3D Arielle Project Update 10

A lot of progress has been made on the 3D Arielle game since my last post about it. Please keep in mind this is a side project so there are not regular updates. However, ever since the virus hit, I’ve really ramped up the time I’ve spent working on it. But I’ve also stopped working on it (for now) to finish some work in 2D projects first before the month ends. So as you can see it’s off and on.

I’ve basically overhauled the entire game. I redid the character and enemy models using DAZ studio. Basically making a base body and hair with a few sci-fi parts and editing the outfit from the existing models onto it in Blender. It took me a while to reach this point because I tried a lot of DAZ clothing and parts. Also I got better looking weapon models, and added parts where you get to fly in Ari’s ship while defeating enemy ships and capturing nodes, I added Ari’s apartment as a area you can walk around in and interact with Jeo and other stuff in there. One example is Ari can do yoga in there. It’s a type of view mode similar to any gravure watch mode in other some pervy game such as DOAX. I also updated all the areas the missions take place in, adding different buildings, objects and enemies and tried to make them all make sense based on the lore. I also added cinematic(ish) dialogue scenes that make use of different camera angles and animations to support what the characters are saying and/or thinking. I also made a new bomb for Ari (and blue agents) and made a few new enemy types. I also plan to add the enemy/boss challenge arena, and I’ll still have racing minigame in there also.

Having added all that, I did also decide to remove Phia and Tiffany from the game for now to keep the project from being something too large for me to finish in a reasonable amount of time. I did remodel Phia and Tiffany in DAZ when I was doing Arielle and Bri (and I even Maiko and Pattie but I will show in a different post), however editing their outfits to the daz body in blender and setting the characters up in unity (fixing textures, editing materials, correcting bones, adding their unique weapons, adding coding/components so they function in the the game, adding boob jiggle and hair physics) and all that takes a long time. The original game concept only had Ari and Bri. If the game does well I don’t mind doing the work to add Phia and Tiffany. I’d love to add them and I have the story that includes them worked out. However currently I have no idea how the game will be received so I want to see how that goes first. I even had the idea to have a second playthrough where you play as a created character. You can pick gender, skin color, hair and colors, khalei color (for passives), weapons and a bomb type.

I’d normally post a playable build of the game with a post like this however due to me still needed to sort out and pay some DAZ licenses fees, I can’t yet.

Instead I will show screenshots showing the updates. I also will have a trailer in a another post since this one will be image heavy.

Arielle Changes

These are the Arielle changes. The left is new, right is old (in case it isn’t obvious). The primary reason I redid the models was to improve the face, since most critique about what needs to improve was about the faces.

I took a swing at the faces earlier, but still wasn’t where I wanted it so this time I just did a redesign of Ari in general. Even though it’s a different, even younger look, from the 2D renders of Ari in existing games and art, I feel it hit right on the money of how she might look at point in the story and this setting (in my own style). Even though this is later in the ARIA story, Ari would still only be around 22 years old here. So that is the face and look I was going for.

I am missing not having an opacity map (which adds the dark and light details in the skin the old model had) but I think I might be be able to find and grab one in daz. I did a bit more than just swapping the armor over. I fixed the shoulder gear, waist gear, there are a lot more parts in general. The boobs are also weight painted a lot better and it uses several bones instead of just one. The new Ari is shorter than the old one but since i updated all of the models, they are all at this new height. and that height also matches the npc heights in the city area.

Bri Changes

I originally went for an asian look for Bri but pulled back on that a bit to land on how she looks now. I have some slight concerns about Bri seeming too young in appearance here for Steam. Although in the game she is the equivalent of 20 years old, she is a bit shorter and has smaller “body features” than Ari. So, if it’s a problem I should be able to remove any sex stuff with her in it for whatever platform it’s on and/or possibly have it as a patch or something. I’m also being very careful about how Bri acts and talks in the game because I know that plays a big part also. It’s a balance of wanting her to be animated and cute but not childish.

Bri wears the least armor out of the 4 girls on Arielle’s team so there is less equipment around the waist and legs. Kind of tricky updating the gear for a character that doesn’t really wear much to begin with but I like the final result I went with.

below are screenshots I took of Ari and Bri in a sandbox testing area. I also do all the model setup here after importing them from other software.

below are the updated weapon models for ari
MLaW (Mega Laser Weapon)

I had a unique custom made mega laser weapon model for Ari already but I decided to go something that looked similarly detailed as the other weapons. Same for Bri’s swords.

Rifle

Pistol

Ari’s grenade appears on her lower back area (not shown here). pistol on the leg and the other two guns on the back. In missions, all weapons she has are shown even when not in use, I didn’t wen to have weapons just suddenly appearing.

Below I am testing Bri and Ari ally AI .

Bri focuses on melee combat and Ari is more ranged. In earlier builds, Bri’s melee animations were bad and melee didn’t really work for her well. but I’ve worked on Bri’s animations quite a bit to make her viable as melee. The current version of her works really well as melee now both playing her manually and as an AI ally. She how has gap closer animations on the first and 3rd hit of her combo. her first and third hit also swing with both swords.

I also I have bit of AI working for Jeo but i’m not sure I’ll end up using it. Maybe for a different game.

Updates on some of the enemy agents:

Theses just a few of the males. however females are updated also.

these are the current enemies created in the game:
male yellow agent – normal
female yellow agent – normal

elite agent – blue suit mini boss (weapon and abilities may vary)

special agent enemy (blue,red,green) – special agent mini boss (weapon and abilities may vary)
smoke agent – blends in the with the environment. you can tell they are in the area if it’s really smoky.

male green agent – gun + shield (enemies in his platoon have a shield on chest also?) heals allies in range
female green agent – fast regen (no off-hand shield like male agent, but has small shields on armor/limbs)

male red agent – melee sword, rush ai logic
female red agent – sniper

operator + sentinel (blue,green) – tough sentinel has a lot of HP. kill operator and sentinel dies.
Mecha – big armor unit shooting explosive rockets. (elite or special agent pops out after it’s destroyed?)

There are some agents you’ll find in the town there don’t have helmets. Since there’s not many of them they likely will all play some interactive role in the game via the main story or minigame and stripclub stuff.

Hidden Special Agents (showing 2 of 3)

So for this game I plan to have 5 main story missions that takes place over 3 areas (with Phia and Tiffany I’d imagine 10 missions over 4-5 areas or so). In each of the 3 areas there will be a hidden special agent to find that is a more difficult to take out than the normal agents. Defeating them will unlock them in a challenge mode arena were you will need to defeat them in a more structured 2-phase boss fight. Beating them there will unlock stuff. I’m not sure what exactly yet though because I need to sort of what will unlock what. But there is plenty of stuff to choose from that can be unlocked. It could unlock their weapon, outfits, concept art, sex animations, dance animations, that character appears in the strips club, etc.

some screens from the Apartment

A lot of it is still template asset (I added it on a whim) but I have tried quite a bit to personalize it so far(and clean it up). It’s been updated more since these screenshots. I plan to do a lot more before I finish with it. I also want to make some Easter egg commercials on the TV. Some of the current ideas are having one with Zytra and one with Mira mostly from Umichan games.

Yoga screenshot
yoga has the option to toggle on/off clothes and move the camera around different ways so you watch ari stretch. Dancing will work similarly. I think for any 3d parts instead of toggle clothes (they will always be nude) that same button will manually switch the speed and climax states.

speaking of which, I have a image for that.
this a quick image from a test project where I try stuff out before importing it into the actual project. I have worked out a way to add 3D sex into the game but it’ll take a bit of time getting that going. I basically need to setup version of the character that uses a generic bone structure instead of humanoid one. It not as easy as other people make it seem. I’d imagine people who already come from 3D game backgrounds have already worked out a lot of the issues I was running into. I plan to use about 7 or animated positions exported from DAZ if I remember then all correctly.

next is the flying minigame

I wanted to have flying because ARIA’s origins are root in space combat theme games. This is isn’t quite space but it has a similar nostalgic feeling. I wanted to keep the main story flying segment fairly simple. capture one node, defeated one enemy, etc. the most you have to do currently is to capture 3 nodes all in one go. Also if your ship looses all HP you wont restart all the way over. Again the goal here is more nostalgic than difficultly. However I will have side activities that have more challenging flying combat to unlock stuff.

last screenshot I have to show is a screenshot from one of the dialogues in the game.
First I want to say the dialogue is mostly just placeholder. I suspect I will get better at multiple camera use and animations in 3D dialogue scenes the more I do them (or perhaps with better tools). Currently I have a few gestures animation that play during parts of the dialogue to support what they are saying. It could further improved with voice acting also if i decide to go that route. The one thing I don’t think I will do is add lip movement to these because I didn’t import and mouth morphs from DAZ, and because when in edited the model in blender I actually deleted all of the inside of the mouth to make the model seize smaller. I didn’t expect to do dialogue like this for this game but here I am.

I think that at least touches on everything so far. I plan to hopefully get more progress made in June. I’d say I’m 3-4 more weeks of working on this full time to finish. Not to be confused with 3-4 more weeks until I finish.