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UPDATE: Chapter Two Status – January 17, 2021
🕑 Added 2021-01-17 16:13:39 +0000 UTCHi everyone, hope this finds you well and sorry that I was quiet for a bit… wanted to get a good chunk of the work that needed to be done for “Chapter Two” of the Prologue to “Wicked Choices: Agents of Karma” done and assemble them so you can see the work that we are doing first hand.
As previously mentioned, after coming off the pain meds and the REMASTERS that we did and returning to the work that needs to be completed for “Chapter Two”, I had realized that… in my drug-induced-pain-killer-haze… I had forgotten about a very important scene that needs to be at the end of that chapter (NO SPOILERS… you’ll understand when you get to it), which meant the Sprites that I had done previously needs to go in the next chapter and needed to jump on doing the Sprites for the scene I had forgot about.
Although it took me a little bit of time, I managed to get the 3,240 sprite renders done for the two characters that will be in that scene… yeah, you heard right… 3,240 renders… that’s 1,620 renders PER CHARACTER just for the Sprites!
I know, sounds insane… and it IS an insane amount of work, but when we mentioned that we were going to start switching to Sprites for the dialogue sections of the game, there were many of you who were worried that there wouldn’t be a ton of variation… we understood this concern, as that has always been a problem for me when playing games that utilizes Sprites as well.
So, if you give me a little bit of your time, let me explain what you can expect when it comes to us using Sprites in our games going forward… and… why so many.
OK… first up, we decided to go with 3x18 Dialogue Sprite Poses (so, 18 Face Forward poses, 18 Face Left poses & 18 Face Right poses) per Character and per Character Outfit (or various stages of undress and even nudes) and/or Character Status (like hair styles, breast enhancement, etc.) change.
Within each of the 3x18 Dialogue Sprite Poses, there are 10 Facial Emotion Poses (such as Happy, Angry, Normal, Disgusted, etc.) and within each of those 10 Facial Emotion Poses there are 3 mouth variations for each emotion (varying degrees in which the mouth is open for dialogue).
Which all totals 1,620 renders per character outfit/character status!
Let me show you how it looks, just using ONE emotion and mouth variation for each pose, using our Valkyrie character “Brynhildr” who will be in the start of the Sprite use at the end of “Chapter Two” that we’ll be releasing, starting with her FACE FORWARD poses…
…and here are her FACE LEFT poses…
…and, finally, here are her FACE RIGHT poses…
If you notice, we can’t do something so simple as MIRRORING the FACE LEFT and FACE RIGHT poses, because she wouldn’t look right or like her character if we did… one because of her tribal markings are Please keep in mind, I reduced the size of the poses to 40% so that I could fit them all on the image which is the game window size… also, as you probably noticed, we didn’t cheat and just MIRROR the FACE LEFT poses and made FACE RIGHT poses from them… simply because if we did that, it wouldn’t really look like the character… because her tribal markings on her LEFT SIDE are different as those on her RIGHT SIDE, as well as the way her hair sweeps on her LEFT SIDE than on her RIGHT SIDE… so, just taking her FACE LEFT Sprites and mirroring them in a photo/art program wouldn’t look right… and it would come off as cheap looking and lazy!
While the poses are mirrored, each one is rendered separately so that the character looks like the character you see and are familiar with on each side… more work, yes, but worth it in design and character familiarity.
Also… with each pose, there is also a slight variation of that pose as shown here using three different poses as an example and at full size…
So that when the scene is assembled during in-game dialogue with another character, it could look a little something like this (except they wouldn’t be side by side like this, they would be overlaid where the first pose is)…
Just the slight turn of the head and neck, with a different expression adds a little more quality that will provide good variation in Sprite use in dialogues… and I am sure you can imagine such use during a situation where a character is asked to… say… get undressed. *wink*
And, as mentioned before… while it is a LOT of work on the front end for me to do these Character Sprites, now that these sprites are done… I will never have to do them again for “Brynhildr” while she wears that outfit… this will eventually free me up BIG TIME to just focus on dramatic and sex scene renders when it comes to the Main Games, once those Character Sprites have been rendered and so long as the character doesn’t change their look or outfit.
Additionally, while the Secondary Characters like “Brynhildr” has 3x18 poses… the Main Characters of Emi, Claire and William/Billie will have 3x20 poses per their Sprites… due to things that they will be doing that the other characters won’t be.
Anyhow… I got the 3,240 Character Sprites of “Brynhildr” and “Karma” done and this week I’ll be returning to doing the rest of the storyline artwork/animation that is in “Chapter Two” of the Prologue to “Wicked Choices: Agents of Karma” … this will also be the last chapter that will utilize a crap ton of animation…
…long story short… expect our production release schedule to be a lot quicker with the start of “Chapter Three” … I will not be overreaching like I did with this chapter ever again and with Sprites, once they are done, will speed a lot of things up as the story progresses!
Time for me to get back to work here!
Please take care, have a really good week and as always, thank you SO MUCH for the continued love and support you’ve shown us!!
Sincerely,
Jack & Crew
