_Artemis Development Log

Happy Monday!

This week has been pretty eventful. The Halloween party certainly lived up to my expectations. I had always anticipated it would be a large scene, so I was prepared for some of the shortcomings and acted accordingly. I was originally going to use billboards for a lot of the background characters. Though there are several sources of lighting (Tiki torches, lights from the pool, lights from the booths, and lights from the heat lamps.). It didn't look so great, so I had to fall back on my alternative which was creating LODs for the guests (Level of Detail models). One of the limitations of DAZ is not being able to store these LODs, because that'd be too easy of course. But long story short, I exported various lower res models to stuff in the background when needed. This also means I had to rethink some shots. Small hiccup, but things are looking really great now. Because of how long this update is taking, I wanted to share a preview for everyone with this DevLog. It's the only preview I'll share that shows one of the INKs in their costumes since I want to leave much of the surprise when you play the update.

On the subject of the Halloween party. While I was working on parts of Zelda's minigame for her booth, I had an idea spark to add to her game. So I had a chibi design of her commissioned for her game. Also, a reminder that at the beginning of Chapter 3 you were asked if you wanted to skip all minigames, so minigames aren't forced upon you. You can double check your setting in the preferences/config menu. But here is the chibi art for Zelda for those who would like to have it.

I've also been butting heads with my composer for this next track we're working on. Since nearly all the tracks playing at the party will be sort of generic sounding club tracks, I wanted at least one Halloween themed song to play. And I never thought creating such a thing would be such a task. I figured I'd get a fire track with some spoopy elements added to it. But I've had to intervene more than I wanted to. Who knows, maybe I'm being too critical. But if with all the work put into this update so far, no t will go uncrossed. Though I still feel bad I have to email him back and say, "I still don't like how this one part of the song sounds". But the track is turning out nice at this point and I'm hoping you all will enjoy it too. It will be the track that opens up as the story transitions to the party. I'll also be making the commissioned tracks available to you guys following the release of CH4.

CH4 is now up to 3,620 story renders. For those still waiting on your custom requests, I'll be continuing working on yours Monday. Then it's continuing wrapping up this final scene for this update. That said, I'm going work on some simple dev stuff before some shut eye.

cheers everyone and be safe!

- digi.B