digiB

Artemis DevLog CH7

Good Monday to you all!

I've commissioned someone to work on an outro track that'll be used for chapter ends. The whole outro sequence is getting a facelift, as well as functional improvement. In the past, I had an auto-save feature to help those save just where you need to for the chapter to transition smoothly for the next update. Most don't seem to have a problem saving or adjusting where you need to save to continue from when an update drops. But there are some who do have trouble and this is just to make the whole transition/updates feel seamless.

This won't be part of the CH7 update though. It's a pretty significant revamp of everything that happens after a chapter ends and I've still got a lot on my plate for this chapter to go through. Adding this now will just add more work. So, it's going to be a patch after the update. This does give the artist time to really take her time on the lyrics for the outro track and me room to review changes.

On a sidenote, I just wanted to say thanks for seeing past the early renders and really letting the story pull you in. I was reviewing renders again over the weekend and one render made me think back and I had to see them side-by-side. A render from CH2, it was difficult trying to make out details, some harsh lighting, etc, all back when my condition was degrading my eyesight.

This gets asked a lot and yes; early chapters (especially CH1) will be fixed, it's just very very very low on my priority list. I try to squeeze one scene in if I can, but only if time allows. For CH7, there's no scenes being remastered.

Thanks everyone. Stay warm and cozy out there.

- digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

Letting my brain wind down over the weekend working on renders. I had been doing more work with the code mostly last week. Thought I had the mod code locked down until I realized that for those who would want to combine the books into one large book, might get some false positives. Meaning the game will detect changes in the code and think you modded it. So, I'm having to figure a solution for that. In development, you have to try to think of as much as you can that the player will do and adjust for those situations.

And again, don't care if you mod. This is being implemented because most people will throw a mod in, they'll play the game and run into a crash or something down the line. Then immediately blame the game and not the fact that they modded lol. Mod all you want, just know I can't support any issues that you run into because I don't want to waste time troubleshooting only to find out the code was fine, it was a mod that broke the game.

Here's a preview of what the save detection will look like. There's still some tweaks I need to adjust for. Again, for those who wish to merge the books is something I'm working on. A lot of braining involved to make sure there's little to do on your guys end. You know, "It just works" mentality. Releases will still have the full version download (All books), Single book downloads and just the update (AKA the "Update Patch"). I'll make sure to have images to better help understand which version to download.

Another reminder, this is due to how big Artemis is getting in file size. Splitting the books is mostly a quality of life thing. Those who don't have the best download speeds, don't want to download 20+GB file sizes, etc. This option is for them. Also, helps me manage things better in terms of uploading patches.

Will put the coding aside for now. Come back to it with a fresh mind while I shift gears into posing.

Have yourselves a great week and keep warm and cozy!

digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Happy Monday!

Short break was nice. Still hectic trying to get my place ready, but was great to spend time with family. In between I worked on some code and realized a small hitch in my goal to split the books. Chapters wise, no big deal. But things like the SDCards, wallpapers, music, sfx, etc. These items get used all across the board, so I'll be making some tweaks and re-organizing how I package things. This does mean for those of you who mod, will most certainly break things. And a reminder that I don't care if you mod, just keep in mind when something breaks due to modding, that's the risk you take. When I work on code and do things like re-organizing, that's just me working autonomously. Another reminder of why I'm doing this, it's to better organize the releases. If I don't start splitting the books, downloading all 7 chapters on release day will be about 20+GB. And use I do use compression methods like WEBP and WEBM, tuning it so it's a balance of quality and size. Splitting the books will reduce that size. It will also leave Book 1 code untouched. Meaning something like a change in future chapters won't affect previous books. If something from say book 2 breaks, your book 1 saves should not be broken and thus saving you from having to completely start over. So, it's more than one reason that I'm splitting the books into separate executables. No save transfers needed or anything like that. As said before loading Book 1 saves while on Book 2 will just prompt you to run Book 1 exe to load that save and vice versa. Also, should you wish to combine the exe's...in theory that should work. This will be something I'll confirm once I've got it dialed in.

Back to the grind! Have yourselves a great week and stay warm!

- digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Happy Monday!

Thanks everyone for participating in the poll. I know anything that calls for voting can make things a little divisive. Just a reminder of why this change occurred; Paige's old hair used OoT hair and it doesn't play well (Out of Touch hair in general) when converted to Blender due to the custom shaders. Additionally, I wish there were more (high quality) hairstyles in the DAZ store with bangs. And I really loved her current hair but in Blender...as you all recall from the farmers market scene in CH6, I had a lot of trouble getting her hair dialed in and it just wasn't coming out great. This is most definitely a skill issue with Blender and I'm working towards bettering my skill with this software. Because like with any job, learning new skills will better the quality of your work. So, I just don't want anyone to think I was just doing this for the sake of doing it. There's a technical reason behind it.

This week is Thanksgiving and I've got my grandmother and my sister staying over this week. So, I'll mostly be catching up with the coding that needs to be done. As well as insert more renders into the code. Bit of an odd week this week, but will be back to normal next.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving. I just want to thank you guys for everything. I do realize the long development times for chapters and I do look for ways to cut things to speed it up. Which is why I frame my dev logs this way you guys see the behind the scenes of things. So again, thank you all. For those in the States, eat up. Those overseas, up north, down south, eat up too!

Have yourselves a great week and please be safe!

- digi

Paige's style

Haircut won. Now to pick the style!

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

The poll was a great turnout! Paige is getting her hair done. I decided to take it further and provide some options for the final choice. Three styles to choose from for the final decision.

This time I added her glasses, some of you mentioned wanting to see her with her glasses.

Also, I hear your concerns about hairstyles and seeing them overused. Unfortunately, with DAZ it can be challenging with many factors at play; The artist made crappy shaders, the strands/hair don't have bones/pose dials, hair renders poorly. Most of you know I'm capable of creating my own assets or heavily modifying them. But hair is a whole other process that I'd rather not touch. Additionally, most other devs aren't 3D modelers, so creating new styles is far and few between. Best I can do for you guys is avoiding using Haven Park and create my own. But hair isn't in the future, unless I hire someone to design one for me. Which is a possibility in the future.

The point is not many hairs in the DAZ store render good and of course that's what the majority of readers want; really good renders. Consider wet hair for example. Next to Haven Park, this is probably an asset you've seen countless times

That's because there's probably only 3-5 wet hair assets in the DAZ store. Which makes it a little difficult to show wet hair that's at this level of detail. You could just ramp up the reflection and tones to make hair look wet on other hairs. But it doesn't always come out great. It also makes it difficult when you have characters with specific hair styles, like shorter bangs for example. The DAZ store just doesn't have a whole lot to choose from. It's the struggle of development when making asset choices, creating characters, etc.

So, I do apologize if either of the hairs above feel overused. The hairs that are being newly released in the DAZ store do have a higher quality to them, but most are for G9 models only and not all hairs play well when put on G8 models. One of the choices I wanted was G9 and dforce didn't work on it and when I saved a pose, loading the file didn't place the hair back onto the head, lol.

Anyways, the final part of the poll will be going up shortly. Also, next week is Thanksgiving week. My grandma, my sister and her family will be staying over to have Thanksgiving at my place, so it's going to be a short week for me next week. Just a heads up on that front.

Have yourselves a great week everyone and be safe!

digi

Paige hair change?

Should Paige cut her hair or keep it long?

Artemis DevLog CH7

Happy Mon-er...Tuesday!

Sorry for the late post. After setting up several shots to be rendered, I threw them in my easy bake oven to render. So I thought it'd be a good time to install the new GPU on my work PC. No idea why swapping out the GPU suddenly made my PC just nosedive. Didn't do anything other than wipe the driver and install a fresh updated nvidia driver. But my PC just became unusable, anyways. Long story short, it's 2AM and I just got done reformatting my PC and it's running fine again. Didn't do anything special, just one of those really annoying technology quirks that come swinging once in a great while.

Earlier last week I had to optimize one of my custom locations. It was a very high-poly model, one of those sets that takes a while to load, move the camera in, and even saving. I was checking out the render queue and it took 14 minutes to load the scene but only 4 minutes to actually render it. This scene was about 70 shots, so if my math is right...combatively 17ish hours of this batch was just loading the scene. The way my DAZ library is setup, average load times is barely 30 seconds. So, optimizing my custom assets helps the load bloat. Another reason why I'm working on transitioning to Blender. I can utilize LOD, or level of detail. DAZ has something similar, but Blender can let me do so much more with it.

Thanks for the feedback with Paige's hair. I kept going back and forth on it. I'll throw a poll up shortly after this post just to get a bigger sample size. Short hair is just easier to work with. Less clipping to adjust, animation is a little easier. But at the same time it does change a person's look dramatically. So, just a comparison. Here's a side by side of Paige with her normal hair and the short hair.

Also, there've been no adjustments made to her morph. Literally impossible with how I create my models. The shorter hairstyle makes her face look fuller compared to her long hair.

Poll will go up shortly and it's primarily to gauge interest.

that'll do for now. I'm gonna get some sleep now, lol.

stay safe out there, everyone.

digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Happy Monday!

I apologize I forgot to post the Halloween render on Friday. It was also Artemis' birthday. Last week I went back and made an adjustment for the freeroam that is planned for this chapter. I use freeroams seldomly. Basically where it makes sense, mostly when I have a scene when there are a number of characters to interact with but I want to leave the interaction up to you guys. Halloween party for example, you can interact with those you want to interact with or you can skip that segment entirely. Anyway, I went back and made some adjustments to the freeroam for this chapter and made it a mini-freeroam. This happens early in this chapter and I set this scene aside because it was such a large segment to work on, then decided I wanted to just condense it. And by that I mean instead of having this elaborate scene divided into several scenes to navigate through (different floors, environments, etc.) I've simplified it down to a single location. I just felt it was a bit extra to spread the characters out for the sake of a freeroam, when it made more sense and felt more natural with the new setup.

On another note, I mentioned that I was contemplating changing some of the girl's hairs (raises shield). So far I've decided not to, but after working on this Halloween render...I'm kind of diggin' Paige with that hairstyle. What do you guys think? 4K version of the render attached to this post.

Depending on the responses, I'll throw a poll up to let you guys decide yay or nay.

Have yourselves a great week and stay safe out there!

digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Happy Monday!

I didn't get the chance to work on the animation last week. There's a scene I'm working on that I just sunk my time into and didn't want to rush or break away to shift focus on the animation. So, this week I'll be working on getting the animation started. I spoke with Puggy and told him I've got an animation I'll be commissioning him for. I'm going to try to give him the outline this week so he can work on it at a good pace.

I also went around my socials for bug reports. Just a heads up, Patreon and Steam discussions. I do try to look at them, I just don't get alerts when a message comes through (and Steam, as far as I know, doesn't send messages). Which is why I much prefer Discord. So, if you're able to, sending bug reports through Discord is easier to manage. You also get real-time responses instead of waiting for me to check Patreon or Steam.

But anyways I digress. I was checking Steam for any bug reports and saw one reported back on sept 22 (sorry :( ) and I'm pretty familiar with my code. I usually can tell when it's been tampered with and when it isn't. But someone reported the game not starting and showed this being the error I got.

This is a game breaking bug, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and looked at my code. That line of code it's complaining about doesn't exist in my code, meaning this error was the result of a mod. The mod warning that's being implemented with CH7, I hope will slow the reports. And if not, at least make me feel less guilty telling people I can't help them when they do get reported lol. Also, the mod warning is just that, a warning. I got a DM on Discord the other week, someone asking me if I said I'm bringing down the hammer on mods. I'm not, I'm just implementing something that says something along the lines of "Hey, you're modifying code. This will likely cause issues down the road and no support will be given if they do.". And you can continue playing the game modded. That's it, lol.

Anyways, enough code talk. Mods. Whatever. Here's a preview of Zelda.

♫ Been waitin' a long time for this shit ♫♫ Long time no see ♫♫ Thought you got rid of my ass, huh? ♫

Have a great week everyone and be safe out there if you plan on being out for Halloween. Or if you're like me, remember to turn your porch lights off. Kids will still ring the doorbell, but not as much lol.

- digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

So, last week was semi eventful. I finally got around to fixing the algae problem in the waterloop. But as I was getting ready to shove another batch of renders to bake, I noticed the server was offline. Turns out one of the blocks cracked and leaked water onto the board, that or one of the capacitors blew. Some might say this is shitty timing, first the algae and now this. But I'm just glad it happened around the same time. As soon as I discovered the issue, I ordered a new board and had it shipped next day. Same goes for one of the fractured waterblocks.

This sounds like a lot has happened. And I'm sure there are some thinking "oh no, computer issues. Delays.". Nah, saw the issue with the motherboard and by noon I already had the part ordered. Then I just resumed working normally since my DAZ database is on the NAS. When the parts came in, I cleaned everything and got her back up and running in a few hours. So, if downtime was minimal why bring it up? Because this is a development log and these are things that happen and when they do, big or smol, I report them. I've said this before, but as weird and random as some issues sometimes are, they do come up. But I also am sure to bring the receipts when they do arise.

Anywho, once it all got back up and running. I queued up the files I worked on in the meantime to be rendered. This week, I'll be back in Blender for an animation. There's still a learning curve to it. Mainly textures but also the animation tools. Most know I hope to eventually transition off DAZ and develop things in Blender 100%. But there's still much to learn, so when I do better my skill, it's easy to fire up the scene again, update and re-render.

Remember to take your vitamins and this is your reminder to drink water. Be safe everyone.

-digi

PS - I switched from water in the waterloop to this stuff. Because German science is the world's finest. No, I'm not German. Yes, that was a JoJo reference.

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

Last week was one of those weird weeks where it goes by quick but slow at the same time. Probably because of the scene I was working on. I really need to split them better. This scene was about 300 renders and honestly could have been split into two scenes. And I think that matters because as a dev, at least for me, moving onto the next scene feels like a milestone for the chapter. So when you're working on the same scene for a while, I dunno. Feels like you didn't make progress even though you did. I dunno, developer mindset I guess.

Anyways, week was productive and that's all that matters. Unfortunately, taking down the render box didn't go through as planned. I shut it down and took a look at the GPU waterblock and there's definitely some algae or build up. When CH6 released earlier this year in April, I did a full disassembly and cleaned everything. Then a few months later did a water change.

(By the way, that's not rust. The nickel plating got stripped away, exposing the copper underneath.)

Lionheart made a comment about the murky water which hit the nail on the head. I changed the water a month or so ago I think, but the biocide and inhibitor needs to be a specific ratio. X drops for every Y liters of water. I most likely miscalculated the mixture. I don't use anything fancy since it just sits in the garage slaving for me to render, its just distilled water. This week I plan on taking the thing apart completely and doing a deep clean on it. I've got a few batches of renders I want to get through first this week, so Wednesday I'll be taking this thing down for some cleaning. Any waterloop gurus want to chime in, I'm all years. I use distilled water with Mayhems Hades+ and Inhibitor+ mixed in. I'm open to suggestions to preventing this. My Maintenace schedule was 6 months, but since this thing gets used daily. I'm probably going to start water changes every 4 months now and see how it goes.

So for those who plan on romancing Artemis, keep maintenace in mind folks.

thanks everyone! And let this be a reminder to drink some water and take your vitamins!

digi.B

Artemis DevLog CH7

Happy Monday evening!

Couple things I got going on this week, going to bundle them together, knocking two birds with a stone. Came home the other day and noticed the water in the reservoir that cools my GPUs is gettin murky, which is odd since I had recently changed the water out. I've also got someone coming out to install network drops at my house. I've done this before and it's not a hard thing to do, but it is time consuming. So I'd rather just hire someone to do it while I work on dev stuff. But since I saw this with that water, figure I'll just work on flushing the system again and checking the GPUs to make sure there's no build up happening. Working on that while the guy wires the network cables will minimize downtime. The flush itself shouldn't take more than an hour though, maybe two if I want to be thorough this time. Then it's back to work. Pardon the messy garage, lol. Especially the gaping hole in the wall. Earlier this year, I had to install a 240 outlet to my breaker to power my UPS. Been too busy to patch the wall after, haha.

Here's a little preview to share. At this rate, Artemis should be the spokesperson for Freezies. I need to find time to create a condensation shader so that cup actually looks cold, haha.

Take care of yourselves out there and hopefully the weather has been cooling down for you too!

- digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone,

quick check-in. Fairly simple week. I did hit a snag with my GPUs, nothing crazy. I was getting a batch in to render and notice the render times were unusual the next morning. 3 hours wasn't normal, but the graphs didn't seem unusual temps wise. But after another looksie, I noticed the second gpu wasn't firing up. Anyway, my fumbling of setting up my GPUs for ComfyUI (which is a pretty standard install, I was just trying to set it up in WSL which did more harm than good.) Whatever I did, it was making DAZ only render on one of the GPU's. I didn't feel like troubleshooting, so I just re-imaged the PC and things were back online after some minor adjustments.

So, what was I doing now to this poor server and why am I using ComfyUI? When it comes to posters, advertisements, just random images for background stuff that I want or need to swap out while avoiding copyright claims, I just use AI generated images for stuff like that.

Veronica's apartment for example. I didn't want random art, so instead of scouring stock images for something like this to slap in as a photo.

I generated and placed a photo prop I felt was better than a blank wall or a framed photo of a flower for this scene back in CH5.

And if it wasn't already obvious, the art pieces in the gallery of CH6 were generated. That'd be some weird irony if they weren't, lol. But anyways, that's why I was working on getting something setup locally. It is a tool I've started to use since CH5 to replace posters or adverts. Even the Big Juicy Weenie hot dog on the carton (CH6) was generated. It's a very good tool to have and makes coming up with shirts designs, logos, posters, etc. easier without having to search the internet or wonder about what license to use. So if you're a developer reading this. It's a controversial subject for sure, but so long as you treat it like a tool and not just flat out abusing it to do work for you. It's fine, in my opinion.

Anyway, we gucci now. GPUs were fixed already, render times are back to normal and Comfy is up and running. Got some props to texture tomorrow.

Have yourselves a great week everyone! Hopefully weather is finally cooling down for you too! Stay safe out there.

- digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

Quick post this week. Mostly had my nose in code, trying to delicately segregate book 2 code from book 1 code. Just a reminder for the reason, currently it's about 18GB to download the entirety of Books 1 and 2. And when I need to push a bugfix, re-up/downloading the game isn't such a...task. On your guys end, it'll fairly seamless. No save transfer required. If you load a B1 save while on B2, you'll get a pop-up telling you which book to run for that save. Should you want to merge the books, that'll be okay too. It's a lot of meticulous re-wiring, since I had little experience with ren'py starting out. Now I'm trying to untangle the spaghetti code. This should technically prevent any issues from popping up with saves. The dreaded "cannot find whatever rollback blah blah" for Book 1 at least. Since I haven't touched Chapters 1-4 since Book 1 was finished and there were some who experienced this from B1 chapters when CH6 released. Just things I'm learning and trying to prevent as I gain more experience with ren'py.

Additionally, I had a moment to chat with the dev for the next crossover and establish their presence more leading up to their appearance and purpose in the story. I'm a big fan of crossovers from the 90s, so the ones I have planned... We'll be seeing them playing to their strengths of their character. You have sort of an idea of what that might be if you know who they are. For example, Lexi from Leap of Faith. Musician, singer. INK needs entertainment. They didn't just get Kink, but also Lexi to perform for the party. Just to give you an idea of what to look forward to when you see characters pop up. This next one is going to be fun. I've got two others planned out for Book 3.

zero context preview

Have yourselves a great week! Stay hydrated and take your vitamins!

- digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

'Evening all!

So, I had an interesting week, having spent a couple days troubleshooting a bug reported. The part that was frustrating was the goosechase, searching for something broken that well...was never broken to begin with. At least as a result of the base code. The issue came up and off the bat it didn't sound normal (I guess what bug does lol). So, after some digging someone else had reported the same issue and thankfully this person was at least able to share their save files. I was able to review the case and confirm my code was modified and as a result caused the issue.

Now, most of you know my stance on mods in general. I shared my history of modding games like Skyrim. But I'm not going to send an email to Bethesda when I get a CTD (crash to desktop) because I'm modifying the game and thus breaking (albeit Skyrim is notoriously buggy even without mods, lol)

The point I'm trying to make here is most people don't fess up with they report a bug and not sharing if they've modded the files. In my Discord, I have it stated in the Rules that I can't provide support bugs if you modded the game. I also state why which is:

I will not support any modified versions or saves given to you by another. What is considered modified? Using applications to unpack Artemis and modify the files. When releasing updates, I know what is in the code and can better troubleshoot. When you modify code, modifying variables could cause a cascading effect and troubleshooting could be a hassle and will take time away from development. If you intend to modify, please make sure you're willing to troubleshoot your modifications

This bit right here "modifying variables could cause a cascading effect and troubleshooting could be a hassle and will take time away from development." is basically what happened. Someone modified the code and it broke freeroam for them. I was able to confirm this by reviewing the save files. It was annoying because I had spent a couple days trying to replicate, meanwhile this person was posting every chance they got to point out the bug. Thankfully someone else shared their saves and fessed up about it.

So, for those who mod the game. By all means, I don't care if you do. I get it, so play Artemis however you want to play it. Just be mindful when you report bugs. Unfortunately, this was the tipping point for me. I spent a couple more days this week working on a script that will check for modified files. If it finds anything, the game will pause, inform you the quote above. Then you'll have to confirm you read and understand modding can break the game. After you can continue playing Artemis modified. This prompt will only display if it detects anything. If it doesn't, Artemis will run normally without this prompt.

Anyways, sorry for the rant-y update. I almost went scorched earth and made the game CTD if it detects mods, but that's being a bit spiteful lol. The mod-detection will be part of the CH7 update.

*kicks soapbox*

Hope you all had a great week. Remember to hydrate and take your vitamins!

- digi ❤️

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey guys,

So....I was hoping to do a little fake advertisement for Kapuletti Industries. Made this whole selfie for the render used on the phone I wanted to playfully advertise, but the UV map for the front phone wasn't playing very nice, womp-womp.... I wasn't about to sink a couple more hours trying to fix it for this, so I decided to just pick it back up later this week.

Fresh off the Kapuletti line, but failed QA... new phone for a certain someone. Does she need one because she's technically a walking cellphone herself? No. No she doesn't. But that's not very human-like.

Was proud of this one because it shows me how much better I've gotten using DAZ's janky-ass rigging system. Back in CH2, I introduced new phones that Kindra and MC use which are folding phones. I actually have two versions of the phones, open and closed because I couldn't get the hinge right. Not to mention the crease on the screen itself. And here we are now. One prop that has folding dials c:

Anywho, speaking of Artemis. Hope those of you who've been looking forward to Artemis' "cooing" sounds are satisfied with the direction of the sound. Back when I was writing CH5, I was trying to think of ways to write this sound. I spoke with other devs, looked at books, turned on subtitles for shows and movies, none that really helped me figure out how to write this "sound". So, I just went with cooing as it was the closest thing I could think of.

I attached a 4K version of the "INK selfie" to this post. I'll make sure Kindra hires better QA staff!

Thanks all! Weather is cooling down some, but hope you all stay hydrated still! And take your vitamins!

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

0.6.2 patch is ready and the links have been updated. MEGA is still uploading as usual, GoFile has been added as an option. WeTransfer is also still uploading.

Various small fixes

"cooing sounds" for Artemis in CH5

Added new audio sliders and a customization section for the dialogue box

Updated renders for the market place scene in CH6

Corrected the issues with the textures in the animations for CH6.

Sorry the cooing audio took so long, but now you can finally hear her. For those who would rather not, you can check out her audio slider in the config menu and slide it to 0.

Now in regard to CH7;

Thanks for the feedback on Artemis' discernment protocol feature. I also got a chance to talk to my friend about it. He's worked on actual AAA games, so it was nice to talk shop. Game mechanics was what we went back and forth on. So, putting the icons back into the choices is best. I get the frustration of making a choice, pulling out your phone and see which protocol it increased. If you want go back or do a specific playthrough, the icons can guide you instead of the guessing game. Basically, I've created the playground, you guys should be able to play how you want in it. So that's my bad for removing the icons in the first place.

They'll return in chapter 7 and chapters 5 & 6 will have them restored. I appreciate the feedback you guys give, the good and bad. It helps me give thought when I'm trying to figure things out like this mechanic. You guys seemed to be satisfied with the choices when interacting with Artemis this time around in Chapter 6, compared to the ones that came off mean in Chapter 5. And that's thanks to you guys, so I may not get to respond to everyone all the time. But I do take your feedback into consideration.

Thanks again everyone. The 0.6.2 patch for TARS and T-800 is available on the pinned post here https://www.patreon.com/posts/artemis-chapter-126650573

Stay nice and cool out there, everyone. Remember to take your vitamins and hydrate or you'll be visited by Cassie...

-digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

Long day trying to get through some technical stuff. Decided to put it aside, let my brain rest and wrap it tomorrow.

First off, thanks for all the feedback last week. I hope it didn't come off as complaining, I just saw an opportunity to really share what goes on behind the scenes with Artemis. And give some feedback on my end on AVN development as a whole. It really is a beast to take on, depending on the scope of what you're willing to take on and of course your vision. I got into AVNs because I've done a lot of creative stuff growing up and I saw an opportunity to do it and took my shot. It is a big investment in time, but it's a rewarding thing to see your progress with each release.

On the 0.6.2 patch, it's ready to go. Just need to do some testing this week and make sure nothing broke. Though, Beta testers for Chapter 6 encountered no issues with their saves. A handful of people did. So, unfortunately, I'm at the mercy of the Ren'Py gods it doesn't happen again. I say this because code was inserted wherever the "cooing" lines are, so just concerned about that. If all goes well, I'll likely upload it this Friday. If not, Sept 1st is when I'll upload this patch.

On the CH7 front, things are good. I'm trying to redesign the Artemis app to be more informative. If you haven't noticed, I love implementing designs that are explained in the story. For example the LiDAR app is the minimap during free roams. The Artemis app is supposed to be not only something you guys reference, but things MC references as he begins fitting into his role at Kapuletti Industries. It is the core part of the story and will determine how things end. High firm points don't necessarily mean bad ending. prob going to point that out every chance I get to reassure everyone. I'll likely try and find time to play mass effect again, just so i can get a feel for the paragon/renegade system as it is the system it was inspired from. See if bringing back the icons in choices helps or if keeping them hidden brings some element of 'realism'. I know I've asked you guys before and I apologize for beating a dead horse, but did you guys find yourselves being swayed by the icons more or the choice themselves? Adding a toggle to hide the icons or enable them will bloat the code and I'm trying to avoid that. But hearing some feedback again will give me some food for thought on the matter.

Thanks again everyone. Gonna step away from the PC and give the brain some rest. Hopefully you guys are in way better weather conditions, either way stay hydrated and take care!

- digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey, everyone!

Nothing exciting with development aside from posing and rendering. Last night, I did take time to get the fixed renders finalized for the 0.6.2 patch. Did some last minute tweaks on the 'cooing' sounds. I'm going to be doing a bit more reviewing for 0.6.2 later this week as I prepare it to package it.

Last week, someone left a comment asking about development time and I felt it was a topic worth discussing here. Since it's something that's talked about a lot and feels like developers rarely get a chance to discuss, or at least have the chance to weigh in. Keep in mind though, this is how development is for me.

It's difficult to say how long each update will take. There's two scenes I've put aside for now, while I work on other things, because I'm having a bit of writer's block. I know how I want the scene to play out, but how the characters navigate it with good dialogue is giving me trouble. I could just be sloppy and throw whatever dialogue hits me at the moment, but that's just...bad. But I do try to optimize my time and work on other things, so I can return and maybe even be inspired by something to help whatever creative hurdle I'm trying to leap over.

But it's why my devlogs are structured the way they are. I stopped doing render count a while ago because I just feel some people are too obsessed with it and it's a frivolous metric. It doesn't gauge where you're at in development. I could say there's 2,500 renders so far right now. But I've yet to work on creating a large set-piece which could take time, thus a week or two goes by of creating that set and the number count takes a hit.

It's also why I share what I share. Instead of render count, I share screenshots of assets that I'm importing into DAZ and retexturing, re-modeling to fit the characters, importing and rigging whole cars. It shows the actual work of what it's taking to achieve renders. And very few developers do this, which is why I emphasize it so much and why development sometimes takes time as I'm doing things like this.

It also feels like once you become an AVN dev, you are no longer considered human by some lol. Like we're not vulnerable to things happening to us. As many of you know, I lost my mother last year and it was very difficult trying to stay focused while mourning. A lot of us devs talk amongst each other and we stress when we get sick or something happens because some of us do share that info and know that many will likely not understand. I'm not gonna say that there aren't "milkers" as many call would describe developers, but again it's why I share the stuff I share to separate myself from that. Especially any behind the scenes work that I can. And what I make from Artemis, a lot goes right back into development. Here's a screenshot of some of what I purchased from last year alone on assets

Also, as of Chapter 5. I've been contracted with Universal Production Music to produce the music for Artemis. As you can see the bill for this is quite high, having to set aside $200+ a month to pay it off. Trying to get two updates for each contract term is a goal of mine.

Puggy's my boy. We're good mates, but I still going to pay him for animations I contract to him.

And I don't want anyone to feel this is a rally call for more money, it's not. Again, I'm just emphasizing that what I make goes back into Artemis.

Circling back to my point that we aren't impervious to things happening to us. Things do happen and trust me, I know things can seem sus. For example, I hired Puggy to work on the new main menu animation for CH6. And on the eve of release, my render PC "conveniently" started giving me issues. Now imagine how bad that would sound if I posted an update saying I'm delaying the release because of that? Well, I made the call to push the update without the new main menu because...well it was a stressful time and I really wanted to get the update out. The main menu wasn't integral to the update (well, kind of), so I made the call and packaged it and released the update. Releasing the new main menu later on once I fixed my render PC. Here's the conversation between me and Puggy about that happening.

Shout out to Puggy on his work with the main menu animation. He was really proud of it when he showed me the preview for approval. And I felt real bad having to tell him I'm delaying his animation.

But again, this is just to show that things happen. It may seem "convenient", but they happen. And I know there are some developers out there who take advantage of saying whatever. Though this is why I outline my devlogs the way I do. So you guys can see what's being done and the work put behind each development cycle.

I am trying to optimize my workflow to push for faster updates. But I do a lot of custom work and it does require time. Not to mention each line of dialogue has a unique render and yeah... I can get wordy with my novels. I'm working on better flow of dialogue. As many of you know, I've been jotting notes here and there for my next project after Artemis. Lowering the amount of LIs from ten (yes, Artemis has 10 LIs. I know, I'm stupid.) and only having 5 for my next project I feel is a big step.

Anyways, sorry for the soapbox post. I just felt like we devs really don't get the opportunity to discuss this from our point of view. And this is just MY development. Keep in mind others have their own methods and visions for their works.

Thanks everyone for enduring my TedTalk. And remember to have yourselves a great week.

-digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey, everyone!

Starting this one off with a preview

Veronica is still brunette. When you moonlight as a camgirl, you'll likely have an arsenal of wigs, cat ears, etc.

I was re-writing one of the scenes, the hair-do segment I considered adding. Having worked a solution with Puggy's help, crisis averted on that front. Though I did like the activity of the girls and Artemis teaching her different hairstyles.

I'm debating on what to share regarding previews for INK+Artemis previews. I do keep in mind to choose very vague shots. I have a problem with movie trailers where some shots def shouldn't have been placed in the trailer and so, when it comes to previews. I try to pick things that aren't so spoilery.

Also, it looks like there was some traction against the censorship. Seeing it more on headlines last week, which means more people are talking about it. Remember, a lot of AVNs have their socials on the main menus. Mine are located at the upper left of my main menu. So, if the internet ever gets crazier with this censorship thing, refer to my socials on the main menu for Artemis.

Discord is my primary place for general communication which is discord.gg/digib sorry if this feels like an advertisement. My discord is currently being updated, so some channels and roles are still being fixed. So, I'm not exactly trying to encourage jumping in right now. But can save the link if ever needed.

That'll do for this log. Stay nice and cool everyone. It's hot as hell this week here

-digi.B

Artemis DevLog CH7

*Beep-boop*

Somewhat exciting week. The RAID setup on my NAS came in clutch. I got an alert saying one of the drives degraded, checked my NAS and one of the NVME drives was disconnected. I'm setup on RAIDZ2, so if one drive goes down, I can continue working while I resolve the issue (So long as an additional one doesn't fail). Resolving the issue wasn't a big deal either. Just replaced the problematic drive, let it resilver and things are back at 100%. I think it took like 15 minutes to do, 10 of those minutes was just pulling out the PC and swapping the drive. The drive is still within warranty, so I'm sending it in for a replacement so I can have the spare on hand again.

Just a friendly reminder for one doing this or considering doing it, setting up a NAS with at least a level of redundancy is important. I have these files backed up to Backblaze B2. So, if I didn't have redundancy, I could have just downloaded the 1TB database in maybe an hour or less. But swapping out the drive took considerably less time and I was able to let things continue rendering during all this.

Last week I was applying the fixes to the other scenes from what I've put together after fixing the Paige market place scene. Though those fixes didn't fully translate over and needed some manual adjustment. Which is expected. I was able to bug Puggy again about it and he helped sort things out/understand the issue more. The bulk of the work for the 0.6.2 fixes is mostly done. The patch isn't my biggest priority as I'm focusing on Chapter 7, hence why this patch is taking a while. But with the re-renders done, some code implementation and testing. The 0.6.2 patch is going to be out on the week of August 25th.

As a reminder, this will fix minor things like spellings that have been reported since the update. Improved the quality of some of the renders done in Blender. i.e. Market Place, Kindra's skin in her lewd anim, the camera POV in one of her shots, June's sparkly hair in her lewd scenes and the new main menu that popped up after completing CH6.

Some new technical stuff like finally being able to adjust the font size (and width of the dialogue box). This should help expand the dialogue if the bigger font size extends beyond the dialogue box.

And the long-awaited cooing noises during CH5. This will be on by default, but you can go into the config menu and zero out the coo's if you want.

I also mentioned previously that I'll be splitting the books into Book 1, Book 2, etc. This should help a lot with downloading future updates. You do not need to transfer saves or anything like that. I've already implemented and tested the code. If you're playing Book 1 and load a Book 2 save, the game will prompt you load the save with Book 2 (and vice versa). This will probably bring back memories from the ol' era where we had to swap discs to continue playing games, lol.

Anywho, this won't be part of the 0.6.2 patch. This will be implemented in the CH7 patch. Reason being is I need to run more checks and implement fail-safes for things like, if someone decides to merge the contents of the Books into one giant book, nothing breaks because that would be totally fine to do. You kind of have to think ahead for that kind of stuff, which isn't easy sometimes when you're juggling so many other different things with development. To avoid rushing that feature, I want to spend more time thinking on it before finalizing it.

Sorry for the long winded log. I try to condense these, but I also want to share what goes on during development because a lot more goes into it than just posing and rendering. I also want to keep things in mind of what's to come, so there's no surprises.

Have a great week! Stay safe and keep hydrating!

digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

A lot has gone on in the adult gaming space since the last devlog , as most of you have likely heard already. The summary is, through collective efforts, Visa/Mastercard have been pressured to force platforms such as Steam and Itch to regulate the type of adult content they allow on their storefronts. What began as something appropriate (banning content that glorifies rape) is beginning to inch itself to the possibility of expanding to things such as consented acts and even violence. Most of us are old enough to remember when people tried advocating how violence in video games are linked to murders, etc. Something more recent is when Onlyfans tried banning sex workers on their platform. It's been a constant battle for a very long time.

What does this mean for Artemis and my future projects? You guys already know my focus is story. If I were to remove the lewd scenes from Artemis, the story would mostly still be the same. Just treated more of an R rated movie. But I like adding in a bit of spice in my games. Not ashamed to say I've installed CBBE and Schlongs of Skyrim mods in my Skyrim playthroughs. Extended lewd scenes in Dragon Age Origins or Mass Effect playthroughs. Hence why Artemis has its lewd scenes. Instead of panning away when you've advanced enough in a relationship, we see the whole thing.

So, Artemis is safe as I have zero desire to create content that involves glorified rape or underage content and anything that would fall in that realm. If censorship ever extends to consented content between adults and more, I will offer SFW and NSFW versions of Artemis. At the moment though, things remain unchanged for Artemis and development continues normally.

Alright, back to our regularly scheduled devlog!

Things are going well. As mentioned earlier this month, I'll be applying my fixes from the recent marketplace scene to some of the animations. This would probably take a day or two to go through, but most of the work has already been done. This is in preparation for the 0.6.2 patch coming in August.

Also, I've been hinting at an Autumn Festival since chapter 1. Not to be confused with the Mid-Autumn Festival. I'll be cutting this out from the story. It's more of a scene related to Katy's romance path and this scene requires A LOT of custom assets to create. This would add a significant amount of time to development to fit my vision of this festival. So, I've decided to place it on the cutting room floor. Katy will still have a scene this chapter, but I'm changing it to something much more manageable in terms of development time.

On that note, there will be a number of interactions with the LIs this chapter. Next chapter (Chapter 8) will conclude Book Two and will be celebrating MC's birthday and where you'll choose your romance partner for the remainder of the story. Artemis is a romance option however her path plays out differently compared to the others. None of the girls will be forced on you. If you want to continue the story solo, you can. Based on their personalities, some won't be interested in a FWB type of relationship.

that'll wrap it up. be safe, be well!

digi

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

Just got done flushing the waterloop and for my render PC. I keep that thing in the garage and with the kind of heat we get here in the summer. Waterloop keeps things cool. She's back online and purring.

So, Artemis is goin' to college to learn from various personalities. With that comes various activities she'll participate in as she learns to be more human. This opens up an opportunity for me to resolve an issue. Some of the girls use Out of Touch hair which looks great but doesn't translate well when converted to Blender. So, I've been bouncing the idea around of having them together giving themselves a bit of a makeover. For the INKs, Katy, Paige and June have Outoftouch hairs. So Artemis, Zelda and Naomi would be keeping their current hairstyles. DK, Reina and Kindra's ponytail are Outoftouch hairs. I haven't 100% decided on this yet, but something to throw out there and see opinions on. Would you like to see them adopt a new hairstyle? Some have changed already. June being one example. I've been slowly growing her hair out-it's gone from her jaw to about shoulder length now. Paige fans want to see her with shoulder-length hair? If I do anything dramatic like that, I'll run a poll. But wanted to see what your thoughts were, since hairstyles can dramatically change one's appearance.

More behind the scenes this week, working on another location. Cabin in the woods!

This one needed a bit of work. Not all surfaces were UV mapped, so I had to create them. As well as separate some of the mesh to better texture some parts.

The textures that came with the base model were pretty bad. So the touchups are a necessary step.

Here's the model with the original texture

Finished product.

That'll do for last week.

Have yourselves a great week! And stay cool!

digi.B

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey Everyone!

Touching base really quick on the 0.6.2 patch coming up. I expect it to be finished in around August. I'm only dedicating about 1-2 hours every other day to work on it, since obviously CH7 takes precedence. But with the cooing sounds implemented, various typo fixes and other adjustments. I've finally gotten over the major hurdle which was the Farmer's Market scene. Last I spoke about it, it was a difficult scene to work on. Mainly since it was done in Blender as a sort of baseline for me to work with the program versus DAZ.

As a reminder of what that scene looked like on CH6's release:

Hair is very flat. The denoise was too much and smoothed out a lot, taking away details. The depth of field was pretty crazy.

Here's the final version after many revisions:

Biggest improvement being her hair stands out better and doesn't look like a wig. I was able to get the sheen and restore texture back into it. Her face is a lot better. The finer details, especially on her lips, have improved. Image resolutions on the post are lower but can be compared on release for anyone wanting to compare.

Now it's just a matter of re-rendering the animations. Taking what I learned from working on this, I can quickly fix some of the issues that were in the animations. Such as Reina's hair and Kindra's skin (Also June's sparkly hair). Taking what I learned here and applying it to future scenes I intend to work on in Blender.

Learning a new skill/program is not always easy, but putting in the time to learn has its obvious benefits. Knowing what I know now, I look forward to applying it to planned scenes in CH7, especially the lewd scenes.

That'll wrap it up for last week. Temps are soaring, so I hope you all are staying nice a cool if you're in an area with hot climate. If you're the lucky ones in far cooler climates, I envy you.

-digi

Also, shout out to Varadero on Discord for commissioning this artwork of Artemis. It's always nice to see another's artistic interpretation of your creations.

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

Sorry for not posting a 4th of July render. Between development and celebrating with family, I lost track of time for a render. I may do belated render this week.

Something that many of you have been requesting has finally been implemented: adjusting the font size. Sorry it took me so long to get to, every cycle I have to prioritize certain things, and this one just kept getting pushed back. But I'm happy to say you'll have sliders to increase the font size to giga sized font...

..all the way down to Artemis for ants.

For any text overflow, you can also stretch the dialogue box to the right so dialogue will fit in the box. The text will adjust automatically and they act independently, so you can customize it to fit your style. I do plan on updating the background image for the dialogue to a simple black image without the gradient and border.

Also, I changed the font for better readability. I liked the slick font that stayed true to the theme of Artemis. But the kerning was pretty bad and words often seemed either too scrunched up or too spaced out. The kerning on this font seems a lot better.

I also made an adjustment to the discernment protocol icons. The previous ones were really ambiguous and felt out of place/random. So now you can look at the icons and it's pretty obvious what they represent. I'll likely tweak the colors, but this feels it represents the system a lot more. The other apps will get some tweaks in the future.

Have yourselves a great week and stay hydrated!

-digi.B

Artemis DevLog CH7

Weekly check-in!

More behind-the-scenes to share. Worked on another custom setting, cleaning up objects, scaling them so setting matches size, correcting UV maps.

Wireframe view. Tedious process, carefully selecting objects and removing them, while making sure you didn't accidently select vertices of surrounding objects you don't intend to remove. But it's still fun to see something shape to what you envisioned, or close to. As I always say, I hate going to the DAZ store and not finding what I need. Instead of just working with what's available, I prefer doing the extra work to find something closer to what I wanted.

Like Aiden, it was almost like house shopping and finally finding that one that's perfect.

Once I've cleaned things up and optimized the model to play nice in DAZ. I'll be decorating and getting this new location ready for renders.

Quick heads up, there will be no DevLog next week. I'll be with my sister and her family this weekend for a dinner in our mother's memory. I'll be back in town Tuesday.

Thanks everyone and have a safe week! (And stay hydrated!)

-digi.B

Artemis DevLog CH7

Weekly check-in!

Most of the week was your general pose/render work. Nothing terribly exciting like my usual custom asset importing/texturing, etc.

I did spend some time getting a bit of work in with the 0.6.2 patch. The "cooing" sounds are fully implemented. As a reminder, you're able to mute the sound if the voice work doesn't work for you. There are different variations I had the actresses do, so it doesn't come off as a repetitive sound. The patch will also include corrections to some CH6 animations. Kindra's lewd scene for example. The POV camera moved a little too fast and her textures had issues at the seams. I've corrected the animations, but still working through the textures. As I've said before, DAZ is a lot more forgiving since anyone can pick it up and make a decent render out the box. But Blender requires a lot of adjustments with a steep learning curve. It's frustrating at times, but it is an investment learning the skill.

The biggest "fix" coming with 0.6.2 being fixing the farmer's market scene. Prior to releasing CH6, I stated I wasn't satisfied with how the renders came out. And with the release schedule already passing 12 months, I didn't want to upset anyone by delaying to work on it more. It was already stressful enough trying to get the update out as it took so long. So I just took the hit and released it, knowing I can just patch it later. Texturing in Blender is pretty intimidating, and your hand certainly isn't held like when texturing in DAZ.

Above is the render that was shipped in CH6's initial release. There's a lot to point out here. Her hair is flat, her skin texture also looks flat, the morphs didn't fully import (that's not what her smile typically looks like compared to her morph in DAZ). The shader on her teeth makes it look like she's got some gaps.

Below are some examples trying to fix the issues. Big thanks to Puggy for helping me with the hair. Things are improving a bit. Her teeth are looking a little better, there's some sheen on her skin now. But it still feels off and I'm still tweaking it.

Here are more versions as I try to overcome these hurdles working with DAZ models in Blender.

That wraps it up for last week. Back to the grind I go. But before I do, I wanted to share a render with everyone. With so much going on last year, I hadn't had the time to create fun renders for you guys to enjoy and this year I'm hoping to remedy that. If time allows, I want to get back on track with random/holiday renders. Having watched Ballerina last week, I was inspired a bit. Enjoy :) 2000x2600 version attached to this post.

Have yourselves a great week and stay cool!

digi.B

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

Thanks for the feedback! I had a lot of people vouching for GoFile and I'll be adding that with the next release, if not sooner.

Temps are still rising here and it's nice to see the render box performing well under pressure. I'll be sharing the first preview for Chapter 7 shortly. I don't have a word count just yet. I'm still going through the script. Script is probably the most involved part of development, next to posing/rendering. Weaving the scenes together can be a challenge, specifically the flow of events. Probably the biggest example is the notorious Katy or Zelda option in Chapter 2. I don't do it out of spite, some scenes I have to shuffle or combine because I need to make sure the main narrative is the focus. And I'm not cramming scenes in. Another example is in the recent update. I actually had to shuffle things around, so the timeline flowed better. It's one of the biggest flaws I've noted since Chapter 2 and that's making such a large roster for romance options. I think back to my favorite games like Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect 2, etc. You want a good roster but also need balance so your story doesn't suffer to make room for the sub-plots. Something I'll be taking with me when I begin my next project after Artemis is complete.

This next Chapter has a major story beat following what happened in CH6. Also considering the Expo is two chapters away. And Book Two will be closing with MC's birthday party in Chapter 8. A lot to manage as you can imagine. But I'm real excited for Chapter 7, so much to explore. And our girl is developing so fast, she's already on her way to college. She has a lot to learn still and will be shadowing Central Pointe University's finest. Will she develop Naomi's competitive nature? Katy's bubbly attitude? Zelda's reserved demeanor? June's hot-headedness? Paige's sweet persona? A blend of everyone? (Fucking hell, I feel like Split writing these different personalities...)

New DevLog image. Attached a version without the text to this post.

Have yourselves a great week and stay hydrated!

digi.B

Artemis DevLog CH7

Hey everyone!

Temps are rising but the render box is holding strong. Pretty much the primary reason I even watercooled the system because I have to store it in the garage. Because I don't want that thing dumping hot air inside.

I wanted to discuss file hosting and possible alternatives.

I've officially gotten rid of GDRIVE. That seemed the best until you hit a download limit. And yes, there are tricks to get around it. But I just want you guys to click a button and the download starts.

MEGA I still support since some have expressed that as their preferred host. Some have a subscription there for their own reasons. Others, like with GDRIVE, have their methods of getting around the 5GB quota. MEGA gave me some issues this last release. The initial upload was quick. Then as I tried to upload the patch, things slowed dramatically. I'm talking from 90+ MB/s down 1-5Kb/s. Which was annoying as I was trying to stay on top of the uploads.

WeTransfer seems to be great for most. I do get a few replies that the download fails after a certain point, so that's concerning.

PixelDrain is the newest I've been using. PD is kind of the reverse MEGA. Free accounts have a 5GB limit. But I'm supporter of the creator's Patreon and because of that, there's no download quota for you guys. PD will be my main platform as there's a lot more I can do with it and I plan on setting more of it up as I go through development.

I wanted to get opinions on other file hosts. I'm looking for something that offers clean interfaces with no popups or anything malicious. Good speeds. I don't mind having to pay to host if it means convenience for you guys. I pay for WeTransfer and PixelDrain and those two have had the least issues.

Have yourselves a great week and be sure to hydrate!

digi.B