Progress report: The gift of giving

Hey, good people!

Hope you're well. Time for a progress report after two weeks of development. As usual, I'll stay clear of any major spoiler territory.

I'm aiming for a big update, story wise, and things are coming along well. Roughly half of the main arc has been written and tested, now remains the other half.

I've spent a good deal of time improving the look and feel of a couple different maps, as they're about to gain a more important role in the story. I can also "spoil" that some new mechanics will be included, such as item-giving. For instance, you can pick up flowers and try give them as a gift, which could affect your interactions. Of course, I'm not pivoting towards relationship-building with random NPCs being a big part of the game, but the mechanics for it are essentially there. Item-giving will be tied to the narrative in this update and continue being used in the future. For another mechanic added, when in water, characters actually "swim" now, rather than just wading around rather pathetically.

Aside from that, I've focused on improving my renders quite a bit by tweaking shaders and textures. The picture included is just a random, unedited example from this process. Earlier, I had issues with shadowy areas on models' skin becoming overly dark and red, like on knees, elbows "and other areas", which I've solved. That makes for improved image and video quality!

As a final note, a design decision. So far, almost all scenes have strictly followed Jon/Eva and taken place from their PoV (depending on your choice of perspective, of course). There has only been one exception, the scene cutting to Marion dancing after falling asleep on the train at the end of the prologue. Now, don't worry, the game is sticking with the tight PoV style. However, there may be more scenes of a similar nature in the near future, and I've come up with what I think is a pretty good way to explain/handle it. Let's leave it at that.

Talk to you in about 2-3 weeks time!

Best,

Haldane