Hey everyone!

We'll have another Pure Onyx release ready for you later tonight 🎃!

The major change this month is that we've added the Bunny Girl enemies for combat ^-^.  Some other significant changes are that we've increased vertical movement speed for Onyx and all enemies, as well as given enemies increased movement range when not performing an attack/action.  This looks and feels much more natural -- enemies feel more like moving targets now, but the player has increased mobility.

AltairPL is deep into backend work at the moment upgrading our asset database so that the game starts much faster  (among other resource/performance benefits).  As this is important, we'll be adding the futa mechanics to the bunnies after he switches gears to integrate it properly with the visual equipment and H content filtering systems.

Mr. Kittyhawk has also integrated our "Aggression Profile" system into the database.  This is a backend system that allows for organic AI-based scaling of enemy difficulty.  Instead of simply giving enemies more health/damage, any number of their parameters may scale (knockdown time may shorten, defend chance may increase, time between actions may decrease, etc.).  We've been doing this for a long time with the wave survival test missions (higher waves = higher difficulty), but it's now integrated in a way that can be used flexibly with actual game mechanics instead of simply the wave spawner.

We have a lot to show and discuss in terms of art and combat as well, so check below for new work there!

Topics for this Update!

• October Release Details
• Bunny Girl Enemies In-Game!
• DK-Doll Sculpt Complete!
• Onyx Concept Animation GIFs
• Background Art Breakthrough!

October Release Details

Tentative Changelog (** indicates items added or being added since the October 25 Inner Circle test release):

• ** Added Bat Bunny enemy for combat, along with her combo attack. Find her in the Red-Light test map and survival mission wave spawner.
• Added new SFX and liquid FX for the Onyx and FemCop 2x Vioreaper scenes.
• Added more liquid FX to FemCop's 1x Vioreaper scene.
• Added Blade Bunny enemy for combat, along with her Whirlwind and Swift Slash attacks. Find her in the Red-Light test map and survival mission wave spawner.
• Added Blade Bunny LOD rig (higher performance in Red-Light map + when she's on screen for H scenes)
• Significantly increased Onyx's and all enemies' vertical walk speed.
• Increased "Nudge" distance across all enemies to prevent twitchy movement and to make enemies more mobile/unpredictable.
• Greatly increased barrel explosion damage.
• Certain enemy attacks can now damage destructible objects.
• Foreground bunnies will now be hidden during grapples / H scenes so as to not obstruct view in Red-Light test map.
• Fixed issue where worm splat FX would shrink/grow while zooming in/out.

Bunny Girl Enemies In-Game!

As mentioned above, we've added the Bunny Girl enemies to the game!  It was definitely a lot of work adding two enemies at once, so they still have more attacks to be added.  Even with most of their animations "complete" it was tough to predict all the changes necessary before getting them in-game and testing, so Penapsquat and I spent a lot of time this month there.  

Mr. Kittyhawk developed AI for two new attacks -- Blade Bunny's Swift Slash and Whirlwind, and I worked on the FX.  We also have Bat Bunny's combo in, but it still needs FX.  

As mentioned above, we've delayed the futa mechanics a bit until AltairPL is available to add them, as right now what he's working on is super important.

DK-Doll Sculpt Complete!

Demonu has completed the DK-Doll sculpt!  I think the bodysuit came out pretty amazing :D.  He's done it in such a way that we have both female and futa versions in the event we are able to integrate both (don't worry, the bikini female version is happening also).  Colors may change still, and we still have to do a damaged version as well, so we can maybe expect those in the next update.   

Onyx Concept Animation GIFs

Limbo has been working this month on creating animated GIF versions of planned Onyx moves so as to help streamline the 3D animation process.  For the amount of effort, we've found this helps convey timing information better than any other method. Let's go through some of them :D.

• Standing Punch Combo

This is our current idea for replacing jab spam.  Limbo has done a few versions and I like this one best so far, but it may still receive some work.  I'd like her to move forward as little as possible with this one, as its intended to be used for sustained high damage at the risk of low mobility (useful during fights, etc).  This will be in addition to her existing forward punch combo.

• Enhanced Kick Combo

This is the existing kick combo, but extended and sped up to be more useful.  The benefit over punching is additional range and knockback power at the expense of benefits from Onyx's knuckle weapons.  Later in the game Onyx's punches will deal much greater damage due to weapon damage and bonus procs.

• Combo Finisher: Whirlwind

Whirlwind is one of the tentative combo finishers Onyx can "equip" via her skill loadout. We're looking at having a few that the player can choose from, but haven't sorted all the details out yet.  I'd like each to have some measure of unique interactivity though.  This one for example could allow the player to control Onyx's direction and to optionally keep spinning at the cost of Stamina.

• Combo Finisher: Flash Attack

This Flash Attack combo finisher could potentially allow Onyx to quickly dash between onscreen enemies, additionally damaging those between the targets.  This one may also be good as a consumable skill instead of a combo finisher.  As in, it has a limited number of uses per mission, and requires a slot on the player's quick menu. 

• Aerial Moves Example 1

Double Jump, along with Falling Star (left) and Dive Kick are shown here.  These are effectively ways for Onyx to quickly return to the ground while dealing damage in her path.  Falling Star additionally will hit grounded enemies, and via skill upgrades can create an AoE when she lands.  

Aerial skills will become more important once we add actual flying enemy mechanics (right now Vioreapers have similar AI and navigation as ground enemies).  Staying off the ground will also be important, as many enemies will have abilities that make being on the ground dangerous (Charger and Blade Bunny are good example already).

• Aerial Moves Example 2

This shows the tentatively named Rising Star aerial combo starter as well as a variation from Limbo on the Dive Kick attack, which quickly propels Onyx diagonally to the ground.

• Aerial Dodge

Aerial dodging will give Onyx i-frames and extra mobility during jumps, and can be used as a method for keeping off the ground for longer when avoiding hazards (Note: she doesn't split in two, this is just fancy presentation by Limbo :D).

• Aerial Takedown

This is one of Limbo's designs, and a neat idea that I hadn't considered.  The idea would be to incorporate an aerial element to the combat grapple system that we intend to add later.  This could give the player extra flexibility for crowd control / mobility as opposed to simply throwing enemies away from Onyx.

• Rebound Kick

Another of Limbo's designs, this one would begin as a dash attack in which Onyx rebounds off an enemy, and could be combo'd into an AoE kick at a chosen time / position as Onyx returns to the ground.

Background Art Breakthrough!

This is an important topic this month!  

I understand a lot of people have strong feelings about AI art, but I'm convinced that AI generation will be an important tool in art production pipelines, not just a novelty, and certainly not as a replacement for good artists.  On the contrary, this month has taught me that strong artists wielding AI yields something transhuman.

I've therefore been developing an enhanced workflow for integrating stable diffusion into our background art pipeline.  From our experience thus far, it allows for efficient art direction with far less back and forth, and at best can make the "finishing" steps of the painting process *far* faster.  This is especially important for us, as a significant portion of the remaining background work will entail overpainting 3D art to give it a style suitable for our cel-shaded characters.

• (Above) Spider cave element example

• (Above) Spider cave element, detail example

• (Above) Spider cave element variations (slimy, painterly, and web versions).  

The short version of this process is that I'm able to use our AI setup to transfer a "finished" style to a piece of WIP background art, and then once it's tuned I can direct the AI to use the result of that first piece to paint outward and match the rest of the map to that style.  It's laborious right now, as I have to feed it adjacent square chunks (it's a lot like 3D rendering, but manually feeding it buckets), but I can do in a day what would take Xxoom and Zydaline weeks with tedious overpainting.  

Below is an example of a "chunk" from one of Zydaline's WIP maps, and the AI generated finished quality chunk -- with background even (added in a separate pass).  Form and composition is retained, but the overpainting work is done.

• (Above) A "chunk" from one of Zydaline's WIP maps taken to finished quality with stable diffusion.

• (Above) Detail example

And here's a test screenshot of this background in-game!

I wanted to have an entire map complete to show you guys for this update, but the last few days I've started transitioning to a new PC and simply ran out of time for the month.  Expect some great progress on this next month though :D.