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Inner Circle Update for August 25 2017!
🕑 Added 2017-08-25 11:33:30 +0000 UTCHey guys!
I mentioned it in a comment on the last post, but thanks again for being patient with us taking a few days to finish up this sprite lighting system! I have a crap ton of stuff to talk about and a lot of new things to show off, so here we go!
V0.06 Map Progress
Ubercharge was out of town the week after the last IC update, but once he got back he banged out most of the work on the first map you’ll see in v0.06. This is the alley where Neon and Malise leave their bike as they venture into the Void. It won’t look quite this fancy for v0.06, as we determined without sprite reflections the puddles look kind of wonky. That being said, we haven’t ruled those out for the new URGE engine, but more about that later on in the post :D. The cover image for the post (full size here) is a perspective view of the area, showing the details that we can get with the new rendering engine a little better.
In addition to that I wanted to show off the latest diagram of the map area for v0.06. For the first time, you can see how we intend for the city to be a non-linear world space, and in part explains why I wanted to finish the story in order to get the map design elements right.
New Sprite Lighting System!
This is the big one @_@. I mentioned the basics of this in the last update, but now we actually have a prototype working within URGE (the new engine we’re building)! This consumed a lot of time for all four of us, but thanks to APL for setting up the test environment within the new engine and to Ubercharge who proposed the idea and helped calibrate it! Before I get into things I want to point out that the super pretty version of this that I’m about to show off will only work in URGE. V0.06 will have a version of the system, but since RPG Maker can’t do some of the more complex blending operations we need it will be simplified. Anyways, I should show the results first I guess, and there’s an album at the end of this section for those of you who want to see additional screenshots and details as to how this effect is achieved.
Here’s a simple test GIF showing the lighting system actually working within URGE! If you recall, I mentioned the new system utilizes multiple sprite layers to simulate lighting. Here’s a second one that better shows the sprite layers being lit independently. Apologies for the crappy GIF quality, the screen recorder I’m using apparently doesn’t know what 60 FPS is. Oh, and obviously characters won’t be sliding everywhere with the new system. Unless you want them to. Because I can make that happen >_>.
Some of the benefits of the new system are as follows:
- Colored lighting
- Able to simulate dark areas much more accurately.
- Layered sprites with dynamic and independent shading for each layer
- Multi-layered sprites add the potential for glow maps (Neon's armor could for instance glow in dark areas instead of being darkened with the sprite).
- While not technically part of the sprite system, we’ll be introducing a new layer to the maps to better incorporate sprites underneath things such as light glares / haze / static fog. Here’s an example.
- Surprisingly low performance cost (maybe even improves over the old shading system in some situations ).
Check out this album for the technical details and additional screenshots!
Artwork Overhaul Mood Board
I threw together a quick mood board sampling inspiration for the direction I envision MATM to take during the artwork overhaul. The purpose was to translate my ideas to the team visually, but I think you guys might find it interesting also. You can see a lot of it coming through already in our recent designs. The new look is more cinematic, and will feature a blend of dark cyberpunk / outrun / retro styles, which I think work well with the fact that MATM Is a retro RPG. It also doesn’t hurt that these things are coming into their prime in modern pop-culture, so it would be neat to be working on something artistically relevant.
A Vision of MATM’s Future!
Well, of the map scene at least. Now that you’ve seen some of the inspiration I’m using for my vision of MATM’s style, I’ve got some eye candy for your eye holes! I’d like to show off some images that represent what MATM may look like in the new engine after the artwork overhaul. I’ve been doing these mock-ups at various stages of our experimentation with these new rendering engines, and these are the first ones I feel like are awesome enough to show off. Some of the elements in these screens may actually make it into v0.06 (revised portraits for instance are now looking like a possibility since there’s no way the old ones will mesh with the new maps and battle backgrounds), however these screens are all 1080p and include some effects not possible with RPG Maker.
Anyways, here’s the album! Obviously, this is a place your feedback would be highly valued, and I’d also love to hear ideas about what we could do stylistically to improve things.
Oh, and there aren’t plans to make Onyx playable :D… she’s just the one character we’ve got fully calibrated with the new rendering engine.
Comments
Guy
I love the bimboesque style that malice and neon have, onyx on the other hand seems more cyberpunk, and whilst that is still hot, think about it, is it hotter to have a cyberpunk badass being gangraped by monsters and criminals, or a horny bimbo slut that makes you question whether or not she's even there for the fighting to begin with? I agree that the characters could benefit from graphical updates but I think that style is what makes MATM glorious, and it should stay in the "bimbo meets evil, and evil is horny" rather than a more classic cyberpunk vibe.
I will try to push ero for better malice character as I did with onyx no worries i have same opinion, even made those kneepad and tattoo stuff
Jade Golem
Yeah it isn't just the higher quality of the character. It also has to do with her design as well. She has this punk-ish vibe to her but, she also looks better as a character like there is more to her going on. I mean, she has a single knee pad, gnarly tattoo, that hair style. There is just more story in her appearance than malice has to offer off looks alone. There is "plot" there.
Currently I agree she looks better, not a big fan of malice atm. But some characters overhauls are planned so she will look awesome. We need to port them into maya which is huge tech challenge.
you will get some horrific creatures, I plan to do some of them in future in zbrush/maya, but first we need to port characters into maya so it can work... which means lots of tech research and development.. but in future (quite far) you can count on some pretty nasty creatures
Jade Golem
You have got to include onyx into the game. Personally I would prefer onyx over Malice as one of the protagonist. I would probably use onyx as an alternative outfit for malaise if you don't include her in the game. Gotta reuse those assets.
Aside from the boss, this area will only have humans. The story mostly defines the enemy variety, and while it gets crazy pretty quickly it wouldn't make sense to have monsters in this part.
PhatsM
That mood board looks like a wonderful collab of ideas. Have you ever read the Druuna comics? Reading through them I thought the MatM was the next closest representation of them.
Kurowscar
Monster on sexy female protag stuff. It's the whole reason I pledged to this. :D I understand wanting enemy variety and play area variety, and that this area will be mostly if not all normal-ish humanoid populated. I was just curious when we might get back to seeing our beautiful heroines brutally defeated by horrific creatures. ^_^
Monster monster or just new enemy stuff?
Kurowscar
How much longer until we get some more monster stuff?
Somnovox
Please, oh please, have plans at some point to make Onyx a playable character. She's my favorite thing to come out for the game, so far. Also, keep up the great work. I love seeing how things are progressing, despite being impatient as can be. Just excited to see what you cook up!
Hm, on a second look, there might be some simple 2D options that could help quite a bit :D. Gonna investigate this more.
They'd be flashing a lot :D. Also adjusting the lighting in 2D without layers would make it look flat. To make it look good, we would need to re-light the portraits in 3D on a map by map basis to have them "fit into the scene" properly, which is why we want to treat them as UI elements. While not practical for each map, it might be possible to have a few versions of the portraits created from lighting presets -- the only real sacrifice here would be hard drive space.
Nah, this is just referring to aesthetics. Currently, lights on sprites get dark when the sprites are in the shade, which isn't visually correct. Strong luminous objects should maintain their brightness and color when in dark or light areas. Using sprite layers / sprite masking, we can make it so only the lights stay bright while the non-luminous parts are shaded according to the surroundings
MB
"Neon's armor could for instance glow in dark areas instead of being darkened with the sprite" I'm sensing that this is going to factor into the "conditional random encounters" for some sections. Armor that glows in dark areas, making it easier to navigate the area, while simultaneously increasing the rate of random encounters?
If it's doable, maybe the portrait pictures can adjust based the lighting the sprite is in. Might add a lot of overhead though...
AltairPL
There will be more than enough playable characters, and even though Onyx won't be playable, she'll have at least one scene as well. Haydee is a child's play in comparison ^^.
>No plans to make Onyx playable. Christ and I thought Haydee was the worst offender of blue balls lmao
