Cellar Door Bar. Out of alpha, now in beta. (Patreon)

The bar in the Vita Domain, “Cellar Door,” has been under development for some time, but today we’re moving it from alpha to beta state. In map terms, this means the area is A) playable without game-breaking bugs (as far as we know) and B) dressed up and built out enough to be shown to the public.

This distinction is important because in the past, we’ve shown concept art or test models in Unity, but it was always hard to communicate how “done” these things were in terms of overall development. Now, when we say something is in beta, it means that if we were forced to release it as is, we’d be somewhat okay with it. It’s like being forced out of the house suddenly—if you have pants on, you’re at least somewhat presentable and hopefully functional in society. So yeah, pants on. That’s beta state.

For Cellar Door in specific though, we’ve actually gone a bit further—say we put on a tie. In addition to the lighting and texture tricks we’ve learned over the past year, we’ve also dabbled in Ray Tracing… and it looks fantastic lol. Check out the bar with and without Ray Tracing:

Kinda hard to tell in a gif so heres a YouTube link in super overkill ridiculous 4K

There’s a gag in the dev world where beginners are warned about going overboard with post processing effects (especially glow) and I feel like this is similar. Too easy to go overboard with because who doesn't like shiny things. Looks damn nice though.

While we’re mastering everything in 1080P~1440P, the wow factor of 4K is also undeniable. So, if you have a computer that can handle it… maybe crank that shit up to 11? Although we’ll have to figure out how to handle graphical tweaking on the user end… we’re constantly humbled that everything you can do in a game, including the settings page where user can tweak settings, has to be handmade.

Bunch of tech and patience and pieces coming together

The tone in the bar is very much likely to be final visual tone of the whole game, and perhaps even the rest of the series. I think we’ve finally found a good balance between 3D and 2D.

Slowly but surely the fault series is relaunching itself as a brand new thing. What are we even gonna call this thing eh...? Visual novel no longer is accurate and “adventure game” seems too generic. Maybe something like walking sim? No... walking visual novel simulator? Hmm.. starting to sound more like a brain aneurysm more than a genre.

Ritona Menu

Seamless talking with full ass visual novel character models on a 3D field with full camera movement succeeded from tech in LIGHTKRAVTE

It’s so exciting to see everything coming together!

Do tell us what you think, I think it’s looking pretty freaking cool and unique.

Vilserio, stay safe.

-Munisix

PS.

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