Progress Report #15: April, 2022

Every1 wants to ride a train, only a few enjoy getting ridden on a train ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Hi folks,

Continuing the mayhem that is this month is, we have for you, the subway! Yep, you didn't think transitioning into districts on foot would be the entire length and breadth of Henosis, did you? This metropolis has secrets embedded in its farthest reaches and transportation will be key getting to those elusive quests and objectives. Trains are ready, stations are set and all we now await are the laying of the tracks.

Oh snap; It's the cops! Indeed, no intergalactic tale would be complete without the law crashing the party and Henosis's finest fuzz is no exception. They now have a fully functioning building and are uniquely integrated into VoidBound's story in more than just the generic "You're now under arrest! Bend over!" kind of way(though we should mention that some bent cops might still make Caly bend in all sorts of kinky ways).

Finally, the audio plugin overhaul, spearheaded by the music director and the coder, concluded on a satisfactory note. The goal was to separate audio and music into distinct channels in order to avoid congestion noise when the upcoming voicework is finally integrated into the game. However, further stress testing is required before we'd call the initiative a final success.

Apart from those specific tasks, not much was handled this week as most of the work flow continued revolving around poking under the hood fixing one thing and breaking ten more in the process. Nothing new there. Stay calm and keep fixing.

On that anticlimactic note, we bid you farewell till the next one o/

Regards,

Cursed-Atelier Team

Live2D Animations: The Next Frontier

Well, luckily with animation, fantasy is your friend.

Greetings SubScribers o/

As you know, we've been floating Progress Reports for some time now; a few of them with recorded footage attached, depicting various Henosis districts. The intent however, was to not only showcase new content, but also object animations; some examples being shop/ad billboards, sign illuminations, street-lights etc. But that isn't where we intended to draw the line.

Since VoidBound's inception, a common query that constantly floated our way was, "How about character animations? Will there by any of it?", and honestly we had a hard time answering that as we didn't plan on them initially. Not that we were averse to the idea, we just simply had other priorities to tackle. Fortunately, now that we are in the medial phase of development where basic foundations are well established, we find ourselves open to new areas to evaluate, or in this case reevaluate, and we're glad to inform you, that our pilot testing of the concept has borne some very encouraging, albeit still a bit premature results.

To be forthright with you, none of our present team members have the skills to pull something like that off; which meant either we used some very basic animation styles that would be cheaper and easier to integrate by abusing the heck out of motion blur or bite the bullet and go all in with a more complicated but a legitimate approach giving a more vibrant style that VoidBound, and our loyal fans truly deserve. Welp... meet DaemonAnim8, the talented author of the video sample we presented for you. Add in the audio magic that Pixie brings to the table with her SFX and VA skills and you have the makings of a fusion that we can't wait to explore more of. On that note, if you haven't yet, do consider checking Pixie out on her Patreon as well. Her work, be it NSFW or SFW, will leave you wanting for more! Moving forward, and if things remain on the up and up, we sincerely hope to employee more of DaemonAnim8's services eventually populating animations in more than just risque' scenarios.

That should about sum up, what is one of the biggest challenges we've taken up in a while now. No doubt, creating animations is a challenging task but integrating the end result into an engine like RPG Maker MV, that is prone to frequent blowouts, is a whole other beast in itself. We'll keep you updated about our progress on that front but for now, we sincerely hope you like this new direction we've decided to take VoidBound in and we'd love to hear your thoughts/feedback if you have any on the matter.

On that note, we bid you farewell and will see you in the next report o/

Kind Regards,

Cursed Atelier

Progress Report #14: April, 2022

Beauty without expression is boring.

Hi folks o/

We bring you today VoidBound's second progress report of the month something, we might add, is a direct result of the last report's feedback. In that report, we added a panning video showcasing the fully animated Slum District of Henosis, and though we were glad it was positively received, we did observe a common quip about how the whole viewing experience was drenched in a tad darker shade and made spying details harder because of it. No way we'd let that stand.

Introducing Elite District, a flashy locale where obnoxiousness is considered a compliment and decadence, a luxury of the rich. Polar opposite to the Slums, nightfall has no place here and is constantly defeated by artificial illumination 24/7. Showcasing another district was always on the cards but since those plans are now fast-tracked, we see this as an excellent opportunity to present the new silhouette's as well. Though we'd refrain from displaying the nude variants this time(dang rules), we'll gladly show their default scheme the player would see when they'd interact with Caly out in the world. We sincerely hope this would showcase object based animations much more clearly!

As for how things went this week: Right from new map based quests to new expression induction to new combat system programming; it was a chaos of multiple elements, something which has kinda become the norm this month. Details, as usual, attached alongside.

Coming up, in our next post, unveiling of a new system by popular demand, something we've been tinkering with for a while, but only now feel confident enough to introduce its existence in VoidBound. Will tell you more about it when next we meet. Till then, stay safe!

Kind Regards, o/

Cursed-Atelier Team

Progress Report #13: April, 2022

The slums are not necessarily a place of despair. Its inhabitants are all working towards a better life. Some are simply less ethical than others in their endeavors.

Salutations!

After a brief hiatus tying off post-HLE commitments, we're back on task with VoidBound. April is now dedicated to extensive patch tinkering with all the planned content making their way from idea based concepts to playable gaming elements.

To showcase one such facet, we recorded a 60 second panning footage of the slum district, one of the more asset heavy maps, with all the effects and NPCs in place. Recommend cranking the video quality to the max and let the camera pan to all four corners of the map to judge the performance(and enjoy the view) for yourself. Quick additional note here: We're still grappling with some stray factors when it comes to zoning into a new district as loading times tend to be erratic dependent on the map, so it goes without saying that optimization is an ongoing challenge and a high priority. On a different front, writers are now finalizing story building blocks and conjoining events in order to sequence them into a coherent chain of quests. To that effect, new central and side characters are being bestowed relevant backstories and our programmer is integrating them into the game code for final testing.

That about sums up this week of work. Eventually, we'd like share our thoughts, on the state of the patch and its planned release pattern, but more on that at a later date. For now, please peruse at your leisure, this week's achievement report.

Regards o/

Cursed Atelier Team