Dev Diary, June 9th, 2023 (Patreon)

This has been another week where I've spent a lot of time setting up the main free-roam of the chapter, which is the hotel you briefly visited in episode 1.

It's a massive free-roam with a total of 9 different floors, and everything takes quite a bit of planning with everything from saving camera angles, lighting the locations naturally so they look equally good with or without people in them, a diversity of room types (not just hotel rooms), re-surfacing walls/floors/doors etc. - lots of things you don't have to think about when putting two people in a room and doing a dialogue.

With a free-roam like this, the elevator comes naturally as a location picker, and after several days of trying the few elevator assets available, I gave up and contacted the world-famous architect, Wibble. And once again did he deliver, and I'm very happy with the result. 

If you don't like free roams, don't worry about this being a major part of the game. It's not, but you can use it to decide who to spend time with. You do NOT have to be in room 303 between 7:59 and 8:00 on Tuesdays only, to discover something.

This weekend I should be able to build up a decent render queue with all the saved camera angles I've already done because next week I'll be spending a few days with a local theater group who are going to be putting my mo-cap suit to the test. That should give me a whole lot of data for use as poses and animations for both u4ia and a future project.

I know that many of you are interested in the music for the game, and I've talked a bit with Jay Denton who you might remember from the Leap of Faith soundtrack, and agreed to use some of his newer tracks for the game.

For our custom character LI, we're down to the very last few options. This time it's the hair. Put your vote in for your favorite hairstyle below.

Again, the full-size image is attached below if you want a closer look at some optional colors.

Happy voting once again, and may your favorite win. Stay safe out there.

// Drifty

ps: Vote for your favorite hairstyle - not color! We'll have to do colors next week, or there'd just be too many options this week.

Tier 3 and above, second poll here.
Tier 4 and above, third poll here.