Artemis DevLog - CH5 (Patreon)

Happy Monday!

Uneventful post this week. Created a handful of reporters for a conference that'll take place at Kapp Ind. How CH5 closes kind of reminded me of how CH1 closed, so did a slight tweak to it. Didn't want anyone to think I'm pulling a Star Wars ANH and The Force Awakens, heh. Something that's been on the back of my mind since CH4 was how much in size each chapter is. Book 1 is roughly 10GB in size and that's after file optimization (story renders are compressed with webp and anims with webm). Book 2, 3, and 4 could add 10GB each making Artemis rival your average Call of Duty update...just kidding.

CH5 will be like every other update. Assuming you already have Book 1 (updates 1-4), things will be status quo. You just merge CH5 update with the others and play as normal. That's because being this far into development, I don't want to try anything new that will disrupt anything. But I'm considering two versions. One where it's all-inclusive. The game size will continue to increase all the way until the end of Book 4 which could potentially be 40+GB. And another version where it's divided into Books 1-4. The caveat with dividing the books is if you run Book 3 and try to load a save from Book 1, you'll have to close Book 3 and run Book 1. Kind of like the days of the PS1/2 era of swapping discs (looking at you Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, etc.) haha. The way I've coded Artemis, a save transfer wouldn't be necessary, at least if you're on Windows. I can't say for sure about Mac or Linux.

Anyways, I just wanted to bring this up so you guys know that I'm aware of the increasing size of Artemis and it's something I'm working on solutions with. Ideally, I'd like to have a website up and running soon-ish. Craft a nice UI that will help you get the download you need. It'll integrate with Patreon and hopefully make things look more organized. The pinned post on my Patreon I find pretty sloppy and is in dire need of a revision, which I'll be cleaning up when CH5 enters Beta.

Speaking of cleaning up. The BIO app will be getting cleaned up. I thought having the girl's stats would be fun, but it's just so useless. The affinity tracker will stay, but stuff like bra/waist/etc. will be gone. In its place, will be an event tracker. like a journal of what you did with them, what you've learned about them, etc. This should help the BIO app server a more significant purpose. Also, someone asked about the lore and other details about the universe. That'll be something I'll be implementing too next chapter. Get more information about the world. It'll be something I'll add to the main menu as well as an app on the phone.

That wraps it up for this week. For those stateside, have a safe 4th of Joo-ly. Apologies for the lack of holiday special renders. I look forward to getting back on track with them after this dev cycle.

Be safe and stay hydrated!

(PS - I haven't forgotten about the shirts)

-digi.B