Artemis - DevLog (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

Did some clean up and small rewrites for this Chapter. I also did more code work, with the music room in particular.

For the OG supports, some of you might remember Artemis had a music room back in CH1 and 2. It's since been removed or "blocked" (DJ Kink Studio on the main menu). A very quick story on that front. AVNs get a bad rap with music in particular. We used to be able to sign up with many platforms (Artlist, EpidemicSounds, etc.) but they've since changed their TOS to prohibit their content from being used in media that has pornographic content in it. This shot a lot of us devs in the kneecaps and severely limited our sources for music.

Anyways, as a result. I had to change a lot of the music format. Because of this, I had to do some coding gymnastics because I told myself to prevent more surprises in the future, I just renamed all music tracks to ch#track##. So if something stupid like this got worse, changing out tracks wouldn't effect the code, since the replacement track would carry the same name and the code wouldn't fuss about it. Back Chapters 1 and 2, the music room was real nice. You had album art, could see artist, track name, album, etc. It's honestly been so long now that it's been offline, I've forgotten what the technical hurdle was for the change. But since then, I've been working on it and refining my old code. Happy to finally say we'll see it back online for CH8. It'll be functional within the phone as well. Why this matters you say? Because part of the freeroam bit, the storymode variable disengages and the music let's you choose what to play while you navigate whatever the event the freeroam is. With MC's party being the spotlight for this chapter, real happy to finally have this re-implemented into Artemis.

I'll worry about making it look prettier later. But for those who want to learn more about the artist or just create a playlist of their favorite tracks, you can do so now.

But yeah. Music in AVNs has had quite the history. There are a couple tracks I've commissioned artists to do for me. But the majority of Book 2 featured music from Universal Production Music (Universal Studios, yes the film studio). As they were the only source I could find that had high quality artists AND allowed use in media that has adult content. The caveat is their contract is $2,500 and has to be renewed every 12 months. So, it's pretty pricy and I often find myself spending hours trying to find the perfect track still. That said, my hunt for a new home for music continues. A close friend of mine who's a media instructor has been dabbling in creating music as a hobby, so I might hire him if he's got the time. Hiring an artist for a specific track I'm collaborating on is still being worked on. (It's costing me about $1,000 since she's working closely with me on the lyrics. But also raising the price to give me full rights to track because she doesn't want to be associated with the adult part, lol.)

So, yeah... music....has quite the relationship with AVN devs.

Anywho, regardless. I'm happy that the music room will finally make its return. The main menu will now look complete without the disabled menu feeling like it's just taking up space.

Have yourselves a great week and stay cool n hydrated!

❤︎ digi