow. 

Concerning character artwork, we’ve essentially completed a total of four new character designs from scratch. I’ll talk about the first today (sorry Inner Circle guys, you’ve seen her 😃), and the remaining three tomorrow. I want to devote the remainder of this part of the update to discussing our plans after v0.06. We have a lot on the table that has been brewing for quite a while, and I want to put it all in one place to give you the big picture of where the project is heading.

Ubercharge to the Rescue!

Ubercharge, our new artist that was scheduled to begin in September, has begun working about 35 hours a week to help us on v0.06. He's currently working full time (plus overtime) on the new Blade Runner movie, and then is helping us out for about 6 hours a day in the evenings. Needless to say, he's an extremely motivated individual, and we're really happy to have him on board earlier than expected. TK has been working with him to get him up to speed on the map creation process, and after spending time with him figuring out concepts for some of the locations we have planned for v0.06 I already know his ability to quickly model custom assets will open the door to new possibilities.

New Character: Onyx

Onyx is one of our latest characters for v0.06. She’s a relatively minor character to the main story, however I like her design so much I’ll probably work her into some side events as well. Here’s additional artwork, as well as the above image in high resolution (zoom in!):

Full Body Poses

Profile View

Closeup

Her design required a lot of work. I decided that I wanted to try designing a character from scratch using Daz’s Genesis 3 (G3) body since we had talked previously about updating the other characters to utilize it. There was naturally a learning curve, but I’m glad to say it’s better in nearly every aspect than the Victoria 4 (V4) body we’ve used for the characters up until now. Not only is it easier to create polished looking stylized shapes like the ones I’m after, it poses far easier and has a bunch of highly useful features such as full access to the facial rigging. That last one is why I was able to try my hand at piercings, since with V4 it wasn’t possible to get a lip ring (for instance) to follow the lip when the character’s expression changed. Of course, literally the day after I bought the morph kits for Genesis 3 they came out with a new Genesis 8 body figure, which is probably the one we will end up using down the line due to its improved backwards compatibility with other body figures/assets. 

Ubercharge also jumped in and helped out by creating her knee guard and designing her tattoo! Having him around will be a huge benefit as we move away from relying on licensed assets and try to innovate with completely original designs.

Summary of Future Plans

The following is a “summary” (it’s pretty huge) of our plans after v0.06. While I’ve mentioned many of these ideas to you guys at one time or another, I’ve never put them all in one place, and the public is pretty much in the dark about them entirely. Not mentioning these publicly has largely been due to us waiting to see the big picture before we pull the trigger 😃. Seeing it all in one place however makes said big picture easier to swallow. I wanted to fill you guys in since I plan on making a similar list public after we announce a release date for v0.06. I’ve tried to list these plans in the order that will make the most sense to implement (by that I mean the order that will require the least amount of redoing work for us), however it really depends on what bottlenecks we might run into along the way. Note that everything that follows is subject to change!

NEW ENGINE

• No more RPG Maker. The game will no longer require the RPG Maker runtime environment package (or any extra software for that matter). 
• Vastly improved performance. Not only will this allow for a wider range of hardware to run the game, but it will raise our ceiling for the quality of art and designs from a development perspective.
• Will allow for HD graphics (see Artwork Overhaul below). Note the usage of the term “will allow”. The actual artwork upgrade won’t take place until the Artwork Overhaul.
• Will allow for greatly improved controls and user control options. This means support for currently unsupported keyboard layouts.
• Will potentially make it possible in the future to support platforms other than Windows.
• Will open up the possibility for future development of custom construction/editor tools.
• Adds shader support, which will potentially allow for us to improve effects, blending, and sprite lighting.

ARTWORK OVERHAUL

Implementation of the new engine will mean a need to upgrade the graphics to 1080p. This is relatively simple since we have the vast majority of the artwork in HD anyways (it’s downscaled heavily for the game). However, this effort will give us the perfect opportunity to bring all of the early artwork into line with what we’re now artistically capable of, and it’s one I’d really like to make use of.

• Upgrade all graphics to HD (1080p).
• HD user interface.
• Replace the Artwork PDF with a standalone HD gallery program utilizing the new engine. The code for this would eventually be utilized for the in-game gallery system.
• Upgrade the quality of all artwork to current standards (see recent artwork of Onyx for an example of the direction we are heading). This includes things such as the following bullets: 
• Better hair. 
• Stylized shadows and self-shadows on character artwork. 
• Better stylistic use of ambient occlusion (better gradients and darks without the shitty pseudo-3D look)
• Potential revamp of some characters to utilize modern base body figures. This will result in dramatically more natural looking poses.
• Some cases of improved clothing models and character props. If successful this will greatly cut down on paint-over work in post for certain characters.
• Improved artwork for legacy maps. I had originally stated there would be improved artwork for the Access Tunnels in v0.06, however to prevent having to redo a significant amount of the work twice we will likely implement this during the artwork overhaul.
• Make use of graphics capabilities of the new engine not available in RPG Maker (such as the aforementioned shaders).

DIFFICULTY OVERHAUL

The purpose of this will be to add a difficulty system that will allow the user to tailor gameplay to their desired experience. Difficulty systems from the games System Shock, Pillars of Eternity, and The Witcher 3 are big inspirations. Presets will exist with descriptions that indicate the type of playstyle that the preset was designed for. These presets will range from those designed for users that simply want to enjoy the H content or story, to those that are designed for players who want a more, uh, masochistic experience. The user can then diverge from these presets by fine tuning more detailed options to create their own custom experience. Options will likely pertain to things including battle speed, general combat difficulty, and a host of options for the H system.  

H SYSTEM OVERHAUL

• Lust and Armor Damage will be completely independent. Currently, a character must be at a specific stage of Lust Sickness before their armor can break (remember that Armor Damage is different from Exposure). This doesn't make a lot of sense, and was in place primarily to reduce the amount of artwork combinations necessary. Without the memory limitations of RPG Maker and with the improved artwork rendering/processing speeds, this isn't as much of an issue. 
• Change the enemy damage reduction system when actors are being grappled with by enemies. Instead of a damage reduction modifier on enemies, enemies' pink "grasp" gauge will be similar to a shield from the Borderlands games. All damage will reduce their grasp, however some skills will bypass their grasp to directly damage their HP.  I feel this is a much more accessible and intuitive way to achieve the effect I was after with the damage reduction idea.
• Implement mechanics for gangbangs and dedicated mechanics for restraint devices. 
• Various other requested and unconfirmed changes (some quite major that will require testing before I make a call on them), some of which may be options in the new difficulty system.

CLASS SYSTEM

This system will add the potential for extended character development and at the same time will improve compatibility with and allow for story events to include combat that previously couldn’t due to how the characters’ outfits and weapons currently tie into the combat system. This basically means a wider variety of outfits (and other states of undress) during story events and more character customization options for combat. Also, criticism regarding how skills are tied to outfit types will be addressed here. We currently have a design for all of this that works much better than what is currently in place, however I still feel there’s room for improvement, so I’ll leave the details for later.

STATS AND EQUIPMENT OVERHAUL

While this isn’t as high priority as some of the things above, I wanted to add the following to help with the aforementioned “big picture”. It's also possible that some of this may get worked in with the UI upgrade to HD.  It’s been in the plans for a long time to customize the stats system to better align with our combat system. In addition, we’ll better utilize the various equipment slots, and equipment will be able to possess a host of modifiers which will be visible from the items and equipment screens. Visually, the UI for equipment’s stats will resemble something similar to the Diablo or Borderlands games. Here’s an example image from a concept done awhile back to clarify my description (don’t take it too literally, the design will likely change some).  

Let me know what you guys think!