Development Journal 11 March (Patreon)

It's been a busy week! I'm currently at work on the boss battle prototype; It looks like I'll be able to make my original concept for it work, and I hope to be done with the prototype today. 

I released a pic earlier this week showing the model I'd developed for Tal'thelas (the elf you had to rescue Ana from), and it seems that folks didn't like it too much! I'll take another look at the model in a few days and release some pics showing what, if any, changes I've made. Though the comments were uniformly critical, I'm never sure how representative they are, so I'll probably release a poll as well.

Some of the criticism suggested things I'd already done - for instance, his eyes are considerably smaller than Alex's, but in that picture they look kind of the same size, since Alex's eyes are narrowed in irritation/displeasure. The eyes are also of a different color (sort of); they have the same hue, but different saturation and lightness. I suppose I'll shift the hue as well. The cut of his face is actually fairly masculine, but the long hair obscures that a bit.

I've been thinking a bit about how other heavily stylized designs achieve a sexually dimorphic look. One way is to go with an exaggeratedly masculine look - huge jaw, large cleft chin, etc - and I may do a bit of that for some characters, but I certainly won't with elves. In manga/anime, though (which my style is most heavily influenced by), they don't usually do any of that. It seems to mostly come down to eye size and hairstyle, as well as visual cues from the rest of the character's body (which you can't see very well in the picture I released). Perhaps he simply needs a hairstyle that keeps it pulled back from his face.

I wanted to release what I thought was a visually interesting composition, but perhaps that wasn't the best way to introduce the design. At any rate, you can expect something a bit later in the week.

I'll start creating H-scenes in a few days as well; I'll start with one that doesn't need the male elf design, and perhaps get to the ones that do over the weekend. I also worked out a detailed plan of what events/skits will be in 0.5, so I'll start writing those too.

I also completed my computer rebuild project, and she's a beaut! ...but very large :\ I was going to have the system use the 7700k I already have, but it turns out that the going rate for those on eBay is about 3/4 the price of a new 8700k, so I got the 8700k and will be selling the 7700k. I knew the 8700k had come out, but I'd assumed it was an incremental upgrade, like all the x700k chips that had come out over the past several years. I was wrong though - it increases the number of physical cores by half and is thus a pretty big boost. The system seems to be doing quite well; I've already noticed a 10-15% increase in render speed, and the temps are considerably lower for all components.

Thank you for your support!