Update #130 A green Christmas

Meticulously merry salutations to you!

...

I suppose they're not very meticulous given that they're this short. And now that I've complained about them they don't feel very merry either...

Cheers and salutations! There! That's merry and a half!

I can safely say at this point that a pre-Christmas release is not happening, but the scene is moving at a steady pace. There's quite a lot I want to do, still hopeful that I'll get it all made in December.

Animation is always so time-consuming. It's a bit weird really, because when making regular renders I tend to get distracted after a set amount of time, usually around the time the caffeine wears out. But when making animations I get into that bug-fixing grindset, where I just have to finish this one thing I'm working on, neither food nor sleep matters anymore, just that I get this one stupid animation to do what I want it to.

I don't make it easier on myself by figuring out and adding new things I want to do in the animations. My newest thing is to try and give the candle lights a bit of a flicker, which seems to result in bigger webm file sizes. Makes sense, more color changes instead of the regular static background.

That, together with the lossless compression renders, is resulting in... uh... a lot of gigabytes. You'll have to tell me after the episode drops whether the size increase is worth it for the quality or not. Assuming you have the time, willingness, and patience to download both and compare of course.

Hang this in the Louvre

Bit tricky to pick images for this update, not sure how much I want to show. Going to try and keep them to a bit of a tease level, after all, it's not long until the full scene will be available for play. Ideally.

On a whole other note, there's still green grass, moss, and even leaves and shit up here. It's like 6-7 degrees outside. I mean, I've seen plenty of Christmases without snow, but this is something else. The precursor of Ragnarok is supposed to be the Fimbulwinter, never-ending cold and snow. Reality seems to be the opposite and I must say, I enjoy the irony.

You'll be finding me on the jötunn side. Bevvies with Surtr and the boys!

How is Donkey not scared of dropping his phone in the bath?

Well, I need to fix my sleep schedule before Christmas, so that I'm actually awake when appropriate. Right now I'm going to bed at 10 am. I mean, it's not like I'm missing any sun or anything, but I find it hard to motivate myself to read before bed at that hour. Don't quite know why, but it's a thing.

So I've not gotten quite as much reading done this week as I would've liked. That's fine though, such things ebb and flow. I find it better to let it do so than try and force myself into reading more than I feel like. If I can start reading something every day and maintain that habit, it doesn't matter if it's just for fifteen minutes.

What I don't like is how susceptible I am to get stuck reading/watching brainrot and ragebait when I'm tired. Especially when I know I should be heading to bed, but just don't want to quite yet. Just a few more hits of dopamine/outrage first, then it's off to bed, promise!

"That's an odd noise..."

Since this is the last update before Christmas I should probably take this time to properly wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. I'll do that in the goodbye thingy down below. Should I make a fancy Christmas render for the day? Eh, I'd rather work on the game and get the episode out as soon as I can.

If all goes well I might go for a fancy New Year's render or something instead. That'd be nice. Anyway, that's about all the yarn I had available for spinning today.

Thank you very much for your support, and I wish you a very Merry Christmas!