Artemis DevLog - CH5 (Patreon)

Happy Monday!

Wrapped up another scene with just three more to complete! Busy week as I stayed focused on organizing everything. Being this far into development, things just become a bit chaotic keeping things organized. It's organized chaos though, one of those situations where I can spot the needle in the haystack. As I was organizing things, I've been letting an idea stew in my mind. I believe I hinted at or just blatantly mentioned it already. When I work, I tend to binge-watch shows on another monitor just to have some background noise when music isn't cutting it for me. I've been paying a bit of attention to their re-caps and how they're presented. So, I've just been letting this idea grow in the back of my mind, and in case no one has caught on, there's this recurring theme throughout the game's UI and even save folder that has been present since CH1. Which is "memories" and with the core of the story starting to ramp up, I think it's time to finally start building up its place in Artemis. So, with CH5 there'll be a recap of the previous chapters. Bring key info that's relevant to CH5 back into focus and just give a refresher before diving into the update. Building that UI will be something fun to do as it will be relevant later in the story.

Anyhoo, lots of fun stuff I'm excited to show off with this release. I also picked up another 4090. There are still some animations to be done and one that needs to be re-rendered. I didn't foresee any issues with my current animation backlog, but I figured having an extra render box to handle the animations wouldn't hurt. I'll be getting that setup sometime this week.

On a personal note, I finally got my new contacts! The one on the right is the new set. They're slightly larger and rest much more comfortably on my sclera (the white of your eyes).

I saw some concerns about the future of Artemis and my keratoconus. Actually, seems there's been a lot of discussion, and has turned into a game of telephone where information gets wildly muddied the more it gets passed on. It was amusing to be informed of this to be honest, haha. So, I'll address some stuff real quick.

Keratoconus can be treated. During ch1, I was diagnosed with it. During chapters 2 and 3, I got crosslinking done on my corneas to stop the disease. At the start of ch4 I finally got my medically necessary contacts through Kaiser.

Some have suggested getting glasses instead of contacts. Glasses were the first thing I tried to get to correct things. Unfortunately, very few with keratoconus find success with glasses and the most common treatment are special hard contact lenses called "scleral lenses". And like glasses, they also require fine-tuning.

My keratoconus has not delayed CH5 in any way. Getting things ready for Steam (recoding elements of the game to work with Steam Deck/controller took some work to do as well as other factors preparing for Steam) rocked things a bit. As stated, I've had my other contacts from Kaiser since CH4. For those in my inner circle know I've been wanting to see a doctor in LA for a while now. He himself has keratoconus too and has equipment suited to treating this with far better accuracy. Why not see him in the first place? He's in Los Angeles and the bill was roughly $4,000 out of pocket. Medical/vision insurance is such a grey area with keratoconus and I've been dumping funds toward custom 3D assets and upgrading equipment for Artemis development instead because as said before, I can see well enough with my previous set of contacts. It was just a matter of comfort and was something I was willing to deal with for the time being while I saved up for this doc. I've had my latest set from the new doctor for a couple of days now and I'm not getting constant mucus build-up or red eyes anymore. I've actually had some people ask if I was sober because my eyes were often red from irritation. The comfort level is a 10/10 now.

Thanks for attending my Keratoconus TED Talk lol

Have yourselves a great week and stay hydrated!

- digi.B