November Progress Update!

Hey everyone!

This is the first major progress report since V0.05!  As part of the new campaign model, I’ll be posting one of these each month for $3 and up patrons.  To kick this off I’ll start by posting more details about the changes in the latest V0.0511 update that was released a few days ago.

V0.0511 Update Notes 

Sorry for not posting these with the original release – I had been working for a couple of days straight and I was ready to crash at the time.

• Added all remaining artwork for Neon’s Tactical Frame armor type.
• Added mechanics for Damage over Time effects -- used for only one internal thing for now, but hopefully this will change soon.
• Fixed a battle glitch that can occur during the elevator battle with Ven.  It was possible to end the battle prematurely if certain enemies were killed fast enough.
• Changed how Knockdown state (the status effect that is added after  finishers) operates.  Instead of “stunning”the character for a duration, ATB is reset and state is removed at the beginning of the turn or hold (basically it’s to prevent characters getting completely locked down by grapple attacks after a Finisher is used).
• Re-coded animations preprocessing to improve animations handling as much as possible.
• Added additional turn indicator to battle UI since the honeycomb pattern can be concealed by complex artwork.  We may improve the graphics for this indicator in the future.
• Implemented gallery mode for internal use, which will be used by us for debugging purposes (enemies animations, skill chain progression, artwork existence, etc.), and maybe with time it'll become the base for a proper in-game gallery.
• Improved handling and processing of database elements called "Features", which basically are modifications to actor/enemy stats, parameters, resistances, etc. This is part of the groundwork for the upcoming battle overhaul, and the end result is better performance and easier to read/modify code.

The updated artwork PDF is on its way, I’m just considering improving upon the Fleshpod H artwork some before putting it together.

How’s the New Campaign Model Working Out?

So, October was obviously a really weird month due to the campaign transition from ‘per creation’ to ‘per month’. There were some (major) hiccups we had to work through with Patreon regarding getting all of the features straightened out, but things went incredibly smoothly in the last half of the month.  So far the new model is working out great for us in literally every aspect I had hoped.  It’s completely freed me up from having to spend time and energy to make individual transactions for people wanting the latest content immediately, and it’s also given us the ability to have a much more user friendly presentation and update structure.  In addition, we’ve had over 200 new patrons pledge in the last half of the month alone, presumably due to the lower entry point for getting access to the latest version. Hopefully this will open the door for a wider audience once I start promoting the game more heavily again.

MATM Render Manager for Daz Studio

This is a project that, aside from the campaign transition, took up my first three weeks of October.  It also allowed for us to complete all of the artwork necessary for the 0.051 update in just over a week, which would have been impossible otherwise.  The Inner Circle guys have heard about this a lot, but to show its value and fully explain why it was worth spending so much time on I’m going to give an overview of it here. 

One of the biggest drawbacks to using Daz Studio for character art is that its rendering configuration is by no means optimal for a complex render setup like what we have going on.  It’s not to say Daz isn’t useful for character art, as in the past year I’ve discovered some of my favorite game artists that work on AAA projects use it for posing and character design.  For whatever reason however, no one had attempted a solid render management and batch render solution for Daz.  What this boils down to is that with the exception of animations, I had to do renders by hand.  This means I had to manually set the lighting/ load any material presets / change the output file name / whatever and click"render"... sometimes up to 25 times or more per final image (in the case of this last story H scene, for instance). It was both tedious and very time consuming.  This however is no longer the case, because early on in October I determined it was possible to create the render manager /batch renderer I've needed since the start of this project. 

The end result is the MATM Render Manager.  This is a GUI-based render manager and batch rendering plugin for Daz Studio customized for Malise and the Machine.  The tool dynamically builds options by recognizing characters / objects in the scene and allows for complex pre-configuration of renders, giving the user the ability to click “render”once and let it run in the background. The tool is expected to save anyone working on character artwork (future additional character artists?) for the game anywhere from 20 minutes to hours per image based on the complexity of the scene.

As mentioned above, in the last week it got a real trial by fire, and some additional bonuses became readily apparent.  Using it, it’s now possible to fully experiment with various lighting / posing setups by quickly getting to a finished image, as opposed to doing a single test render and hoping for a good outcome.  In the case of one of the more complex Fleshpod vs. Neon portraits (tentacles under the dress), it made what would have been a huge hours-long headache a relatively minor inconvenience.

Basically, the render manager is one of the biggest optimizations I’ve had in the character artwork department, and having accomplished it opens up a lot of doors for future improvements.

Map Artwork Update

TK has continued his work on optimization of his workflow with the new map creation system.  In addition he’s been working heavily on revamping the remainder of the Access Tunnels maps to achieve consistency with the quality of the new maps produced by said system.  The following are quick post-processing jobs and should be considered works in progress, but you can check out his work on the maps here!

Goals for November

The above pretty well describes our October, and while we haven’t fully planned out November yet here are some likely goals for this month (incompletely random order).

• Revisit and tighten up story details now that it’s had time to marinate.
• Figure out the details and develop a plan of attack for V0.06 content.
• Attack V0.06 content.
• Further identify requirements for and begin battle engine overhaul #2 (this is AltairPL’s realm, so he can correct me if his plans differ :D)
• Further investigate (and potentially begin implementation of) possible major improvements to the lust/armor damage/grapple systems.
• Build a new rendering and 3D workstation.  My mid-grade gaming PC has done well, but I think AltairPL and TK have had enough of me bitching about input lag and performance issues for one lifetime.
• Revamp my Daz material preset library in order to achieve even faster render times.
• I’ve been working on getting one of the contributing musicians (who is also really talented in sound design) to help us out with sound in general.  Assuming things work out, he’s going to be working on creating custom user interface sounds as a first task.
• Make a new promotional video(?)
• Reconnect with potential voice actress and try to get the ball rolling for vocal effects.

Thanks for your support this past month and hanging with us through the campaign transition!  Things are only going to get better as we continue to work on improving the experience here.

- Eromancer