Small Update - February 2024 (Patreon)

Hi all, Kyle here

Not much to update on since my last non-story post, as we're still working on the internal team reference archive. After spending some time gathering up material and dividing it into folders for objects, we've taken some of that and started plugging it into another application which we'll use for actually working with other modelers/volunteers.

And a quick note to be clear: This archive is NOT for public release, this is purely for THG's internal team use. We've gotten research material from many sources over the years. Some are very secretive about their stuff, some may have been under NDA, some they just spent a lot of money on, others would prefer not to give things away, and a lot of stuff is just outright under some form of copyright. People may disagree with this - it's been a longstanding point of debate in the Titanic community - but we have to respect collectors' wishes and err on the side of caution.

We actually tried something similar back in 2021, albeit without the organization on the research side. We did also try some limited form of an organized archive for when we had worked with Ferris. It was those two experiences that ultimately led to the decision to try this kind of organization again, but for the whole ship and using a different application that's a bit easier to use for more of the team.

Once it's all set up, it should be trivial to get things assigned to people so they can work on those objects, with everything they need reference-wise, and then run through the process from modeling and polish to final checks and imports.

It's probably shocking this wasn't set up sooner, but there wasn't much call before. For most of THG's time, it was pretty much only ever the few of us making stuff, so there wasn't much need for a central organized archive. 2021 and later saw only limited efforts to do something like this, a lot of trial and error. With the prospect of more people being brought on in the future, this organization is sorely needed, especially considering the size of the ship and how much is on it.

Meanwhile, I've finally finished scanning our new photo collection. I'm now well into processing the scans into finished images. It'll probably be a few days or so yet before that's done (there are a bunch I'll need to digitally stitch together), and then I'll probably do a bit more work on the archive before jumping back to the structural model.

I'll also continue to post more parts for the THG story. These first few parts are leading up to Lost in the Darkness, and it'll be a good few parts before we reach THG proper. The later the parts get, the more I'll have to decide what to include image-wise. I know there might be a lot of fun stuff for what will probably be an entire post just for Demo 3 development. I will probably post the next part pretty soon!

Finally, there have been many questions about the Demo 401 update. Of course, it's been a long, long time since that was announced. There are a lot of reasons it's taken so long, among them being that there's been a ton of work to optimize and polish it - not just a few bug fixes. More recently, Derek's PC stopped working (apparently a faulty CPU) and then his brand new monitor decided to also break itself. Honestly just the worst luck with technology. But that's all been fixed now and work is again continuing, including some QA testing.

I cannot say when this update will be out - that's up to Derek to announce when he's ready to. I would caution against any speculation. I'm sure Derek is very eager to get it done so he can really devote himself to Project 401. (As a reminder, work on THG is purely modeling for the time being, so our engine team will be free for a good while to work on Project 401.)

I suppose the spirit of some of this can be summed up by one GIF: