[Episode Deneb] Progress Update I

Greetings,

sorry, no image today, rendering hasn't started yet. 

Anyway, with this post a new series of progress updates for the next episode is starting. Next episode will go by the name Deneb. Got a few points to tackle, so this might be a bit more text than usually.

Writing

The story / timeline for the next episode is sketched out and even some dialogues are sketched too, so I'll be focusing on writing the dialogues next.

Language-Handling / Relation-Configuration

With the recent update I simplified and polished the language handling a bit more but I feel this still isn't quite enough. The character configuration seems a bit over engineered and at the same time it's not enough I figured out while sketching the new episode. While sketching the dialogues and trying to respect multiple scenarios of character relations, a simple config file just won't be enough. Dialogues are changing too much depending on the relations to make it natural with just a "simple" configuration. 

However, I still like the idea of people being able to change how the characters refer to each other. So, I'll keep this part of the configuration but will take away the relation parameters. This will be moved to the language files itself.

I already implemented a way for languages to overwrite or "extend" other language files, so you won't need to edit the whole language file to make it work, but just the necessary lines. I will provide a template-file with just the lines that reference relation between characters.

While writing this episode I'll try and see how this works out.

New environment

I will add a new environment, a club / dance floor. It will be based on the information desk environment with some adjustments. This should reduce the creation-time for this location.

Left over tasks from last update

I didn't manage to do all the things this week I planed. I was just too busy with other stuff. I couldn't think of a way to test the game myself for mac, so I'll probably don't even try to make a MAC build next time.

For the android build I just didn't have time. I postpone that till I have time, I'll probably need to change the file-handling and resource addressing to make that work.

The pipeline test for transferring the hd models and scenes to blender is also still open. As the needed update of the octane plugin for DAZ doesn't seem to get any closer, this becomes a necessary step more and more.

Render engine update

Otoy released a new experimental build with some interesting new features, like cross-engine materials and a new kernel that is focused on caustic. I'd like to test that build very soon. The caustics would be amazing for the pool scenes I planed. Just need to figure out a way to make it work. As the scene will be a bit later in the episode, I have some time to test it.

Audio

While having sketched the episode and thinking about the club scene I grow to the idea of adding more audio and music to the game. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to create enough tracks to fill the whole dialogue or just a few tracks. However, I definitely want to create a track for the club scene.

Therefore I'll get out my old audio gear and will start building some simple tracks, nothing to complicated but still something of my own :)