NeonTail_DevLog10 (July 22th, 2018)

Hi, this week is just 2 new characters. I added a groovy grandma, still wondering what to put on her T-Shirt, maybe a hippie color pattern or some fictional rock rap or metal band. She will be a shopkeeper, although I leave open the possibility to play with her as a character. Leaving that for later.

I did "extracted" a shirtless dude from the work I did on the other male model, as it didn't take much time. That actually means I duplicated it and quick tweaked it, that lacks design work, but I don't think it's that bad, I'll just need more different characters in the future and I really gotta move on now.

See you next update!

NeonTail_Poster

Hi, this week's  #screenshotsaturday is a sort of concept art that can be used as poster, cover, or presentation visual.
In short I've just been drawing for the last 3 weeks, this isn't my main thing and I learned too late some techniques I could try and experiment to shorten the production time for my future drawings. Drawing everything in clean line then painting over in crazy resolution wasn't that smart of me but meh it's something .
If some of you artists have general tips or critiques I would be happy to hear them, I will take note for later, but I have to move on for now as my schedule is pressing me on.
Have a nice week end!

NeonTail_DevLog10 (August 18th, 2018)

This week on#screenshotsaturday I finally started working on the gameplay, hitting those energy spheres to gather as much points as possible before shooting them all in a goal.
The winner is the one who shoots the most points in the goal. There are bigger versions of these spheres, that contains more points, that have their own bigger animations, and are climbable.
This week I've just created some sphere hitting animations and started coding the implementation. Tons of bugs for now, but it's kind of functional.
The update to Unity 2018 broke my UI, as well as the hair physics, but also revealed why I struggled so much with it.
By default Unity can have good physics handling with thing that have bigger scales, like planes tanks and car.
The ponytail is too small for the physics to work except if I made my character as big as Godzilla. I did tests, it's kind of funny as she looks gigantic.
Only 2 solutions : Either scale up EVERYTHING so that my ponytail is as big as a bridge, or code my own physics.
I'll do that later as either way it's quite a big amount of work.
That's it for this week, have a nice week end!

Neon Tail -  DevLog 12

This week's #screenshotsaturday I did a lot of small fixes.
- Fixed many bugs tied to the slapping of green spheres. The code behind it was a bit sloppy, now it is quite solid. Mainly been about a satisfying input feel, allowing the transition anywhere between the start of an attack to a little while after its ending, while keeping a smooth transition.
- Created a very primitive physics for the ponytail, it's missing the usage of mass and I'm hacking some fake gravity in it for now as time flies and I really need to move on. It will do for now, will come back at it later.
- Created a mockup level for a demo build, as the people who will play it will have never played the game, and as previous tests showed, people would mainly hit walls for 10 minutes, not knowing where to go this level is designed to be less opened to choices, with one large road to test the movement, introducing this dynamic city with many pedestrians and fantasy sci fi, including some basic skating, grinding and introducing the sphere slapping game at the end : hitting the spheres to gather points then unleash it all at the goal at the end of the wall, scoring enough before the timer goes out. Some AI and traps will try to stop you.
To do :
- Air attacks, backward combo and goal shooting animations and implementation.
- Big spheres are special, they hold more points, and I'll have to think of a cool animation where you end up standing on top of it, on the metallic circles around it, from where you can jump again. They can be used as platforms to access higher locations.

Neon Tail -  DevLog 13

Hi, this week's  #screenshotsaturday got me working quite hard :

- Added and implemented sphere slapping animation backward and aerial, as well as big sphere's jump and stand on it loop.
- Worked on this demo level a bit more with the materials and spheres placements, the grinding rail setting took me forever, and the collisions are mostly done, but still WIP.
- Fixed many invisible bugs.

Things are slowly coming together for this level. Still a lot to do, pedestrians, destructible objects, NPCs, Game Rules, points and timer, goal animations, pedestrian interactions, pedestrian animations, etc...
Made this video quite in a rush, but it's still saturday so it's all good.
See you next week :)

Neon Tail -  DevLog 14

This week's #screenshotsaturday shows steady progress :
- Environment update.
- Re positioned Spheres and rails.
- Created the game rules, simple timer, score, scoreboard.
- Added the "Style Tracker System", tracking jumps, grinds, wallruns, on beat grind and turn around. When a sphere game starts, style combos adds time to the timer.
- Added entering proving ground cutscene.
- Found a funny bug. See the end of the video! :3

Next week I'll add hitting goal animation, sphere game ending cutscene, environment props and start working on pedestrians.
Have a nice week end

Neon Tail -  DevLog 15

For this week's #screenshotsaturday a lot has been done, while a lot of sleep were lost. Also a lot of retries for this video haha.
- Environment update
- Hitting Goal cutscene (missing FX, WIP)
- Intro and outro added (WIP)
- Created and placeholding textured dummy pedestrians
- Animated many moves the pedestrians can do, like watching smartphone, lean on wall, sit on ground, sit on chair with without smartphone, party hard, evade, getting angry, getting hit hard, etc...
- Wrote the Pedestrian Manager, optimizing spawn amount and activities based on distance to player and camera visibility
- Integrated interactions with pedestrians
- Added pushable props physics
- Added secrets in the streets with good precision skills required (hence my many retries)

I'm looking for some electro pop music that are very dynamic, if possible with female vocals in. Something like "Fusq - Perfume" or "She - Coloris" would fit.
I don't have budget for now but arrangements can be made. Or if I really love the tracks I'll sell a kidney or something. ;)

Anyway, I'll keep rushing. Have a nice week end, see you next week!

Neon Tail - Devlog 16

Hi, this week's #screenshotsaturday is of a lesser gameplay quality, I'm exhausted so excuse the missed jumps and such. 
- Added temporarily a free music, recorded some grinding sounds, and created and integrated a bunch of new sounds.
- Made groovy grandma dance, made her into a talking NPC.
- Added the guy who'll let you in the game.
- Added small badges to collect mini quest.
- Fixed wallrun and grinding physics.
- Other dozen small stuff.

To do for next week :
- new bug appeared : Cutscene's ponytail goes crazy.
- VR Challenges and Tutorial.
- polish demo.

I'm exhausted, but like this week, many 4 hours nights are scheduled next week. Have a nice week end! 

Neon Tail - Devlog 17

Hi, this #screenshotsaturday is almost wrapping up a presentable mini demo of our progress.
The demo is really short but it's something. \(o_o)/
Not public for now, sorry, but that should be feasible some time later. 
Added a loading screen, fixed many collisions, added a secret level, fixed many small bugs, added objective panels, tutorial messages, pedestrian bugs, dialogs, sounds, fonts, lights, UI, optimization, etc...
Really a big bunch of tiny things in the end.
For now I just don't like the cheering sound when a game is won but meh... will change it later :p
Have a nice week end! :3

Neon Tail - Devlog 18

Hi, it's been a long time since I posted a #screenshotsaturday !
But I've got good news to people who wants to try the game, however much the game is a work in progress.
A demo will be available on November 1st, I will post more about it then.
This #screenshotsaturday doesn't show much new features, but mostly everything that is already there has been polished.
Added 2 languages, french and chinese (traditional and simplified), fixed many bugs, added this and that logo...
Started to code in a new tricks & combos system.
And started to make real devlogs, going in depth into game design. More later. :)

Neon Tail - Devlog 19

Hi, for this week's #screenshotsaturday , a little more mood work, a little less acrobatics.

- Added Pedestrian clothes, hats and bags management system
- Added Tricks and Combos system
- Added Reputation system
- Added Hypershot system and tutorial
- Added more Keyboard & Mouse support (Icon change and stuff)
- Added a Pause menu
- Changed to night time

Next week I'll work on the surface city, maybe design more characters, and finish my devlog.
Have a nice week end! 

Neon Tail - Devlog 20

Well, this week's #screenshotsaturday is quite a big one. Been changing many key designs and fixing big issues with the wallruns.
Added animals to make the city more alive, but right now it's so alive it became visually messy. I will use spread pedestrians and animals into a more cinematographic way later.
Here's a list of all the new things we're preparing for the monthly builds for our Patrons :

- Modeled / animated the Zombeanies
- Added pedestrian and Zombeanies invasion system
- Improved Hypershot system (can now shoot pedestrians...  )
- Birds, cats, dogs
- Removed Boost from Button B
- Added Spin Boost system (perform Ground Spin then press trigger)
- Improved wallrun system
- Fixed many wallrun bugs
- Fixed and added grind poses
- Added spin pose based on rotation while falling
- Added snow fall + auto optimizing code
- Fixed accidental heaviness on Hypershot
- Added a VR Challenge level
- New NPC basic pose loop added
- Upper city in construction 

Happy holidays in advance by the way! \o/

Neon Tail - Devlog 21

This week's #screenshotsaturday I'm finally attacking the story's implementation... This video clip might look unusual, but it's part of the story.
So development wise it's going to be short :

- HUD now displays speed (in km/h)
- Grinding speed goes to a set speed when no triggers is pressed.
- Grinding speed max limit was increased
- Imagined created and coded a simple grid system to move around and encase the player in a performance friendly cluster of particle system. I can now haz snow storm or dust storm and such... with the right sounds and effect it can be really cool. :3

Have a happy new year!

Neon Tail -  DevLog 22

This week's #screenshotsaturday shows a little about what I'm working profusely on at the moment. I also implemented a main menu full of placeholder but it's really not much to see yet. It's all just functional. This is what I did this week : - Implemented saving system - Updated the options, now they're saved - Implemented main menu - Added a first version of the prologue - Added a wake up from a sofa animation - Implemented it based on first mission - Shopping District accessible but all rail collisions are to be done.

Neon Tail -  DevLog 23

This couple of weeks I've been working on a build for the Taipei Game Show, where people will come and go maybe try the game for a minute or two then move on. For this special case, we decided to take out the VR levels and tutorials, and instead of trying to create an impossible 2 minutes skating mastering course, I decided to implement other fun sources, work on the universe, the people you meet, their reasons being here, etc...
Hopefully, people trying the game won't just be facing an impossible challenge of mastering the skating physics within 2 minutes, but will find a street to explore, people to meet, and a city to look forward to.
Also hopefully we'll find a way to help funding our project.  

- Improved dialog system for more flexibility with missions
- Optimized A LOT the pedestrian management system (most of the time went here)
- Fixed many small dialog bugs
- Added Optrellian NPC
- Added lost hat side mission
- Fixed dialog trigger detection bugs

- and shopping district still in construction

Neon Tail -  DevLog 24

Hi there, I'm sorry this week's #screenshotsaturday is a bit redundant, been mainly debugging and preparing for the Taipei Game Show.
Here's a list of the small changes :

- Implemented the dialog conversation animations to the dialog system.
- Made and added Optrellian's animations for basic reactions.
- Fixed many small things, fixed some problems with textures.
- Shopping District still in construction :O

Neon Tail -  DevLog 25

Hi, been a few weeks since I last posted a #screenshotsaturday !

Beside the #TaipeiGameShow, there was a huge update with the whole shopping district made available and updated with pedestrians. Ran into a lot of expected performance problems, that I dare think is mostly resolved probably. 

The list of changes since last update :

- You can now skate in the Shopping District! \o/ - HUGE rework on the pedestrian manager for optimization purpose. - Implemented Saving system. - Updated the options, now they're saved on hard drive. - Implemented main menu (functional but ugly. Visual update pending) - Added a first version of the prologue (same, will be more spectacular later) - Added a wake up from a sofa animation - Implemented it based on first mission - Dialog system code improved - Reduced Pedestrian polygon count by around 30% - Added and Animated Drones and props - Many new props will now move on player touch - Fixed grinding bug - General performance optimization

I'll probably keep working on more optimization for all the dynamic props next week, something visually visible for the next #screenshotsaturday could be nice for you guys too.

Have a nice week end!

Neon Tail -  DevLog 26

Hi! For this week's #screenshotsaturday there isn't much graphic work done... but a huge, tedious, boring, tiring and annoying amount of work done with the optimization.
In short, I've been organizing and restructuring the whole district so all the props and animals (and there's a ton of them) goes along with my pedestrian management system, disabling them when unused. Also did a lot of other various and exotic optimizations, be it in codes, materials or light bakes.
This led to a loading time sped up by about 500%, and an FPS increase of around 15~20FPS (yes having tons of active props does that)
The downside is I need to really be careful with what zones can be seen when. Props can be seen popping in and out in some places and debugging... it's just more work.
Ah, also now when you jump while skating forward you will only flip when pressing Rt. Changes nothing except that you can spin earlier without the flip. Feels nice.

Hopefully I'll get to some actual game content next week. Or maybe make another Devlog.
See you next week!