DevLog: Before/After Locker Room Upgrades

Hey all.

So I'm pretty excited to show these off... so excited in fact that I almost did an audio DevLog instead. So if I'm being honest, I actually did a practice one that was like 7 minutes long when nobody was looking-- I never record stuff like that. But it was awful and I totally deleted it because I sounded like a sugared-up maniac that was talking at a much faster cadence than normal people have the patience for.

So hi.

I'm typing this like normal.

Today we have another edition of Before/After, this time showcasing the differences we'll see in the revamp with the dorm locker room. All of these new pics will be featured in the next update. I'm super excited about these because, I'll be honest, I've been dreading this particular setting but I'm stoked with his it turned out.

Let's start with some history for the newer folks and give some background on the story associated with the locker room/shower setting in general. Image 1 shows the original entrance to the shower the first time we walk in on day one of the game. The scene is very dark and that was mostly because I had no idea how to light scenes back then. Later, during the development of the game, I learned a little more about interior lighting (which was honestly still very bad but it was progress) so the shower room gradually was able to get lighter. To correct that within the story, I forced a plot point that had Zack actually fix the lighting in the story so that I could fix the lighting in real life. I literally wrote my own correction into the story to try and make these scenes look better. 

Fast forward to today.

I honestly like that part of fixing things and dealing with Ernie and all that stuff so we'll see that remain in the revamp. However, the problem today is getting the shower to still be lit adequately but still look inconsistently dark enough to need fixed in the future.

Which brings us to the first image of the shower in the revamp. Let's look at Image 2. This is the recreation of image 1 that we will see in the revamp-- and the difference is fucking crazy! If you're not impressed, this DevLog is going to be really annoying(just sayin...). So we have completely different-- but still spotty lighting. I'm really trying to make it look like only half the lights are working... but of course they drop a killer spotlight on Braden that, I feel, really focuses the eye more and gives the scene more depth. 

Image 3:  This is the original shot from the base game where Braden first turns around and Zack is sorta accidently staring at him. Again: we have terrible lighting and Braden's face, while always cute, has a weird expression that doesn't really tell us anything about him or his feelings in that moment. 

Image 4: The replaced image we'll see in the revamped edition when Braden first turns around. Completely different vibe and here's another taste of what I'm trying to do more with Braden, really capture those feels on his face more. In this version he's gonna just gradually take a step back and turn the water off--it's gonna be that classic awkwardness that you're used to with these guys but this just looks waaay prettier. Don't worry-- there's more close-ups of this for the Braden fans. I love these shy expressive shots.

Also, this shot is a first glimpse at something I've been trying to do for like 2 years now. Wet hair. Y'all... look at his gosh damn hair! It actually looks wet in the shower now-- something that I've been dying to add to the game forever-- we'll see another shot of this in a second (This is why I got rid of the audio version-- I made noises during this part because I'm super excited).

Image 5: Here's the original shot of Braden getting out of the shower with his towel on. He and Zack exchange a couple words then part ways for the night. 

Image 6: Upgraded version of Braden fresh out of the shower in his towel. Insane lighting difference, better expressions and we see a much better shot of the wet hair here because it's still damp. 

Ok, I'll calm down now and enough with the wet hair.

These last 2 shots are going to focus on Zack. Image 7 is the original Zack showering shot that we see several times during the game. The lighting is awful-- so bad in fact that his junk turned colors (that was a texture issue that's corrected now and wasn't something that Dr. Hodges needed to take a look at).

I totally lied: there's more wet hair.

Image 8 is the revamped Zack shower shot. Like the other shots, we have depth of field very strong here as well as a first shot at Zack with wet hair-- which is actually fairly long at this point in the game and falls down his face and neck quite a bit. In the final version, we'll see a couple other angles of Zack. But major victory here for the shower scenes with the enhanced hair textures that I honestly couldn't wait to show off and I hope you like them.

This shower scene hits completely different than it used to. Anyway, let me know what you think and don't feel compelled to be excited about the wet hair texture. When you do 3D stuff, there's a lot of battles you lose and I finally made some progress on this one after years.

Thanks for the faith all and hope you enjoy the new peek. Stay tuned for more