Contractor work (Update)

Hi!

Since there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes, I decided to give a little update on what's going on in the contractor world.

Basically the premise of this post is that when I decided that semi-risky port decision, I went to so called "safe-mode" for a little while when it comes to hiring contractors and flowing financial resources outwards to external assets.

This "safe-mode" was there to make sure that if there would have been some major issues with the porting, I would have "saved" extra resources to potentially hire people / skills to solve those issues (mostly engine / tech related).

Now when the porting process is going smoothly and I don't see any potential issues in any shape or form, I have restarted this contractor side of things and here's what's currently happening.

Props

One of the easy things to outsource is 3D-models and textures but one of the hard things is to make them uniform to existing visual style when they are not made by you (me in this case).

For this purpose, I have talked with RE3MR who have been really talented in multiple areas when it comes to 3D and we have learned this common "language" when it comes to mimicking my style of making those photo texture assets.

RE3MR has now started making a quite large batch of different props based on my photo textures and here's some of the initial props based on this somewhat unique style (compared to modern PBR-methods).

There will be around 30 new modular props before the next Godot demo and I have all those Public Demo 2 props from Unity build still existing, so visually there's going to be a lot of new stuff for these next demos (mostly Public Demo 2).

New characters (Guard faction)

The second custom character type for the game is called Guard and Claudia (who made the Bandit character) is once again making these.

This Guard model and its AI will be ready for Public Demo 2 after this initial Godot "performance demo" and I think it will be quite a memorable character in terms of style and visuals.

Once the Guard type is ready then it's time to start making those Vostok Military characters and after that the Traders. I would assume that most core character models (~8-10 characters) for this game will be done in 2024.

FPS animations & Item animations

Barry who has been one of the key players for upgrading stuff to Godot and making those FPS animations is now working on few new weapons (RK-95 and MP5) animations and finishing rest of those inspect animations for the attachment system.

You can see one of the new inspect anims. (KP-31) on the post header.

Once this initial Godot demo is over, then it's time to start developing "additional" animations for different items as well. These item animations will range from drinking / eating to really specific animations and these will be made side by side with the weapon anims.

Audio upgrades (a lot of them)

Aki who has been the main contractor when it comes to audio design, have now started working on multiple different topics, here's some of them:

- Ambient audio rework and nature SFX
- Weather effects and indoor / outdoor variants
- Footstep audio rework & detect sounds
- New radio / folk songs (Vostok radio)
- Reload audio details (cloth / textile sounds)

Most of the audio upgrades will be finished probably Q1 next year, but some of these will be ready for the initial Godot demo also.

- Antti (Developer)