An Update on Environments, With Still Much More to Do...

So like I said last month, this month I'm working on environments to prepare for a focus on story content. This is just a general update on how thats been going!
I'm putting a significant time and money investment into this work, cause I'm trying to get it done ASAP so the new story content can begin. It's thanks to you guys support that this is all possible at this speed. 

The Outside of the Apartment

So my initial focus is on the Apartment scene, it's needed an outside environment for some time. This will mostly be used for backdrop and certain scenes, and while it looks good so far, it's still quite incomplete with some distant background details and some stuff needed in front of the doors (welcome mats, other junk).
The idea is a relatively average two story apartment setup. The players apartment is in the back corner which means there's a little more privacy than other areas since less people tend to go past there.
The main objects in the scene are custom by me, with minor assets like the bushes, electrical boxes, and the cars are bought assets.
The players car is a vehicle similar to a mustang, why? Cause I love mustangs, and I'll be damned if I won't take the opportunity to render a mustang in a game. Usually I have restraint for this kind of thing but I let that go just this once. :P
This model is also bought, taking time to model a car like this would likely take up a whole month. I've done it before but not this time. 

Updates to the Inside of the Apartment

Inside the apartment is getting some updates too with the goal of reducing material and texture use, and improving the overall rendering. 
Now the inside of the Apartment the walls, floors and certain other aspects are all combined into fewer textures, 3 sets for the upstairs, downstairs, and windows & doors. This reduces the number of textures loaded, and means I can add more details.
On top of this, I've commissioned some new assets from 3D artist Oddmore  (who you should totally follow if you like story driven content and futa). It costs quite a bit more to commission assets than to simply buy them from a store but there's some needs that simply can't be met otherwise. So far I've had them redo the couch model, and the bed. Soon they'll be reworking the computer area as well and some other aspects.
Other assets in the room will be replaced with time, and other assets added. The goal is giving the rooms more life.
The bed also will have various states depending on scene. Variants of messiness and such.
Besides what Oddmore has done other updates include some new assets for the kitchen with reworked cabinets and appliances. And many more updates to come, the appliances may change depending on what I want to budget for, I'm not 100% happy with them due to some scale issues but I'm not sure if it bothers me enough to commission assets instead...
I'm still far from done with updates! Other things I plan is more props, replacing the carpets, and a variety of other improvements. 
I do have some performance concerns but optimizations can be made in time as well. For starters I have re-enabled Occlusion culling, as the number of assets processed at a time likely does need to be managed. But we'll see how things go in practice. 

In car scene

I'll have a proper less awkward screenshot at some point. But in short there will be scenes with Naomi in the car. I'm setting up a special scene that allows for a scrolling background to indicate driving. 
I've always thought "girl in passenger seat of your car" is a enjoyable thing, so I want to recreate that.

The Café

I haven't started working on this yet but I will shortly, the café is a critical location for the introduction of the game. I won't say much but know it's why I have to focus on environments for a bit lol.
Once this scene is complete story content will follow.

Other Updates

In other news there is a hotfix I need to release for something thats causing a crash on some PC's and probably mobile devices. I'll need to roll back to a previous date on the repo,  cause all this new stuff isn't ready to be in a build yet.
There's also a shader issue on Mac...
I'll try to get a rolled back update out soon, sorry for the wait it's difficult for me to jump around in focus. 

Other News

That important thing I'm waiting on I'm still waiting on. Sorry for the wait but as soon as I get word I'll begin shouting from the roof tops and releasing the public build. 
I just can't talk about it until it's 100% certain! 😩
Thanks for your support peeps, progress is smooth thanks to your support!
~sacb0y