📒 Dev log: a slice of life

Hi guys!

The sex machine is on beta. It's very raw for now and missing some key fixes. Just I didn't want you to wait any longer. Ironically, I expected the sex machine to be the smallest feature in v1.5 (just draw it and put it nearby), but it already became the most time-consuming one. So now I'm going to show how it happens that the amount of work often grows twice on the go.

Enjoy your reading!

Monday

Painted the guiding cubes. Sketch looked too colorful, need to make it more like tin than gold. Control block was mostly fine, just make the box more matted and the grate more glossy. Both of the engines are painted glossy black on references, but matted finish might look cooler on radiator parts. Need to add some color accents on rivets. Completely forgot about melding seams on the frame, as such things are usually melded together. Also added some color reflections to it from the installed parts to highlight the glossiness. Oh, and we have 2 independent engines, so the remote control should have at least 2 buttons – have to redraw it. I thought I would finish this today, but nope.

Tuesday 

The engine attachments are done. These have many parts to be drawn separately so I could apply changes later – nothing difficult, just time-consuming. Wheels. Front side of each wheel should be drawn separately – then I can deform and rotate them in Unity to create a perfect animation. Add some wear and tear to it. Good, it’s a pity it will be barely visible in the end. Hey, why did I write “Roy” on the left wheel? It's fine to name the favorite toy, but it looks like an unclear reference. Let's change it to something more obvious: “Sweetie”, draw it with another brush and make it pink like lipstick. Joints and rods to be chrome-like shiny. I'll draw one rod and will make a copy later. Still they have to look slightly different, so I redraw the shines and prepare some recoloring layers.

Oh, I'm done finally. Wow, the workday is mostly over. Should I start the next step today? Doesn't make much sense, let's relax a bit. Hmm, I can add a bit of rust here and there and damage the paint on the corners like the machine was accidentally hit a few times, some small reflections, a bit deeper shadows around the equipment.

Wednesday

I drew things on the Samsung tablet. It’s a portable gadget, so I'm limited to ~100 layers per image. The final version of sex machine is split between 4 files, that's about 350 layers. Today I’m going to merge these on my desktop PC into a single PSD file. 1 file with all layers separated and grouped to be used later if I need to apply any changes. Another file to be imported in-game. All rods and joints are separate sprites so I have a full control when animating them, wires are split into parts as top part is over engines and bottom part goes under the frame, both should use the same rig to be perfectly synced, so add the crop marks to it to ensure the final sprites are the same size. The cube to be also cut into parts to cover the rods properly. Damn, the compression algorithm makes the seams visible – try to rework this piece. I could make it with Unity masks, but having the ready-to-use sprites will save some performance. Ok, the 3rd attempt worked fine.

Now create the skeleton and rig the sprites in Unity editor. Need a root bone, bones for engines to shake them while working (like they're super powerful, will name that animation br, lol), bone for highlights to tremor them a bit while working to create an effect of movement on static parts. Need a bone for each joint part and rods will utilize 2 bones each to control both ends separately to sync it with the existing toys.

Then it's time to rig the sprites. For each of 25 final sprites I place the points attaching it to bones. Some details are simple, like the wheel front side depends totally on a single bone. Some are complicated, like I made a single sprite for the engine and the shake should affect only the top part as the bottom is connected to a heavy frame. It's impossible to make 100% realistic with a single sprite, but shaking will be small enough, so it will look pretty realistic.

Thursday

Making animation. Create a separate animator with its own set of animations to less affect the performance – the main one, ruling the body, is already overcomplicated. Going to build the V-end first, fix the issues, then repeat it for A-end. “Engine-brr” is pretty simple. Oh, it affects the joints too much, need to compensate for the shaking. Also one more round of adjustments to highlights and wheels to better match. Now the wheel rotation animation, which includes the joint and the bottom part of the rod. No need to make a perfect circle here, 4 key points look good enough (maybe add 4 more? not sure yet), add shadows movement, highlights shaking… highlights are affected too much – fix the rig – oh, nice. One more animation for the rod end – it should be perfectly synced with dildo animation. 15 minutes with a notepad and calculator and it's done.

Now I need a code to bring it to life. Get the dildo position from the main sex generator, calculate the wheel rotation from it. Run. Damn, it starts fine and fails later. Arcsin(x) is defined only on [-1;1], matching [-90°;90°], but I need to cover the whole circle. This? Nope. This? Oh, also move it 90° forward. 30 minutes later: OMG, OMG, it's working! Looks so good! Magnificent! 

Ok, now focus on dildo end: it's close to what I need, but isn't completely synced with a dildo. Are my calculations wrong? Even worse, the connection point differs for different toys. Can I find a single good point? This works acceptable for glass and yellow toys. lollipop? Damn, it's 2 times smaller. Hey, is it possible to attach the candy to sex machine at all? Maybe just disable this combination? Completely forgot about the carrot – it's huge! Will I need one more component to patch the animation per each toy? – seems so. Oh, one more thing is noticed: dildo animation works related to the body, so it shakes together with the body. I need to sync it somehow between animators. 

Well, it looked like a 2 day piece of work until I started it. So now I'm sure I won't complete it before the weekend. Also would be good to add some related phrases, buffs, sound effects. Spring is a single sprite with a connector and deforms it too much – need to separate them. The difference between rod ends is too large, try to compensate for it by stretching the rod a bit, add one more bone to not deform the joints – this is much better. Oh, got it, the wheels are too small, would be good to redraw them later, make it like 1.5x larger. The transition when attaching the dildo also looks weird. That's bad. That's very bad. 

Friday

Ok, stand up! A minimal task for today is to make the A-end, so everything is basically working. Would be nice to sync the animations properly, but I'm not sure how long it will take.

First make a component to toggle the machine from UI. How did that UI work at all? Oh, I see. What a weird solution, it worked ok for switching plugs, but will need a new UI component here. Also requires minor rewriting here and there. Fine, this should work for it. Now the animation itself.

Copy this, paste here as an example, recreate the movement for the right side. This is so boring. Now this, here. It's difficult to test the bottom rod, as it's covered by the top one. And it will distract the players as well – I need an idle animation to hide the part which is not in use. Yes, like this. Also turn on engines only in manual mode. Wait, why does nothing work anymore? WTF? Don't panic, try to roll back today's things and recreate it step by step. … 30 minutes later: oh, I'm really dumb, the unfinished animation piece just overrides the working one, so it looks like nothing happens. Now calm down and proceed.

Good. Looks pretty good. But the bottom rod intersects with top dildo – need to integrate the machine into wardrobe z-indexes calculation. Also a glitch happens when toggling the machine or switching the dildo.

Awesome. The basic part is done, and I even have some time to try to fix a synchronization. Let's go an easy way and try to repeat the movement of the cock1-bone here. Why nothing happens? Ah, my fail here. And here. It's strange, it should work now. Maybe animation affects it? – but I excluded this bone from animation. Did I override something again? Hell, let's try another way. Oh, this is more complicated, but it works somehow. Coordinates are incorrect, so something is wrong with calculations. This is better. Where did this “-” come from? Oh, it's night already. Let's build the game and take a fresh look tomorrow.

Saturday

Uploaded everything to alpha and showed it to my tester. Why can’t we show it on beta? It's not completely broken, just unpolished. Yes, I know it works bad with some toys. Sure, that scaling looks ugly. Ok, let’s have a compromise: I’ll show it as it is today and write a post about the unexpected issues. I guess it might be interesting to read.

…

On this optimistic note I was going to say bye as usual. But at the last moment I accidentally broke my stylus in 2 pieces. The dark stripe continues, my day is ruined and no more drawing until I get the replacement.

Have a lucky weekend!