Inner Circle Update for November 25 2016! (Patreon)

Apologies for the belated post!  I've at least got a couple goodies for you this time around, including an unexpected preview of some design work on a new character!

Images and Content for this Update on Google Drive 

Promo Video Progress

On Saturday I got to see the work being done on the new promotional video.  Turns out our man is making original audio to score it, so I've uploaded the WIP track for you to check out above.  The video was still in the conceptual stage, but hopefully I'll have a finished clip soon!    

New Character Design

This wasn't a priority at all, but inspiration struck and I spent a couple of days putting together the basic design for an upcoming character.  She isn't planned to make an appearance for a little bit, but she will be a valuable ally for Neon and Malise down the road.  You can check out the preview in the uploaded content above.  Keep in mind it's a very early design, so elements will likely change.  I am however very happy with how the face came out!    I've yet to do any work on the body, though I have a lot of solid ideas on where to go with the outfit (assuming I can find the necessary assets).   Her role is basically a know-it-all engineer/mechanic type with a street-punk attitude, so I want her style to reflect her rebellious persona.

3D Workstation Build

On a positive note, let me thank you guys for supporting us to the extent that building this machine is possible.  

On a less positive note, this is naturally taking longer than it should be.  Samsung, who we all know and love for making their recent phones and washing machines double as improvised explosives , is now (without a word) almost two weeks late in getting out orders for the solid state drives I plan on using in the new rig.  Granted, digital retailers are likely equally to blame for taking preorders on orders they can't fill, and I certainly am someone who gets deadlines, but either way it left me sitting on an extremely expensive pile of untested parts with their return deadlines ever-encroaching.   

So, earlier this week I went ahead and built the new workstation sans hard drives just to test the parts (especially the processor, which I now have 5 days to initiate a return on).  I pseudo-documented the build with some images, so feel free to check it out here.  The super good news is everything seems to work (and I am indeed sitting on a genuine 22 core processor), however I've only been able to test via the BIOS.  I'll likely go get a standard hard drive to install an OS on and thoroughly test everything in the next day or so if I still haven't heard anything about the other drives.  It definitely sucked having this beast sitting next to me unplugged while waiting hours for the ambient occlusion renders to finish for the updated fleshpod artwork... which I suppose I should mention now.

PDF Update, Material Preset Database, and Fleshpod Artwork

I finished up the optimization of the material preset database I mentioned last time and have since directed my attention to other things nagging me since V0.051's release. 

I've been holding off on creating the V0.051 PDF because while making the fleshpod artwork for Neon's new outfit few weeks ago I really felt all of it needed the updated shading I've been using recently for full environment scenes.  As mentioned above, the rendering and such is all done, so it shouldn't be long now.  You can check out the first few that I've finished above!

APL's Coding Extravaganza

APL is now junk-deep in his battle engine overhaul, and is already cranking out some great results.  He's made a lot of progress with fully concurrent actions (mentioned in the last update), as shown in the example screenshots I've uploaded above.  Note the multiple Vens doing stuff simultaneously and the game not crashing.  He's also added armor indicators to the battle scene.  We went back and forth over a few possible designs, but for now are going with the one loosely shown in the example GIF.  Basically, when an actor takes damage that damages their armor (not all does mind you) the armor indicator will become fully opaque and the section that's been damaged (future outfits may have multiple breakable sections) will flash.  He also edited Neon's heavy armor indicator to hopefully better suggest that the top is invulnerable.

TK Died in a Black Friday Stampede

Not really.  He's alive and working on concepts for the next area.  He finished work on the Access Tunnels B5 revamp, though I've been irresponsible and haven't had tested compositing the renders yet.

I'm pretty confident I'm forgetting something, so as a substitute I'll mention that at some point in the last week I discovered Nine Inch Nails' 1992 EP Broken syncs up uncannily well with the first half hour of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  

Till next time!