Devlog Update

Hey there,

It's been a bit quiet on my end these past couple of weeks, so I wanted to give you all some long overdue updates about what's been happening behind the scenes. Life has thrown a few unexpected curveballs, causing a bit of a hectic period. Some of the new characters also required some more work on hair and textures than anticipated. As a result, the development of the novel has been pushed back slightly.

While I may have been quiet, I’ve tried hard to make up for some lost time trying to finish chapter 3 by the end of the month. However, looking at it right now, sometime in July seems a bit more realistic to iron out some of the bigger rough spots.

I’ve included some finished shots as well as previews out of blender, but don’t want to spoil to much of the story since it will pick up directly from the cliffhanger of the last chapter. The previews also show a new room featured as a location in chapter 3 and some visuals being changed in the pool area with some more details in the walls and some adjusted lighting and shaders, which have been a bit troublesome in renders before.

I will keep gradually improving some of the visuals to not waste too much time on minor details and keep the development time between chapters low. This may introduce some inconsistencies in between chapters but will also be patched out along the way and hopefully shouldn’t be too jarring on immersion.

Until now, the novel doesn’t have any reader choices as I was unsure of their implementation with the overall vibe without feeling too trivial. But I’ve got an idea in the works of how to introduce a lot more player control and gamification. This won’t be part of chapter 3, though, so further teasers will have to wait until after that.

Life has calmed down enough to focus more on the novel development. Same way I’ve introduced more regular uploads for artwork sets, I’ll try to give more regular text devlogs in the future. At the same time I’m still aiming to have much faster turnaround time for new chapters, and while there will probably more hiccups along the way I’m still optimistic I’ll manage to achieve that.

We’ll see how that goes but until then I’d like to thank you for your continued patience,

Milo