digiB

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Good morning!

Popping in for a quick check-in. Informed that beta team they'll be receiving the next build tonight. I had hoped to find a composer for CH5 that I could build a long-term relationship to provide music and really invest their talent into Artemis. It's been a struggle as they mostly just want to get paid and move onto the next thing. Not wanting to really sit down and understand the story they're creating music for. That said, I'm still on the hunt, but have also secured a ...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy new week everyone!

Things continue to stay busy. I unfortunately wasn't able to get the next build for testing to the testers like planned over the weekend. The last build didn't have the mini-games implemented and was something I was working on this week. There were two mini-games planned for CH4 that I had tossed to the cutting room floor, mainly because they were pretty gimmicky and served no purpose other than have something to do during the Halloween party. For CH5, all of th...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the late update last week for those visiting the Discord. One of the things beta testers mentioned was how many dynamic images were used in this chapter. Dynamic images is the term used for something like the "blinking" effect you see. They're really fun to do and can really add to a scene. They're just so involved in the setup and really slowed me down inserting them into the code. But the final result came out great! 

I had people ask about game save...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Good M-...Afternoon!

Last week was a helluva week. Processing the renders was a grueling process. Processing means I drag them into Photoshop into a template that automatically downscales them from 4K to 1080 and I color correct any that need to be. As well as correct any quick fixes like clipping. I managed to get a head start not long ago, but it was still a lot. This update is about 4300 renders big and processing roughly 3000 last week was mind numbing. I also found an issue with on...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Good morning!

Posting this one a bit earlier than usual. I mentioned passing on an early alpha/beta last week and after looking at the script. I felt if I just kept focus and pushed, I'd get this last scene finished. Which I am very glad to say that got it done just now. This scene ended up being just over 600 renders by itself. Scenes on average are usually 30-120 renders long. Very few go past that. The server is currently chomping away at these renders.

There are still a very s...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Terrible Monday! Just kidding, I wanted to switch things up this week :)

Things continue to go great. The scene I'm working on is still going, I had hoped to have it wrapped this past weekend. More behind the scene stuff that happens that add time is when you're trying to do something in a scene and the software fights you. For those familiar with DAZ and my mentioning of dforce know what I'm talking about. Dforce is DAZ's simulation tool and it can be nice and simple or just make your ...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Feels like these weeks are just zipping past me. But I take that as a good sign of staying busy. While working on this final scene, I was going through the script. Some of the criticisms I get is how scenes transition. So in this scene in particular, even though it's considered one scene, there are 4 transitions from the locations and events that take place. The last two transitions are pretty simple but the first two are major location changes as well as establishing one ...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Busy week going through my list of things to review. There were more renders to be fixed than I thought, but the majority of them were easy fixes. A little trick I picked up working on CH4 was not compressing my daz saves. This lets you open the file in something like notepad++ and edit it in plain text. So in this example below...

you most likely won't notice since the imag...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

More steady progress last week. I got kind of concerned about render times for the outdoor shots since the scene takes place at twilight and the set had very few light sources (see above). But renders were actually 20 minutes faster and had hardly any grain at all. So major plus with this one. When I was posing this scene, I contemplated animating the stretch Naomi is doing (Cammy from Street Fighter). I told myself if there's time during the beta, I'll do it. But no promi...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Another productive week. For the scene being worked on I brought in a number of custom props to help better stage the scene. I've also been doing a lot of zbrush work lately. This is a real stupid detail some might think, but I do get head pats every now and then when someone catches a detail I put in that most people probably wouldn't do.

The scene I'm working on involves Naomi. A proper spar should you choose to contact her during your down time. When I was working...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Thought I'd change the main image up a little just for this week's post. Sort of a preview render and I liked how the weight of Kindra's parent's legacy looms over her as she contemplates. 

Progress continues to go steady, I'm wrapping up another scene today which leaves me with just two more to finish. Some scenes are 50 renders and most others are 1-200 renders. I should probably splice these scenes better, it's something I'm working on. For e...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Wrapped up another scene with just three more to complete! Busy week as I stayed focused on organizing everything. Being this far into development, things just become a bit chaotic keeping things organized. It's organized chaos though, one of those situations where I can spot the needle in the haystack. As I was organizing things, I've been letting an idea stew in my mind. I believe I hinted at or just blatantly mentioned it already. When I work, I tend to binge-watch show...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Uneventful post this week. Created a handful of reporters for a conference that'll take place at Kapp Ind. How CH5 closes kind of reminded me of how CH1 closed, so did a slight tweak to it. Didn't want anyone to think I'm pulling a Star Wars ANH and The Force Awakens, heh. Something that's been on the back of my mind since CH4 was how much in size each chapter is. Book 1 is roughly 10GB in size and that's after file optimization (story renders are compressed with webp and ...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Good Monday to you all!

Another scene down 4 more remain. This week I'll be working on setting up the lobby area for Kapuletti Industries, as well as getting all the background characters ready. I've also been working on a cinematic that will appear near the end of this chapter. Initially, I was going to do this myself. But with everything going on this development cycle, I didn't want to throw more work on myself speed learning Blender. And the reason I'm wanting to do this cinematic i...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

I feel pretty good about the scans I did on Tuesday. My current contacts do the job and are better than not having them. But it's been about a year and half of adjustments and still discomfort. So it's why I decided to see this other doctor. They did 6 scans with 6 different machines, including one that did a 3D scan of my cornea and partial sclera. From what many have said, this will give me contacts that fit me far better than my current ones. I look forward to picking t...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Hey everyone!

Sending this DevLog a day early. A few weeks ago, I mentioned seeing a keratoconus specialist. This Tuesday I'll be taking a day trip with a buddy of mine to see them and to do a proper pentacam scan on my eyeballs. And the requirement is I have to not wear my contacts 48 hours prior. Fret not, that doesn't mean I won't be sitting around doing nothing (that would bore me to death). Instead, I'll be working on code. Typos are easy to fix but if I work on any renders without...

CH5 Preview Render

"The power of the sun, in the palm of my hand."

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Weekly check-in. There are six scenes left to pose and render for this chapter. I also wanted to expand more on the "Artemis mechanic" I mentioned last week. There will be a brief explanation of how this will work. But wanted to use this opportunity to give more insight on it. Artemis will mostly act on her own accord and most scenarios will just play out. There will be moments where you'll have an opportunity to intervene and how you do so will raise one of two stats for ...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Short post. Focusing on the remaining scenes. Slight concern with that outdoors cafe I mentioned last week. But render times were unaffected and rendered out pretty quickly. Set turned out real nice and well worth getting a few more gray hairs over haha.

This week I'll be continuing my focus on completing more scenes. There's still a handful of animations to be done. I'll be...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

This week was a bit of a fun one. I was able to knock out four of the six custom set pieces planned. But the two remaining custom sets can be done later, just glad to finally get the majority of them done. Especially mall asset as I've been pushing this one back due to its size and complexity, but it turned out great in the end!

The same went for an outdoor shot. This one ac...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Mornin' everyone!

Spent the weekend wrapping up a few Artemis' tasks and re-writing part of a scene. As well as taking a step back and seeing where things are with this chapter. CH5 is about 75-80% complete. I'm giving it a range because while there are 8 scenes left to complete, five of those scenes require custom set pieces that have already been acquired. But they still need to be converted to DAZ format and whatever re-mapping is needed, as well as fixing little issues with the mesh...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Progress continues to be steady with CH5. Another large queue completed and did more prep work on up coming scenes. This required a couple of new set pieces. I needed a dealership and a parking lot. Fortunately the parking lot was modeled and labeled correctly. Didn't spend very long converting to DAZ and correcting textures. Though the dealership and car were a bit of a pain due to me having to take it into another program to properly organize the material labels and drag...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

What a rush of a week. Just to get it out of the way, I'm personally happy with Artemis' performance over the weekend with Steam. Hiring a composer is priority now, but more on this in a bit.

Only thing I'm not satisfied with is the change in music. The selection I had to choose from wasn't great and they were composed at the same caliber as the artists from Artlist/Epidemic. Honestly, all this could have been avoided of these websites put something like "Yes, I am o...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday everyone!

Last week was a nice balance of rendering and coding. Something that always wears me out is the mind numbing tasking of reviewing the 4000+ renders, fixing minor clippings, and treating the images. So, I'm trying to get a head start on that process now. This way it's not only easier to manage, but also doesn't take up a whole lot of time during the prep for beta stage. Nice to see things coming together though. I can't say how big this chapter will be, the number ...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

To avoid sounding like a broken record, I wanted to share some behind the scenes  from some of last week's work. One of the scenes I'll be working on this week takes place in another McCreed location and this is another environment I'm converting to DAZ. Converting non-daz assets can be a bit of a pain since in most cases you're having to fix the UV maps. Or worse, fix the mesh itself. Which was the case for the park I used in CH3 where you ate tacos with Naomi. But t...

Preview - CH5

Have a great weekend!

- digi.B

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Apologies for no Easter render this year. Just a reminder for those who want to preserve the original music from Chapters 1-3, you'll want to back these files up somewhere. Then overiright future updates with these files. 

ch1_music.rpa, ch2_music.rpa, ch3_music.rpa

As of right now, all of CH1 music has been updated with the temp tracks for awhile now. Needed to g...

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday!

Last week I spent about a day reviewing the music from Artlist and finally getting them removed. Testing things out, I noticed there's a bug when accessing the DataLeaks from the cellphone during CH1. Basically when dismissing the phone, you lose right-click ability to access the games menu. You can still access the menu via the quick links (clicking Save or Config will bring up the menu.). The fix was easy to implement and I'll be pushing a hotfix very soon. I just wanted...

Kindra Bathwater - coming soon! (NSFW)

(made from real digi)

:)

Artemis DevLog - CH5

Happy Monday everyone!

Progress remains steady with this cycle. Some of you may have noticed I'm not as active on my socials and it's sort of my MO at this stage of the cycle. Where I sort of close my door so I can keep focus on the update. But of course, feel free to reach out to me if needed. I just may not respond as quickly as usual.

I've a couple of questions, mainly regarding Steam. So, I'll answer them here.

The Steam page for Artemis finally has an actual date on it,...