Testing some new stuff and story touchstones (Patreon)

Testing out more of the environment systems that I want to start using.  Mostly all the fancy procedural foliage, splines, and world composition stuff that I haven't worked with much in the past.  The procedural foliage seems really promising so far and I'll most likely use it similar to how I've heard it was used with games like Skyrim.  Where a large area is procedurally generated and then an artist goes in and tweaks, polishes, and refines those areas where it's needed.  I think that'll be the fastest way of handling the large world map.  Also it looks like there have been updates to world composition since I last used it and I think it will be less resource intense than the current landscape that I'm using.  But this is still all just in the testing phase.  

AI has started to get revamped.  There's a few things I want to test and see how they feel during combat especially.  This is very experimental but I want to test a system similar to Skyrim's "kill camera" but use it in the middle of combat for character specific scenes. I'm picturing something like the goblin girl tackling the player, riding them, and verbally taunting them, just as an example.  There are two things I'm worried about though, taking a bit of control away from the player in the middle of combat, and the camera cuts that would be necessary to make all of this work.  If anyone has any opinions let me know.  I'm hoping to have something put together for testing before too long but it's also going to require a handful of animations and will most likely only be for one character at first.  

Also working on the storylines and personalities that will be in the first town.  This is a major shift in gears and is a lot of fun to work on.  I've been looking a lot at shows like Deadwood and Westworld for reference ideas and overall feel and tone.  Both shows, at least at first, have a really cohesive setup and feel for their respective towns.  It's that small border / frontier town feeling that I want to put in Feign.  They also both are very character focused and driven.  Westworld also does a great job with exposing questline hooks like the simple act of picking up a dropped can that can lead to an epic adventure.  If anyone has suggestions for other references,  shows, books, movies, or games just let me know.  

Oh I've also been going back through Stephen King's Dark Tower books and I'm looking at how he handled an epic quest and how each novel has one or two goals but all of them still contribute to the overall narrative and main goal of reaching the tower.