Greetings, Mythies!
Remember how I was so exhausted? I got my weekend of rest and then… caught a nasty head cold. Thankfully it was just a head cold (not COVID!), but it was giving me a bit of hell. Writing while on cold medicine is difficult at best, and while I’m sure you all would be immensely entertained by whatever crazy bullshit I come up with on DayQuil, it wouldn’t really do well for the cohesion of the story.
Luckily, since we’re still early in the Chapter Four development, I had plenty of other things to work on! Thus, I did a good number of the side images that are required.
For those who don’t know, “side images” are the portraits of the characters that appear next to the text when that character is speaking, and they also have emotions that I can attach so that you can get an idea of the tone of the characters voice while they say it. There was a Daz update done that I stupidly installed that broke a lot of the lighting I’d set for the original side images, so when I wanted to add expressions it ended up making images that didn’t match up with the existing ones. That’s a pretty big stylistic problem when you see the lighting change on a character’s face when they say several lines in a row with different expressions. Therefore, there are some characters where I basically have to redo their whole side image set so it matches. I didn’t have to do any of this in Chapter Three, because the only character I needed new expressions for was a character who was getting a whole new set of expressions because of how they look different (Sylvia).
I’m applying this same principle to Tara; from Chapter Four onward, her braid is going to be her default hairstyle, so I had to redo all her images, anyway. Tara’s default side image set was missing a “thinking” face, which… makes a lot of sense for Tara. But now she has one!
Moving forward, to prevent issues like this, I’m going to just make the full line of expressions for every character, even if I don’t think I’ll ever use those expressions (like “Lowman smiling”). I know I’ve been at this for a good amount of time, but I’m still learning shit and I’m doing it alone.
Anyway, even though these side images are pretty easy to make, they can take a bit of time. They’re very quick to render, and not very hard to pose (it’s all face, after all), but anybody who’s worked in Daz can tell you that the thing that takes longest is actually loading a character. For Tara’s new set it was easy; I only loaded her once and then adjusted her face for each render, but to redo existing side images will mean either I load every side image expression individually or I re-pose the whole series so I won’t have to go through the pain of loading the character with their existing pose for every expression.
Did I really spend a whole update talking about side images? I guess so! Sorry! If you have any questions about side images though (or anything else about the game), don’t forget that “Ask the Dev” questions are still open until at least Sunday! Get those questions in while you can!
Chapter Four Scenes to be Done:
- It’s Always Sunny in Baltimore
- Writing: Complete!
- Born in a Barn
- Writing: Complete!
- Law and Mordor
- For Here or To Go?
- High School Never Ends
- It’s LeviOsa, Not LeviosA!
- Fairy Tail
- Things That Go Bump in the Night
- Lobster Thermidor aux Crevettes with a Mornay Sauce, Served in a Provençale Manner, with Shallots and Aubergines, Garnished with Truffle Pâté, Brandy, and with a Fried Egg on Top — and Spam
- We Will Rock You
- Ghostbusters!
- Doing the Dailies
- I Choose You!
Chapter Five Scenes to be Done:
- A Childhood Lost
- France is Bacon
- Divine Deception
- On Your Wedding Day
- Thin Black Line
- Rogue Nation
- Personally Victimized by Regina George
- Violating the Traditions
- Gehenna
- Drumroll, Please!
- I Can Has Murder?
- Mordred Ascendant
- Merlin’s Declaration
- I’m Kickin’ My Ass!
- Curtain Call
Other Things:
- Music Track Revamping
- Reshoot of Some Side Images (50ish%)
- Chapter Four Achievements (0/4)
- Unnamed Tara Render
- Unnamed Mara Render
- Unnamed Kylie Render
- Unnamed B Render
- Chapter Five Achievements (0/15)
- You Ruined My Childhood!
- Like Sands Through the Hourglass
- Flash! Ah-AHH!
- Mr. Crocker Was Right
- Whatcha Gonna Do When She Cums For You?
- Get In, Loser!
- Nature and Demeanor
- Live, Local, Latebreaking
- Violet Tendencies
- Grohl Approved
- Feelin’ Frisky
- Nice Fuckin’ Model
- Agents of Shield
- You Lucky Bitch…
- Case Closed
- Tell me how many lights you see? (Five Four)
Keep the Legends Alive!
– Nine ♥