Nothing Much To Say [31/07/2023]

So I barely did any HMLP work this week, mostly because I was out living a vivacious, beautiful life (going to concerts, having birthday parties, seeing movies) and generally slacking of in favour of vice  and pleasure. August will just be one of those months most likely, with the combination of NZIFF, my 21st Birthday, and more time-takers. I have only the littlest bits to share in progress, but that will be bolstered by both my personal shame and my new to keep somewhat up with my scheduling.

The Dens living room set is pretty much complete with furniture decoration and texturing of the walls and couch. It looks very homey and pretty, and just sleazy enough. If I had one complaint, I don't really think it's messy enough for being home to multiple adolescent werewolves. I'll likely scatter some more trash around for finding, as long as it doesn't block the players walking space.

And cutscenes are now possible! This cutscene will be the opening of the game, wherein Cliff wakes up in the freezer cage of the Romuli Den. This scene is still, unfortunately for me, a work in progress script-wise. Mainly, this is because I've started to see a pretty large gap in my concept; the Smell System. I wanted to incorporate a bit of tutorial aspects in this opening cutscene, so I wrote an explanation of the Smell System into the scipt. But then I realised that the way I currently had Smell set up, it was completely obsolete. It's essentially just flavour text instead of interesting or useful information for gameplay.

So what am I going to do? I'm going to iterate like hell is what I'm gonna do! There's alot of ways this Smell System could be exponentially improved. The Smells descriptions/words could fluctuate in size, they could be shader-graphed coloured auras around objects, they could be particles effects, they could be simple outlines, etc. I'll need to look at other games to reference and inspiration.

That's... kinda it! Here's hoping I can turn up more before my next update. It's just a matter of prioritising and taking every little bit of progress as a plus.

- Monkeydog

Leaps and Strides [24/07/2023]

 Welcome back!

In just the first week of uni I have felt great senses of health, accomplishment and harmony. With every task scheduled and ever hour of the day delegated, but loosely enough so that the rules can be broken as wished, I feel as though I have, for the first time in a long time, achieved a truly satisfied work/life balance. I work often and hard, and make great progresses everyday, and yet simultaneously have an appropriate amount of rest and recreational time. I feel motivated but not pressured. It's not easy, but its not impossible. I am realizing that my dreams and desires could infact be achievable and even realisitc not with constant, torturous work but exact and proper planning.

So in this week, much has been done. First off; progress on The Den!

After trashing the Hospital set, I immediately felt a burst of inspiration for The Den set. These designs were based straight from a sketch I included in my GDD, with the inclusion of the Lower and Upper Floors, Bathroom and Freezer Room as well as elements like scenery moving past the windows of the caravan, small environmental animations like fans running, and oportunities for Splash vignettes like on the TV, in the cupboards or freezer, in the bathroom mirror, in packmates belongings, and so on. At the moment, my prioity has been furnishing and texturing the lower floor rooms first, starting with the Freezer where the game would now begin. Almost all of the sets furnishing is taken from Sketchfab, courtesy of the generous creators. A couple models will get retextured though, like the couch in the living room ("Corner Sofa" (https://skfb.ly/onozG) by Nick Broad) due to UV issues and also due to me needing them in different colours or patterns to match the tone and aesthetic of the scene and its real-world references.

The Freezer Room is the most important piece of the set, with it being the players first introduction to the games world and also being a reference for me to take the style of the rest of the games environments looks from. I textured the walls and floor in Substance, trying very hard to make it look very overused and undercleaned, with dark bloody smudges on the floor from unsuccessful mopping attempts. In the end, even though the room is not yet properly lit in Unity, it looks fantasic with Cliffs model and exactly how I would love for the rest of the game to look. 

In my schedule, I've given myself 3 weeks to complete the Den scene. Left to do is the wall and couch textures of the Lower Floor, retexturing most of the Bathroom, and completing decorations and texturing on the Upper Floor, which is still under development. Then lighting and lighting settings, changing the skybox, scrolling lights and imagery out the windows, and interactive pieces like Items and Splashes, which will all be done in the 3rd week.

In the Unity side, almost all mechanics have been replicated and brought over to this new set (except for camera zones and smell). New to the mechanics is Icon Changes! When Cliff talks, his icon can now change eye or mouth sprites independently of eachother so that he can express his feelings. The next step will be to give these sprites animations so that he can blink and babble.

Also, animations are finally implemented! It's a roundabout process, but it works. Cliff can now Idle and Walk. But what else? We've made significant progress in the programming side. Thanks to James and Masaya, Dialogue Events are up and running. This means that inside each line of dialogue inside each dialogue scriptable object, Events can be called on such as sounds, animations, stat changes, timelines, effects, scene changes, and anything that can be imagined! Here I've been testing it by letting Cliff do a special dance for Lang when he talks to him.

... Actually putting it all together, it's not as much work as I thought. But it's still exactly what I sought out to accomplish this week (and more). So I both did... more and less than what I expected. Next up is completing the total layout of the Den, scripting out in writing the opening scene and dialogue, then turning that script into a playable cutscene using timelines and dialogue events. The future is beautiful!

Happy sailing!

- Monkeydog

The Beginning and The End [17/07/2023]

 It's the end of the mid-year break and the start of the new semester! In my last week, I tried to appreciate the last days I'd have of a real, unbroken holiday. I relaxed, I watched movies, I spent time with friends and family, and I left the work to the rest of the year. Now that I've rejuvinated, I've got a little more to share.

Without access to a computer, I started thinking more about Naomi. I was going to leave her for a lot later in the production, but I got inspired. Here's a piece of her background in the form of a mini comic, and sketched out a Doll of her to mix and match hairstyles and outfits.

I've also started encountering a problem with my opening level. It's always supposed to be a hospital layout with a bit of an escape puzzle and some encounters with the strange amenites of the Lycanthrope research lab. But in many rounds of reiteration, I'm starting to feel like this sucks. Nothing about the level is inspiring me or getting me excited. Even modelling it out in many different versions just hasn't sparked much beyond the room with the beds. The story aspect just isn't sticking. It's only made me feel more drawn to and intrigued in The Den. The more I think about it, the more I can accept that if I was going to cut or reduce anything, it would be the Hospital scene. I think I want more to jump straight into the meat of the Den and the character interactions than to waste time on what is essentially just a tutorial. It feels unsophisticated and uneconomical. So for now, the Hospital is out and the Den is in. I do, however, have lots of WIP development material left over, incase I ever want to come back to the concept.

And finally, I got down to the administrative work and put together some real tight schedules. One is for each week, taking classes, work, and freetime into account and laying out exactly how many hours a day (very roughly) should be allocated to Capstone work. The other is for the entire semester, with each task broken down and scheduled into the weeks with due dates and checkpoints. This is also subject to change (and already has now that the Hospital is out) but is very helpful to have printed out by my computer to remind me that the dream is NOT IMPOSSIBLE! It can be done with good time management, resoucre management, and adequate rest.

Hm. I thought I wouldn't have anything at all to post about today and yet I filled out quite a bit. Turns out, even if you feel like youre being lazy, youre probably still doing alot more work than you think you are. And so begins the second semester of my last year. It'll be tough, it'll be crushing. But I'm tough and I'm ready!

With me luck,

- Monkeydog

A Model Citizen [10/07/2023]

 YO!

It's been longer than usual, due to the last update being so delayed. We're back on schedule and there's very good news; Cliff is near complete! Let's run down the process.

Last update, I drew over Cliff's face to try and properly nail his proportions and characteristics. I didn't know then how helpful this would be, but I know now and will definitely be incorporating this into my pipline going forward. After that stage of refinement was complete, I turned to Cliff's hair. I have never, ever enjoyed modelling hair, usually because I end up modelling in big clumps of geometry that look like more like rocks. On Homolupus I needed a new approach, and what I wanted most was to emulate JRPG  shiny spikey hair in my models, because thats pure visual kei. I looked for reference for exactly how I wanted the hair to sit first, which ended up coming alot from David Young in D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die aswell as Raiden in MGR:R. This is when I also made a wonderful, life changing discovery about how these looks are achieved; the brilliance of Hair Cards. Hair Cards are the foundation of all modern hair/fur technology. A simple plane or collection of planes that, when duplicated and repositioned enough, form lush, textured human hair. Examples below;

So now I had to apply this to Cliff. I started with a random hair card template from Google Images just to act as a reference while modelling, and started building up a luscious head of polygonal hair for Cliff.

Not so terrible, and so much easier than trying to model it all with real geometry!The method'll be put to the test with Lang's longer hair and I'll still have to find an entirely new method for Naomi's sister locs, but that's a bridge I'll cross when I get to it. After being suprised by how simple that was, I moved on to clothes, and also continued to add new hair-cards for Cliffs furry coat and skirt. Most of his clothes are just extruded from his body, but I do (very luckily) have a Naked copy of him saved incase I ever want to redress him (or use his body as a template for other characters). I also put him into Mixamo jsut to make sure he didn't break, and he looks pretty cute not breaking (don't mind the colours)

And then he was done! Now it was time to UV Unwrap (also not so terrifying now that I've learned to find it therapeutic). I have unconventional UV'ing methods, but they still work for me.

In Substance Painter, I started texturing by laying down base colours picked from my reference/orthographic and then went in on the hair. This was honestly alot of fun, and I think the result has great depth and looks very ruffleable.

Those black edges around the hair are where it's supposed to be transparent, so you get good fluffy edges. When the hair was done, I applied materials to the clothes and accessories for a little extra detail and then with in on painting in the details of the face and clothes.  He's got a perpetually funny expression like he's really scared of something, but I'm actually okay with that because he's ended up looking just like all his concept art and his orthographic, so it's very accurate. His pupils can't move because he doesnt have seperated eyeballs, and his mouth cant open either. This would be a waste of hours to implement, because his character icon/portrait will do the emoting for him. His texture style is very Simple and Clean, mainly because I actually don't know what kind of shader I'll use in the final game and I don't want to lose any too-meticulous details in the final rendering.

After going around and touching up, adding Height levels, stitiching his denim vest and giving him his sparkle, I checked that he looked alright under rendered lighting (I took him to the beach to see the ocean) and then exported his textures. This is where I had a crucial final step before Unity implementation; crunching textures. In order to replicate the PSX/2 style I've been going for, I need tobring those texture files down to atleast 512px. I did this in Photoshop, but in all honestly, I actually like the crunched textures less than the originals. Perhaps theres another method I cause use that doesn't leave polka-dots all over him. Can you tell the difference?

Now he's in Unity! He can glide and spin and interact like a little champ, but unfortuneately is still frozen in his T-pose. Next up is implementing Mixamo animations into Unity, so that our Cliff can idle, walk, run and crawl just like a real boy.

This week is the last week before going back to uni (GULP!!!) So it's full speed ahead on completing the Hospital Map! If I can get that done before the end of the week, I'll be on track to head into the next semester. On the horizon is implementing cutscenes, re-doing the inventory system, implementing the changing Cliff character sprites, and more... coming soon!

Ride on shooting star,

- Monkeydog