Log inThis is definitely the last post before the release!
Hi everyone! Thanks again so much for waiting and for your patience. I apologize for not notifying you about the delay sooner.
I’m almost done, just a tiny bit left - finishing up 2 events in the editor and an animation for one of them. The final test is scheduled for next week.
In the meantime, here’s a little preview to boost morale! As I mentioned before, the main focus of this update is a large map for Noemi to explore. To make the exploration fun and engaging, I've included some new poses and scenes.
AI?
Hmm, what exactly led you to suspect that? I don’t use AI for characters or main scenes. However, on rare occasions, I might use them for blurred-out backgrounds, like 19Uscene2main3_000_000. After an update, the image source are available to subscribers with 10+ subscriptions
Meaning outfit texture - looks unusual
Oh, regarding that there really are some changes. I love chatting about art, so if you're interested, I’ll tell you more.
I’m leaning more and more towards cel shading because I now have a clearer understanding that game art has completely different criteria. It’s an easier style to reproduce and, most importantly, much more simple to use for animation.
I’ve been making attempts at this for a while. For example, you can look at the art from update 0.15. That’s when I consciously realized that some arts needed a simpler style and decided to try it out. You can also see this in the evolution of the hair, I used to draw it differently every time, but now it’s more or less consistent in a cel-shaded style.
It seems all of this (I’m still playing around with it) is evolving into a sort of hybrid style where I combine cel shading with a soft rendering style (especially for character bodies). Like here: the t-shirt and hair are almost pure cel shading, while the body has a softer render.
I won’t lie, I’m not really holding myself back stylistically with this game. I want to try different things, see what works and what doesn't, and establish a solid style for future games. That said, I’d say my style has already stabilized since updates 18-20. So from now on, only minor details will change at most.
Ahhhh, so that would explain artstyle inconsistencies, looks like a lot of AI models are trained on cel shading then. Fascinating stuff yet utterly confusing for someone without artistic background. Makes a lot of sense to 'standarize' for style causing the least headaches along the development, while still looking great!