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Progress Report 24-08
New
6 hours ago
Happy Halloween!
So the most important news, Ep4 is still shooting for a winter release. Ideally before the end of the year, but there's a lot of work to do and it's still hard to predict. But here's a little info on some hurdles this chapter has brought.
Story:
I know I made a small mention of this one time and promised to talk more about it at a later date. But Ep4 is beginning to show more consequences and branching based on player choices. This was always meant to be intentional.
Going into development for this episode, I wasn't sure how complicated I could get with this. In one particular scene, I found out I'd need to account for 5-6 scenarios. This would be a lot, especially if it became commonplace.
Fortunately, I think this is an outlier, where most convergence points won't be as convoluted. Also, the intent is use these scenes to take those 5-6 scenarios and reduce them down to 2-3 paths as you exit the scene. The biggest benefit of this (other than shrinking the branching on my end) is that it creates multiple ways for the player to achieve certain goals/paths.
Visuals:
I've also mentioned this before, but improving lighting is my main goal this time around. Fortunately a few other artists/devs I interact with have been focusing some effort into that recently. One of the more impactful changes, I think, will come from switching to using Daz's sun/sky lighting mode for many outdoor scenes.
Up to this point I have used an HDRI map to light up outdoor scenes. These maps do two things: provide an environment light and also a landscape background. But sometimes I don't need that background...
What the sun/sky mode does is simulate the sun in the sky at a specific time/date and world position. It's something I've messed with briefly in the past, but for whatever reason didn't end up happy with it (likely due to not configuring it as well as I could have). Here you can see one comparison (First image HDRI, second Sun/Sky).
HDRI:
Sun/Sky:
Now, you can't take this as one is strictly better than the other mode, because I could have still done some changes or used another HDRI in the first render to produce better results. But the sun/sky mode
does offer more flexibility, and more consistency between scenes, and that's something I want to take advantage of.
Boring Work Stuff:
Recently I finally took the time to convert my logo into vector art. For those not sure what this means, it uses math to create an image instead of using a color value for each individual pixel. You would never do this for something like photos, but it's quite common for logos or other art that can be created with simple shapes and lines. The main benefit is infinite scaling potential with no loss of quality.
A couple months ago I had also gotten my hands on a new monitor stand, but never assembled it until this week. It can hold two monitors vertically, so I was able to grab my OLD monitor and hook that up as well. That's when I learned how horrible the colors are compared to my newer one. But, it's extra screen space that helps with multitasking, as long as I don't use it for artwork.
Dumb Apple/iOS Stuff:
Starting November (now) everyone who uses the iOS Patreon app to sub to a creator will be charged an extra 30% fee that goes to Apple. As far as I'm aware, automatic renewing subscriptions are
not affected. Also, I believe you can avoid this fee if you subscribe using a browser on your phone, or just on a PC.
If you subscribe using an alternate method, you can still use the iOS app to access Patreon and do everything normally.
Personal Stuff:
As I hoped, with the summer heat gone, my carpal tunnel problems are barely an issue. It should be fine going forward, at least until next summer.
I don't have any major obstacles coming up. But next week I'll be taking a weekend trip to see a few friends I haven't seen in two years. The fun part is one of them really wants to know more about this project and the work I do, so it's a free opportunity to talk about it and brainstorm ideas.
Take care!
-ckr
