Update: General Stuff, Island (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

Hope you had a great week! There was quite a lot going on last week on our end!

First of all I decided to show you much more Work-In-Progress stuff so you get an idea about the inbetween steps as well. It is much less pressure for me than presenting almost final stuff most of the time.

One big point on my list is workload. I have been working way too long too many days/weeks/months, neglecting my private life & family and my Wife asked me to work normal hours and also spend time with the family and not just work. I also noticed a rather dramatic decrease in my physical wellbeing. Things start to ache, sleep deprivation, very short temper, headache, well the list is long and you get what I mean. I need to learn to establish a sustaining way of working, health, family. And I need to do it now because a couple of close people (Wife, Daughter, Mum, Dad, Friends) basically told me that I can't continue like that. For the sake of my own wellbeing, not necessarily for the others. But that goes hand in hand. And I do need help. I noticed that I simply can't just "cut" work. I still feel so much pressure of having to deliver things and earning money to pay the bills that I could work forever. And my family will help me to guide me on a healthier path.

Creating so much content is actually a job for a couple of people. I tried to cover it up by just working insane hours, but as we all know it´s not healthy and just burns you out. And the scope of any of my Projects is pretty massive. Even EP8 usually takes a lot longer if you work normal hours than the timeframe I delivered it. And that is not complicated when you compare it to an actual game.

So the Team and I decided, and of course want to let you know, that things will just take longer. We unfortunately did not manage to create a first playable because there were so many issues with things that you normally don´t see/hear. Engine updates that break things, Plugins that stopped working, Code that got corrupted and we need to find and fix. And the lead coder now is on well deserverd holidays for the rest of August so we will continue early September. I will also take it slower the rest of August. But with weekly updates, even if they are short, showing WIP stuff, I think you will actually get more (hopefully for you interesting) updates and it is way less pressure for me.

Another point is, if the numbers of Patreons will decrease further, I will have to look for a normal Job again. I hope that does not happen, but if it does: well that´s the way life goes. I will let you know of course once that happens. The friend who was supposed to do Management and technical R&D also basically can´t help any more (for I don´t know how long) because of personal reasons. So long story short: I will work normal hours, the Team size decreased, things will take longer but therefore it will be a sustainable way of life.

Alright, now back to the actual update ☺️

SA-Treasure Island:

So, we ran some first performance tests for huge landscapes (on the Screenshot it´s 2x2km). And they are very promising! I started blocking out the Pier & Porch for the first Village part. The landscape itself will actually be bigger (more like 8x8km), but we need to run final tests first once the coder is back.

So first you collect reference, then you start with basically nothing but a flat landscape, sclupt it into the rough shape you want and then gradually add stuff.

Add Ocean

Closer look on the bay

Adding a Pier:

And a solid Foundation for Buildings:

Add some rocks:

And bigger Rocks:

And when I do that, I constantly check all kinds of angles for placing stuff. Does it look & feel good? Would I like to stand there? What about the flow of the map? Does it make sense to place stuff there at all? Will it serve a purpose in the game or "just look cool". I always try to place stuff so it actually does serve a purpose. Or that the construction would work and is not totally unplausible. Also, does it hold up to Close-Up Shots? Where is the balance between Performance and Looks?

So yeah, there are lots of steps involved. What I also need to do is check and adapt/improve assets that I purchased on the Asset store. I can´t model everything and there is a lot of really great stuff on the Marketplace so it does not make sense to create everything from scratch. But it all needs to be looked at, adjusted to the conventions of the project and so on. So it can happen that stuff, all of a sudden, does not work anymore under certain conditions and you need to find out why.

Like these here... Took me half a day to fix stuff, but it works now reliably!

And you also need to make sure that the Ocean works, colors are fine, Wave Height/Speed etc.

And last but not least I play around with the lighting. Where does the Sun go up/down? How big is it? How far does the distance Fog go, and so on. And once you are happy, you get something like that for a nice Sunset 🌞

Mountains & Vegetation will be for a later Update, right now it´s really just about blocking the space, checking the size when running through the level, etc.

Working on that stuff is actually pretty therapeutic for me and I very much enjoy it. Just need to keep an eye on the hours 😋

With that said I will wrap up this update. I hope you are ok with this update and the changes we are facing. But it will definitely be for the better because if I am happier and live a sustainable lifestyle, the Quality will also improve 🫡

All the very best,
Puppetmaster