eromancer
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May Progress Update!
🕑 Added 2017-05-03 04:11:04 +0000 UTCHey guys!
We have some fun stuff to show off for the $3 tier for this month! In addition to that, we nearly have the battle theme revamp complete (you can check out the latest version above)! I presented an early version of it to the Inner Circle crowd a couple weeks back, and the feedback was really helpful in figuring out the direction it needed to go in. Most of you liked the vibe of the original, so we stripped it back and tried to retain that while adding production value. Audio guy had a big deadline for another project, so he'll be doing the final edits/mix/master when he hasn't been awake for two days :D. I'll also be uploading another soundtrack demo of his later tonight or tomorrow for the $15 crowd!
Progress on the New Engine
Your eyes don't deceive you! That image above is MATM running in APL's new URGE engine (at a lovely 1300+ FPS)!
This month AltairPL started out by focusing on file handling for the new engine. He ran into trouble early on when he had to sort out issues regarding non-ASCII characters in file names. After lots of cursing at Microsoft, he was able to resolve his issues by using Unicode throughout his code. After that he decided to see if he could actually get the game to run. Here's an update from APL about his experience over the last couple of weeks getting the game to run in the engine:
I decided to make a crash-test: running the actual game using URGE. There were a few problems and bugs, and I also had to disable some custom Ruby scripts and add workarounds for some not yet implemented things, but in the long run it was a success; MATM is looking and working just fine.
Not having any text in the game was making testing some things problematic, so my next venture was decided: implementing font handling and text drawing. All preparations and some very basic stuff was ready before Easter Sunday, and the plan was to finish this in the week thereafter. Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of work needed to implement font handling. At the moment only very basic font handling is implemented, but this will have to wait for a while. Currently, all my attention is directed towards text rendering. I had a lot of problems with making the italic/oblique style function properly, and this style is used in MATM only all the time. I've already managed to fix 3 major issues, but the remaining one is above my skills at the moment. I still have one more thing to try though. Slim chance it will solve the problem, but it's still better than nothing.
I don't want to sound completely depressing, so here are some screenies from the game working with URGE!
Story Preview
Early this month I decided I wanted to do something fun to show you guys a sample of my work on the game's story these past few months. What I've created is a presentation showing off the first (spoiler-free) details of the game's backstory! Let me know what you think!
For all those that are surely wondering, story stuff is still the hang-up on V0.06 progress. I'm definitely on the tail end of it, however I got sidetracked with all of the following artistic projects the last couple weeks of the month. My current goal is to boil the whole thing down into what will likely be a 10-12 page summary that reads sort of like a Wikipedia movie plot write-up. I was basically working at such a low level for so long that I didn't want to lose the forest for the trees, and with a few diverging but major ideas rattling around I decided I should take a step back to see how the various possibilities look at the high level. Another benefit of doing this is that I'll actually be able to get critical analysis from other people without handing them a 100+ page document. It's been in transition so much that the rest of the team doesn't even know most of the story :D. I'm also writing the summary in such a way that, while explicit, it fails to mention the H content, meaning I can get critical advice from experienced writers who may not be all that into H-games.
Malise's New Hair
This is one of the aforementioned artistic projects that I got sidetracked by :D. It's probably important to note that with AltairPL's new engine coming along so well, I've decided that when we transition to it (definitely some time after V0.06) I'll be doing an artwork overhaul on pretty much everything. This will be a great time to do it since the engine transition will require me to go through and prepare HD versions of the artwork anyways. This doesn't mean redoing everything from scratch or anything, but it does mean I get to take what I've learned since I started figuring MATM's art style out and make something really professional looking.
As I've mentioned to the IC crowd, hair in particular is something I kind of half-assed originally and I know I can do better. I had initially intended on creating a new model for Malise's hair from scratch, but the IC crowd's feedback led me to try to improve upon the current one (with much success!). TK helped out by creating a prosthetic addition to thicken up the geometry in the back and ponytail. She also has a hairline now! I think the results are really solid, but it was definitely a chore fixing all the glaring issues. I've made a gallery showing before and afters , and have also made a set of GIFs showing the same .
I think you'll be surprised how much it was necessary when you compare the old with the new! The crappiness of the old hair is a lot more obvious with the new directional lighting style and character shadows, and is especially obvious in HD/closeups.
Character Shadows
So, this is actually a topic that I've been messing with for awhile, and it was bugging me enough that I decided that I wanted to knock out a solid implementation for it due to the aforementioned artwork overhaul on the horizon.
One of the biggest issues I've had with the character artwork is that I've never been able to get a handle on until now is how to properly handle character shadows so that they don't only look consistent within the styling of the game, but actually add to it. The goal in my mind was therefore to create an effect that leans toward an animated/hand painted look so as to mitigate the unnatural 3D feel that comes across in some of the artwork. In addition, it needs to do what shadows should do, and that is add depth; something the character artwork is lacking in my opinion. Lastly, it needs to work with directional lighting. *All* of the character artwork has been lit from the front up to this point, and in some environmental situations it just doesn't look that great. The reason for this is that directional lighting (up until now) does some gnarly stuff to the character shaders, basically making unlit areas look super flat. I've finally come up with a low overhead process that, I think, fits the bill (and just as importantly, works universally).
I've made an album that you can find here that shows off some of the test results, as well as gives a brief description of the process.
Once you're through with that, I've also uploaded a set of GIFs and images showing some of the many early attempts and progression toward the current technique. Keep in mind that Google Drive doesn't play animated GIFs, so you'll need to download them to check them out.
Let me know what you think!
Comments
Renmaru
Try reading the other comments, James Gallagher already asked this and got an answer.
Good stuff, but when is next build?
Thanks! I'm glad the effort was noticed :D. One of my favorite modern directors is actually Neill Blomkamp because of how good he is with incorporating accurate near-future technologies into his stories.
That's pretty much our current workflow for painting. I even have automated masking and alternate material/clothing versions implemented into my custom render manager :D. Our basic issue with armor damage is that to achieve the same high detail we do with masking/painting, we'd need character and clothing models with more appropriate or higher geometry in order to achieve good morphs. The solution (re-creating the characters with a better base body as well as some parts of the clothing) is a time consuming one, though it'd likely be worthwhile in the long run and end up saving a lot of time even if animations weren't to make it into battle scenes. This is something I'm considering as part of the artwork overhaul as well. How experienced are you with modeling/rigging? Feel free to message me if you want to talk more about it :D.
Subjectivity
That background story material is so much more deep, clever and scientifically accurate than it needs to be. I remember reading some IFLS articles about the possibility of using lasers to knock particles away from their anti-particles when they pop into existence at the quantum level for a fraction of a second, and how it could eventually make Star Trek fabricators possible, and that was a lot like the ARIS system. Not something I expected in a porn game, and the writing in this was already very high quality. This is going to be much more interesting and better written than most big budget non-porn games. I am very excited! Having a scientific basis for the ideas presented in sci-fi makes a big difference to me. I was hoping the hair section might offer multiple hair styles or even colors, like when they change clothes, unless changing their hair requires a big overhaul in which case I doubt it would be worth it.
QuestionablyInsane
Yeah I remember you saying a while back how RPG maker was too limiting to allow you to do some ambitious stuff, hence why I was asking you if you were planning something big now that you don't have those limitations with your shiny new game Engine. : ) .... And yeah I totally understand having your models as they are now and having to edit all the images in post would be a very tedious and impractical if you needed to edit a ton of frames. I would like to offer 2 small bits of knowledge that I hope will help: First, use multiple character models for different damage levels. You are probably doing this already but I thought this was worth mentioning. The advantage to this is then you can minimize clipping by deleting the bits of the mesh that are covered up by the armor and you don’t have to worry about the body protruding during animation. Secondly if this is too hard there is a trick I use for my still images that gets rid of clipping mostly. Do two renders: One as you would normally render the image and then one where you hide the character that is wearing the armor. Now in Photoshop layer the normal image above the floating armor image and add a mask to the normal image… Now go to the mask and draw over all the clipping spots in the image with black. This will have the image underneath show through that has the armor doesn’t have a body clipping though. It doesn’t take too long to do this and I’m sure you could come up with some kind of action that could speed this up even more. Lastly… As far as battle torn armor and whatnot… I would love to hear your issues. I have a ton of suggestions on rigging and modeling and whatnot. : )
Wuumaster
Still appreciating the high quality, still trying to be patient for the another playable release (and associated H-content). Amusingly, the battle theme makes killing heroic Gul'dan especially epic.
Yup, it's bugging me as much as it is you! Once the story is finished, getting a playable version out will be our prime goal. We're at the point in the story where if we don't have it sorted we'll simply need to redo a lot of stuff later, which I'm really trying to prevent. I basically didn't expect the story to take nearly as long as it has (admittedly, it's turned out a lot better than I had hoped, so that's good at least).
Improving animations and potentially extending them to battle artwork is something I'm going to take some time out to research during the artwork overhaul. Having our own engine would greatly increase the possibility of it being technically feasible (with RPG Maker the memory limitations made it completely impossible/impractical). The big problem would be the workload. Among some other issues that would need sorting out, having to paint armor damage for every frame for all the battle artwork would be impractical, so I'm considering some options there. Basically, removing the need to manually paint as much as possible would be pretty critical.
KatakiSenpai
We haven't had a playable version of the game in forever. Any idea when that is going to happen?
Very cool music Battle :) Great Work (top 10 favorite best battle theme :D )
Gaia Chong
good job!!! I like the work you guys present
QuestionablyInsane
I really like where the battle theme is going! I think this is a good compromise between the simpler original Battle music and the complex remixed version. There is just one thing I worry about and that is how it mixes with everything in the game. You said that you wanted to change the theme to add some energy (Which you totally nailed btw) Just wondering if a highly energized song will mix well in every scene that uses the song? It might get a bit detracting. But never mind me... Just putting a bug in your ear in case this aspect was overlooked due to EVERYTHING else you have on your plate. Aside from that... I know you can't promise anything due to then having to commit to too much work... But all this talk of being able to render faster and moving to a new engine... It sure has gotten me maybe unrealistically hoping that the heroins will be animated in the future of this game... Anyways., Really looking forward to the next demo of this game and get a chance to feel your guy's hard work. :)
Justa Badge
Your music is fantastic.
Whats the estimated time for an actual demo with new enemies?
dudman
Awesome! I can't wait to see the next demo! This is gonna be great (And could be buggy... But great!) I'm happy to be a patreon on this project for a while!
I wish to see some screens of new content, with new enemy / bosses and maybe alies .
Awesome job guys! It is so exciting and enjoyable watching all your hard work take shape into something really special.
Great job! Can we get an estimate on how much longer it will take to get v0.6 released?
FloundericiousWA
I love what you've done with the RPGMaker VX engine and expanded code base. The art, gameplay, sound, etc are all great! I have to say though...the h-content on cutscenes is jarring. It's a little played up and in your face during gameplay but it is way over the top in the scripted scenes. I honestly wish you had a mild-to-wild slider for choosing how extensive you want the cutscenes h-content to be...thinking eggs scene...just eeeyuk.
matt7h
Dope af. Great to hear such a good chunk of info regarding progress, and you guys are doing a great job from what i can tell. Excited as ever to see how it looks when it's finished!
Guys! Your project are awesome! But, why you create your own game engine? Its a lot of no need work. Why you don`t use exists game engines with very good performance, and rapid develop like: cocos, unity, love, defold etc... I was lead and CTO in several game studios, and we use private engines only in very rare projects with unique mechanics. In other cases we always use Unity and Unreal 4. People want Game, not Game Engine. ;)
I had no problem playing the gifs google drive. Everything looks a lot more sleek now though, I really like it!
BoogerBrigade
Looks great! The audio is a bit grind-y on headsets, but sounds fine on speakers. Any news on the next release schedules?
