Closing this chapter...in more ways than one (reworks and additions, starting my Blender journey, moving to a new place).

Boy, do I love my life. I hope you're all loving yours, too! It's been a while since I've done a proper status update. Let's get to it (I'll give you some context on these images, I promise).

Tier-locked content poll.

"No" won against "yes" 37 to 28. Almost ten more people agree that tier-locked content is a bad move right now - so it's settled. It doesn't mean I won't do it in the future, though (or that I'll stop doing extras) but I'll focus on other things right now.

Next release.

I've finished 214 renders, which is 35% of an update. "B-but, Capella, it's been three months since the last release!" Yeah, I know! Do consider I now write loose scene ideas and keep them nice and ready for whenever I need them, though. No more making renders when I have a new idea, preparing to write the game, and realizing I have a lot of renders and no context.

Two of the reasons this chapter is taking a little bit more time is that I'm approaching my finals and I'm in the middle of moving to a new place. I've been studying, buying new stuff for my new apartment - I mean, look at this mug I got! My phone doesn't do this mug justice at all. It looks sick. I'm pretty happy with it. Yes, it's a skull. No, I'm not five.

I get excited about the most random shit, I swear.

Additions.

Centered text: I've added a new option for players to change the dialogue alignment between left and center. Click on Fiona, see for yourself how it's looking. Doing that was way harder than I thought it was, so I̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶u̶l̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶l̶d̶e̶r̶s I opened a thread in the Lemmasoft forums. Here it is if you're interested:

https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=63561

I managed to do it, but it only works if you restart the game. I think centered looks better but, well, it's up to you!

Journal system: Unfinished. I ended up scrapping the whole thing, but it's gonna look nice when it's ready, trust me. I learned a lot from the first attempt.

Gallery system: I haven't even touched the gallery system, yet. It's still on my mind, though. I'll get to it eventually.

Reworks.

I've been reworking some stuff for the next release.

As you can see, the menu is different. I might change it, perhaps, but it's looking pretty damn good to me. Nothing final, though.

I also have a new splash art. I made it myself. Along with the new disclaimer, I think the game will look more like a proper game and less like something someone put together in a hurry.

The NVidia AI Denoiser I mentioned on Discord (join if you haven't already) works by batches, which means I can put 4000 images in the same folder the denoiser is located, go to sleep and it will denoise all of it automatically. I also wrote a .bat script that removes the prefix left by it on all images.

(Check Robbie's image, it was put through the AI)

In theory, it's a pretty quick process, but...well, I'm actually re-rendering some stuff in different angles (the old ones make me uncomfortable, lol) and putting the rest through Photoshop. To sum it up, I'm putting the whole thing in the blender again.

I'm learning 3D modeling.

Speaking of blending...I've been spending a lot of time training some 3D modeling in Blender.

Some stuff I need simply doesn't exist and I figured that, eventually, I'll need to make my own stuff (or limit my creativity forever). The image above is a Colt 1911 I've yet to finish. I know it looks lame right now, but everybody gotta start somewhere, right? The thing got redone a hundred times, so there's that.

I'll show you guys when it's finished.

To conclude...

I predict the next chapter won't be ready until January, but when it does, it will be worth the wait. With my studies out of the way, me getting my driver's license, and not having to worry about a LOT of stuff, I'm hoping I'll have more free time to dedicate to my projects.

2022 is looking bright from here...

Thank you for your kind support.