Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

I had my hands in everything last week, Steam preparation, 4.2 patch, CH5 development. Steam front of things; I initially set the release date to be end of January. There are still things to do on that front and if I were to stay on track that would mean I'd have to take a nice chunk from CH5 development which I don't want to do. So, I'm pushing the date to March/April for Steam. Steam version doesn't get rushed and CH5 development stays on track.

I want to take a moment to discuss what to expect with CH5 and Book Two as a whole. I managed to trim a lot of fat with CH5 and I initially wanted to focus solely on Artemis herself this chapter. And this will still be her chapter. But there is room for content for some of the other girls and the content will be done differently this time, focusing more on small activities with them as you develop your relationship more. A common question I get is when you'll be locked into a relationship and to answer that, it will be at the end of Book Two (CH8) where you'll make your choice. In regard to story, Book Two is essentially the road to the McCreed Expo. Expect the same crazy antics between you and Kindra on this journey only with a twist now and, some new characters introduced.

I also been working on getting motion capture back into my workflow. There are two shots in Chapter One that are mocapped. Both Kindra's and Cassie's introduction pan-ups were captured. Kindra's was pretty smooth but Cassie's had some popping of the joints. The post-process for this is called 'cleaning up keys' and was really difficult to do then. But at the time, my time was limited due to my schedule. And I really want to add this to my arsenal since later chapters I have action scenes I want to do that motion capture will be very helpful to produce these animations. I also initially dropped this because the number of frames this added to the animations and now that I have added some rendering rigs, I'm comfortable rendering more 900+ frame animations.

I'm at a point where I can start sharing previews of CH5. I didn't want to share much of the first few scenes completed as things left off at an interesting spot in CH4. So, to avoid spoilers I held off on previews. But this week we can expect a preview for Ch5.

Have yourselves a great week!

-digi.B