Level Streaming + Hair Update (Patreon)

We have some progress to share, and a plan for next build date :D

We've been working on Virtual Novel's level streaming system, to allow for open world exploration in a seamless manner, while being able to have a high amount of detail in all of the sub-enviros and interiors. We've talked about the concept before, but now we have it implemented and working quite well. 

Players will be able to adjust the streaming distance in the Graphics settings, which increases or decreases the distance that you can see the interiors of buildings, so that powerful rigs can render further away, or so people can mix and match performance settings.

A specially made glass material on the exterior of all the buildings adjusts its opacity to coincide in perfect timing with the load and unload of building interiors, so that the player shouldn't be able to notice pop-in or pop-out of levels, for a more immersive and performant experience! 

Glass will fade gently into a stylized reflective surface, so when it's opaque it won't look out of place in the environment. There's a clip on our Twitter, demonstrating the seamless loading and unloading of building interiors as glass becomes opaque, and a couple pics below showing what levels look like when loaded and unloaded. 

Once doors are fitted, it should be near impossible to see levels loading and unloading. 

We're planning to finalize this system in the next week or so, and then hopefully we'll be able to release an entire campus build mid-May. Like we mentioned in a previous post, from now on builds will probably contain everything and be less fragmented, as we start working on the game as a whole rather than individual sections and then releasing only those sections to play-test :>

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In other news, we've also begun to work on our main cast, and we're beginning to finalize our character designs and bring them into 3D. The main cast of characters won't be using the modular hair system, but instead will have hair uniquely sculpted per character by a professional sculptor that we're working with. We'll be working on characters one-by-one and introducing them when they're completed, here's a preview of the first main character's hair sculpt, which we'll be making game-ready soon and bringing into Virtual Novel -

https://gfycat.com/CostlyGrimyCardinal

To coincide with new hair meshes, we've also improved our hair material  to make hair look deeper and more physically shiny and soft in VR, as well as having more stylized detail in general.

We should be showing all this stuff off in more detail soon! Please continue to support the project and tell anyone who might be interested!

Love VN devs