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November Progress Update!
🕑 Added 2017-11-09 16:21:12 +0000 UTC Hey guys!Thanks for being patient! Between a late monthly update last month and the whole Patreon debacle we needed a bit of extra time to finish up what we wanted to show off. I therefore decided to forgo a video for this update to save some time, but believe me when I say we’ve gotten a lot done!
Malise Overhaul!
Obviously, this is the big deal for this update. We’ve completed the base overhaul of Malise for the new art style! Check out the finished images below.
I say “base overhaul” because there’s still a laundry list of work to be done on her. First though, let me explain the details for those that didn’t see the Inner Circle post a couple weeks back where we showed off an early version of her.
Unlike Neon, Malise has been completely recreated using the Genesis 3 body system. I started by figuring out a technique for transferring her old face to the new geometry, and then started reworking it from there. Her body's shape has been completely revamped, and she has all new textures. The most obvious change besides the suit is probably the hair. It's a new model that I carefully edited to get the vibe of the old one, but with some class. And yeah, we've changed the hair color some since the old one simply looked really strange in this new style.
Now for the suit! This is an entirely new suit made from a customized Genesis 3 asset that we've put a lot of work into to resemble the style of the old one. After getting the materials to look approximately how we want them, TK and I deconstructed the suit by adding a working zipper, and then generated a bunch of new morphs to make that lovely cleavage compatible with Genesis 3's pose-able tatas. Having a custom-rigged model means we can do a lot more with it, so we will be attempting to do armor damage entirely in 3D with this one (as opposed to painting it by hand). That's for another post though :D.
Since initially showing her off a few weeks ago, I’ve reworked and finalized materials for all her clothes and her hair. Regarding the hair specifically, I spent a day testing subsurface scattering techniques in an attempt to accurately recreate the effect of light passing through darker hair. I’m happy to say I was successful! After trying out a whole bunch of different options for headgear, we finally settled on custom glasses that Ubercharge modeled this past week and helped me nail the materials on.
So, now onto what’s still left to do! TK ended up having to rework the unzip and open morphs for her bodysuit, so unfortunately I don’t have those to show off today as I had hoped. We’ve also got to do some rig editing on the holsters to ensure the straps don’t deform when her legs bend (like they are in the back in the full body image above). At some point soon I’ll be adding new genitals to both Neon and Malise, so those should be fun to show off :D. Lastly(?) and probably the most difficult, we’ve got to get armor damage in 3D working. We originally weren’t intending to do this until we move over to Maya, but we’re pretty certain with everything we’ve learned we can get it looking good in Daz.
Malise’s Gun Overhaul
When I showed these off to the Inner Circle crowd the other week I was pretty sure we’d ruffle some feathers, but we definitely needed an overhaul for Malise's old revolvers. While I initially wanted to cyberpunk-ify them with a design similar to the Syndicate guys' revolver, Uber felt semi-automatics were more her style. I was skeptical, but after he landed on this particular concept I was sold. It ended up becoming one of the most detailed props we've created. You can check out a mess of images here!
Weighing in at a whopping 3 million polygons, Uber’s currently finishing up a low poly version that’s compatible with Daz (and has virtually no quality loss). I’ll need to texture that at some point soon, so tack that on to the list of things to finish up :D.
Corruptor Overhaul
Malise isn’t the only one that got reworked this month!
The guy shown above is the revamped version of what I call a "Corruptor"; AKA the dudes from the scene at the end of v0.05. He was my project over most of the last week as TK worked on morphs for Malise’s suit.
Even to a greater degree than with Malise, I rebuilt this guy from scratch using the Genesis 3 body system. This is my first creature that I’m really proud of honestly. When we showed him off to the Inner Circle earlier this week there were some suggestions to go wetter with the skin, which I want to mention is super easy to do with physically based rendering (it can be done with a single slider :D). For more viscous slime we’ll need liquid simulation, which we intend to get working in full once we port everything over to Maya. Anyways, Here’s a new shot I haven’t shown off yet, displaying his lovely skin in extreme detail!
Hopefully once you compare this guy to the old version, any remaining skeptics regarding the necessity of this art overhaul will be converted :D.
AltairPL’s Programming Progress Report!
If you're Inner Circle member, feel free to skip the first part of my update, as you've seen it in one of the previous IC updates. I’ve added my report for this past week below though!
I've started this month with a plan and an early prototype for map GFX handling overhaul. It was supposed to be pretty simple and quick. I was on a roll, so it was quick, but far from simple ^^ - I've managed to do much more than planned and anticipated, which surprised me a lot and makes me really happy and proud.
The main reason for this "small" overhaul was a messy map GFX file naming scheme related to a long gone 3rd party script. Since then, map data handling was recoded and could handle much more and in better way, but for few reasons, cleaning up the filenames was always left for later. No more. I've actually changed my plans in the middle of the work, but now all files are neatly named, ordered, and grouped, and everything is much cleaner and easier to work with.
Another reason for the overhaul was to make the map layers system much more universal and versatile. The old system had internal division of map images to traversable map layers and extra images, like tiled backgrounds, pipes, etc. Pretty much everything related to map layers was hard-coded and only extra images were a bit more configurable. New approach is a huge step forward - now all map images are handled in the same way and configuration options are not limited by the type of the image. Traversable map layers are still partially hard-coded, but it’s more like an automation saving time instead of a limitation, and those default parameters are very easy to override. We can do a lot more with the new system, and every newly implemented parameter will be readily available to use with all map images. One of the most notable features allows for using cropped map images, which in turn will decrease disk space usage, memory usage, and map loading times - probably not much, but every bit counts ;).
At first, all map images' settings were stored in hashes and most of the processing was taking place in the game proper, so I started wondering about making a new object class dedicated for map layer data. Had mixed feelings about it at first, but as it turned out later, it was the best I could do. First of all, most preparations are made during pre-processing phase of the development, so only few things have to be processed in the game itself, which makes it a bit faster, which is good since added functionality added some overhead. Using dedicated class also allowed adding internal methods to it, which dramatically decreased clutter in the code. I kinda realized it much later, but there's one more great thing about it that I hadn't taken into consideration earlier - considering how I chose to do things, it's also extremely easy to save and load map layers' settings along with the game, which means that all transformations will be remembered and then restored, which till now was not possible.
During the overhaul, I had to edit preferences of every map used in game. Since I was already there, I've cleaned it up a lot. I removed few obsolete things, renamed few others, etc. While doing this, I've noticed something peculiar about built-in RM parallax: most of its functionality could be replicated with my new map layer system, so I've decided to spend some time to analyze it and make it a part of my system. That way we can have as many vanilla-like parallaxes as we like, and they'll be much more versatile than the vanilla one. Not to mention that some neat vanilla parallax functionality, like automatic scroll, was extended to every other map image.
Since I was already knee deep in map entrails anyway, I've decided to include in the processing something needed by 4:3=>16:9 conversion. The main problem with RPG Maker is that a lot of graphical things are hard-coded, and in such a way that changing it is virtually impossible. With a lot of luck, I was able to fix the built-in Plane class which is used for tiled images, but there's a lot of things I had no luck with.
This includes the way in which RM handles/draws tilemaps. Basically, every tile exceeding 4:3 width was not drawn. Fortunately, full tilemaps are used only by my test maps, but majority of Access Tunnels maps were using animated tiles functionality. I've yanked out every use of animated auto-tiles and replaced them with simple animated events... required compiling animation spritesheet and few small changes to events code, but it was well worth it. On top of few FPS I've gained thanks to overhaul, maps that were using animated tiles got another dozen or two of extra FPS after disabling tilemap use. That's one of the best examples of how inefficiently RM does some things - 30-40 FPS lost on basically nothing!
Another hard to fix graphical features limited by 4:3 aspect ratio are various transition effects, including fade-in/out, freezing the screen and performing transition from frozen screen to current scene. Thankfully, my recent work on similar stuff for URGE, and long done fade-in/out related to loading screens scripts, both made my life much easier here and I was able to code replacement from scratch in Ruby. The only thing that wasn't implemented is special kind of transition using black and white image as transition opacity map - it was used only just prior to the battle, and I'm not sure if Ero agrees with me, but IMHO we can live without it.
With this out of the way, the only stuff that needs conversion to 16:9 aspect ratio are some images and UI. Former is not really my department, but whenever I can, I do process some simple images, like UI, by myself to save time. Latter however, is a bitch, since conversion to wide-screen results in much wider (1024=>1280), but also lower (768=>720) area to work with, and some things were already a very tight fit vertically. That said, I've already converted everything that was looking weird, causing clipping, or outright crashing the game. It is only temporary, since we'll need to revisit/redesign parts of UI, but this will have to suffice for now. Nasty cold and the new Patreon guidelines stuff hit while I was in the middle of it and it seriously slowed me down.
Well, last thing planned for this month was getting back to battle engine overhaul, so I can proudly say "mission accomplished". This battle overhaul was left unfinished when I took the break resulting in URGE inception, so I have a lot of catching up. Unfortunately, not only list of known issues was already long, but recently it got even longer. That said, no matter what happens, I just need to finish it before 0.06. Only like 90% of its functionality will be needed for now, but I would really like to reach whole 100% and convince Ero to allow me to do some things my way... at least as a preview... just to blow you guys away :D.
[Begin New Stuff for IC Members]
For some reason, even though I have extensive notes, I was unable to replicate most of the bugs in the battle engine I had before switching to URGE development some time ago. I did find one or two new ones during additional tests, however, which didn't help with my declining mood. Let me tell you, this battle engine stuff is seriously convoluted. So much that I actually subconsciously did everything to do something else. It means that not counting many, many tests, followed by making extensive notes on all battle engine bugs, new and old, I haven't progressed very far with it. It doesn't mean I was sitting on my hands, though.
The main detour from battle stuff was making menu scene dedicated for all ARIS processing, which will replace processing using the map event. In case you don't know/remember why it is/was necessary, see "ARIS Scene Revamp, Graphics Conversion, and Concept Map" section of "October Progress Update!" (https://www.patreon.com/posts/october-progress-14814203).
The ARIS Scene looks like this at the moment - basically a full recycle of all menu assets for now. Functionality is also pretty rough - pretty much the same as previously used map event. I have a lot of ideas about how to improve its functionality and make it more eye-candy, but doing this now would be a waste of time, since sooner or later some related stuff will change and then I'll need to do all ARIS stuff almost from scratch.
Besides the above, I've fixed few random bugs, and optimized text caching performance a bit... a very small bit, but still ^^.
Ubercharge's Finished Car Design!
Ubercharge finished his first car design not long after our last monthly update. You can check out images from his progress here!
This one took a little while since we had to work with the original asset vendor to acquire the proper formats for what we needed. In addition, Ubercharge developed a technique using displacement mapping that should carry over to the other car designs as well. Now that the process has been figured out, the remaining cars should go more smoothly (we need at least one more for v0.06).
While we eventually plan on making a few different base designs, Uber will be able to create multiple paint jobs for each, as well as change up options (tails, rims, etc) so that we can recycle the models a few times.
Ubercharge's Monster Test Sculpts
Recently Uber has been doing some sculpts to test out techniques for the custom monsters we plan on eventually designing. You can check them out here!
Ubercharge's 3D Scan Tests
Ubercharge has been learning 3D scan techniques for converting photography into usable 3D assets. I really don't know much about the process (feel free to ask, I'm sure he'd be glad to fill you in), but the results are really impressive! There will be a couple of areas later in the game where nature assets will be required, so this will be particularly useful once we get to that point.
Comments
White Rabbit
Well, She is hot. :D
This is stunning !!! You guys sure know how to take away the patience from us :D I really like the new Malise and her new hairstyle. Although Neon is still my favorite. I was wondering if you will show us Neon with her Blue Dress-alike suit in the new model ?
I’ve been following this game for over a year now and I’ve finally become a Patreon for it... your absolutely rite I’ve always wanted an adult game that shines, especially American language based. Your doing this... this literally could make you the absolute top devs. In the gaming industry for adult entertainment. This project is so big I’m excited.
James Denning
Oh yeah, I like her "pistols" too, she has a "beautiful pair" ;)
Two Threenine
All I want right now is a real life functional replica of those beautiful pistols. Absolutely amazing, keep up the fantastic work.
I like those first and last hair highlights.
Preach, brother! Preach! I concur and share your sentiments.
Venus
Missed that :P
AltairPL
@Venus It's actually mentioned both in October 26th IC update and this one: "And yeah, we've changed the hair color some since the old one simply looked really strange in this new style." Can't tell you both if and how it will change, though.
Venus
<a href="http://data.whicdn.com/images/240293354/large.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://data.whicdn.com/images/240293354/large.jpg</a>
Venus
Speaking of hair, how about some highlights? <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1f/86/59/1f865920d414fddfab5724e63e17e627--highlights-for-short-hair-short-highlighted-hair.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1f/86/59/1f865920d414fddfab5724e63e17e627--highlights-for-short-hair-short-highlighted-hair.jpg</a> and <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/df/c4/cd/dfc4cd72616eafce3ac1c2e5e397f035--silver-highlights-on-dark-hair-curly-highlights.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://i.pinimg.com/736x/df/c4/cd/dfc4cd72616eafce3ac1c2e5e397f035--silver-highlights-on-dark-hair-curly-highlights.jpg</a>
Venus
Regarding everyone that is moaning about the lack of playable demos... please consider another angle. Personally as someone that has been an inner circle member for... ages... I just don't want this project to end without it reaching the potential I see in my mind. There's a gem of a story, scenes, girls, bots, guns, monsters, game-play and intent here. A part of me is worried that all this effort prematurely ends and we're denied the amazing title that we've been dreaming about all these years. Instead of moaning about the lack of content how about motivating and drilling these chaps with ideas and constructive criticism. Oki rant over. @ero: Show us some boobies! "See what I did there..."
Venus
OMG! Once I noticed Spassmacher you're completely right... since when did Malise become a brunette?!? I think the guys may have accidentally slipped some hazel in there.
No worries, it's all good. That absolutely was the plan, but it became clear we were pretty unprepared at the time for what a game of this scope requires (some people have suggested the scope has been growing, but it really hasn't; with the exception of adding new party members, we still only intend to do what was in the original Patreon description). We pretty easily could have made it a much simpler experience than we intend for it to be now, but I've been taking the gamble that you guys want the game to really shine. I think we'll be able to get back on track with frequent updates after v0.06 rolls out. The bottleneck at the moment is that until we have the game looking consistent with this new style I don't want to put something major out. Old releases go way farther than Patreon over time, and without the context of all that's been going on it'd be a really jarring/shoddy experience for someone who is having their first impression of the project.
Maybe I was being too harsh when I expressed my frustration, but having been on the "losing" side of failed kickstarters and false promises has made me feel jaded about releases. Let me reiterate, that following the poll you created around the end of last year, we were said that game content updates would be released every 3-4 months (the equivalent of 10$ that I was paying per release). That being said, this is the only adult content game I support with my wallet because I honestly believe in what you're creating and the quality of what's being presented by you - I wouldn't have pledged if it wasn't. If you view my previous post as a personal attack against you and your team, then I apologize, it wasn't my intention. My intention was to voice my concern, and I guess that was muddled by my own frustration. I want this to be the sort of project that you enjoy making and the players to enjoy its fruition.
Iiris Dreadtide
Thank you, it does help. Good luck, guys.
Hell, never mind what you're having to pay the other four developers currently is entry-level pay, if not below it after Patreon takes their cut, for their respective fields.
My response was aimed at Dan :X. The reason I don't like to speculate on dates anymore is for reasons like the above. If I say "we hope to get it out by XXX" then "XXX" gets etched in stone and it comes back to bite us. That being saaaaid, back in early October we were looking at potentially trying to get v0.06 out by the end of the year, but this was before all the Patreon craziness crippled my productivity for the last half of the month. I also think adjusting battle to the new art style could take longer than we were thinking. I gave a pretty lengthy response to Marco a few comments up that lists a rough outline of our remaining major tasks, so hopefully that can give you some more insight.
Iiris Dreadtide
I admit to some frustration. I see lovely art updates and I would dearly like to play. I stated the length of time since the last playable update (for me) to contextualize any discontent I might be expressing. I did not mean to sound hostile, so if I did, I apologize. My goal, and I realize it might not have been stated well, was to get a rough idea as to how much longer it might be until a playable update. As I have no idea what goes into this process,I find it difficult to know the importance of any one development. In my case, your second reply was mostly what I was looking for, though I was hoping you might state when you hoped to have something (which would not be a promise to have something, merely a statement of goals). You have had regular updates and developments, though, and I appreciate that. I continue to hope for your swift progress and success.
Let me follow that up by saying that I understand your frustration. I really do. But we feel that cutting months off the project by doing this art overhaul now instead of having to redo things down the road is absolutely the right answer, even if it sucks right now.
Yeahhhh, I'd definitely never be so stupid as to *promise* anything like that with the sheer volatility of game development (even more so with adult game development). Since you want to twist my words I'll suggest you take off your rose-colored glasses and try to understand that things don't always go to plan. I justified multiple times the delays up through the summer, and once we brought Ubercharge on we were given a great opportunity to make this game way better than it ever could have been previously. Also, if I was going to milk you it would probably be wise not to *lose* money doing it. Paying four people and not taking a paycheck means I'm losing money on this project right now. So yeah, watch it with the ridiculous accusations please.
Since our dear creator ignored your message, I'll add that he promised us a tangible update once every 3-4 months, which is why he also changed the payment module from per update to per month. Judging by the fact that certain indie creators have been known to milk supporters from their money, I'm starting to wonder if this project is going to wind up the same. Over a year without an update is simply stretching the boundary of my patience.
Currently, only things that will be in v0.06 are getting converted. This is so we can get v0.06 out ASAP. v0.05 content actually will not be in v0.06, as you'll simply start where v0.05 left off. Once v0.06 is complete we'll begin the next phase of the art overhaul, which will include revamping all of the v0.05 content (including the Fleshfather :D).
Subjectivity
Any chance Malise's hair might get darker again?
Very good re imagining of Malise especially. Like the new look and the new kit really fits well.
Jamie C.
this is going to be amazing! Question I been wondering since the update to the corruptors will the flesh father be also getting some kind of re-texture done to him. He would seem out of place with all these fine textures being used. right now he already seems very well plasticy and metallic rather than being something made of flesh. Cause when I see this new corruptor compared to the older version he now looks more or less realistic.
Me likey!
The updated Malise pistols look like cyber-punk glock-17s with a top ejecting slide. The update for Malise herself looks good, kind of a Catwoman vibe going on. If you wanted to stick to something like revolvers you could have gone with longer barreled semi-automatics, kinda like the original Robo-cop pistol. This would give a weightier impression to them while still being cyber-punk style. If I remember rightly, that pistol was based on the Beretta 93R.
I like Malise's new look but there's something about her old hairstyle that makes her really stands out. I'd love to see the old hair style but in high res instead of this new basic looking hairdo that she got.
AltairPL
I try to make the game scripts as modular as possible, but remember that most of the game scripts are still based on vanilla RPG Maker code, which quite frankly isn't the best. I do rewrite and/or optimize it as I go, but I can't just yank it all out and code it from scratch... not all at once that is. Previous battle engine overhaul, even though much faster and stable than initial, was still built on some flawed concepts and ideas. Main problem with it was that whole hold mechanics was slapped on top of the battle engine instead being a part of it. Also, the way some of its parts were made would prevent me from implementing some planned features later. Newest, and hopefully last, instance will have those and many more potential problems sorted out, and on top of that it will be much more stable, functional, and easier to maintain... not counting initial debugging hell I'm in right now. Making game engine/framework of my own is my dream and I hope to make one at some point, but it will require insane amount of time and work. Game engine itself, game scripts, editor, just to name the few. Believe when I say: making one with MATM in mind is not a good idea, and keeping current course of action is in everyone's best interest. That said, programming and art are completely separate aspects of MATM development and both are developed in parallel.
Yeah, v0.06 will still use RPG Maker, but all of our work on art will carry over to the new engine. We should be able to make a simple test release showcasing aspects of the new art style for the IC once we get battle looking decent. I'll likely be overhauling the Police enemy next so we can use him as a test enemy, and then I'll get on with that. As far as v0.06 itself goes, the two major tasks are finishing the art overhaul and then finishing the content. Beyond that, we will need to make some UI changes (not only to pretty things up for the widescreen format, but to adjust to the new art style), and APL is working on smoothing over the battle engine overhaul he performed awhile back. I (with the help of Ubercharge and TK) need to finish overhauling all characters that need to be in v0.06. This will allow us to render new portraits so that v0.06 has consistent artwork throughout. There'll be a period of testing very soon where we need to get things like battle effects / battle backgrounds / portrait lighting correct for the new style, similar to how we had to overhaul sprite lighting to get sprites looking good with the new highly detailed maps. The character overhauls have taken precedence over work on maps this month since Malise has required a lot of custom modeling/morphs, but Ubercharge and TK will continue their work on that once I begin rendering portraits / enemy animations and working on the story cutscenes in the new style.
Criss Cyanide
Damn the new Malise look is killer, a little biased due to the new Hair Style though :P. If looks could kill and all that haha. Won't even pretend to understand a sliver of all the technical stuff and background stuff that goes in to it all but the results do speak for themselves. <3
Iiris Dreadtide
Guys, it has been over a year since the last game update. Were you planning on releasing v0.06 any time this year? All these pictures are great, but it'd be nice to get something to play with more than once a year.
I'm really loving this new look for Malise. The softer face geometry is much more appealing to me than her previous appearance. Or maybe it's just an effect of the lighting. Meanwhile, although I'm glad to see how much work you're getting done and excited for what it means for the finished product, I'll admit that I'm beginning to get antsy over the wait for a new playable demo.
Do I understand correctly that the next version (0.06) will still use RPG Maker? It's nice to see what was accomplished this month, but a little overview on what still needs to be done until a new version can be released would be nice too. Not much detail or ETA needed, just to manage expectations and see where we are on the bigger picture.
Wait you changed her hair? now i'm sad, i loved the old version
Hi! I'm very glad to see your progress in last few months. I'm a hardware programmer - that is not so far from programming at all. I'd like to raise an old painful topic about the game release. When we write a firmware for hardware, we write some modules and then maintain it as is. I mean we write a code with a certain set of principles and programs. 2-3 years later the principles may change significantly. But we don't re-write the previous firmware. Finally I mean the following: you pay too much attention for graphics and other stuff (it's really great, no worries). The process of re-writing is endless. You'd better write a high-quality engine code and make a release. You may add or change textures easily in future. Best regards. Hope to see release of 0.06 soon.
HonorablePsycho
I'm getting more excited about this game as these updates continue!
Malise looks very delicious now
Faithel
Ammmmmazing work out there !!! Keep this up wow
Faithel
Wooooooow.... !!!!!!!!!!
first！
