Hello everyone!

Here is the Dev Log that I thought wouldn't happen because of my new job and I was rather accurate with my prediction in thinking that I couldn't show you enough progress to warrant writing a post. However, I've changed my mind in how I want to approach these posts and instead of feeling pressure and anxiety from getting to the point and showing only numbers like X amount of renders done, I'd instead talk a bit more about what's happening and try not worrying so much about people not caring and only wanting actual numbers. Of course, when there are numbers to report on, you will still find them in the Dev Logs.

So, what's been happening?

With the first couple of scenes done, I had to go back to a map which I've been working on since the start of this year - the Linwood house, which is something that you've seen glimpses of already. It's a fully custom-made map by me and by now I've put in well over month's work into it and it's still not finished. Leila's room was the first section I created, which you could see in an older render here (at least part of it):

Then I started Sofia's room, however I realized I'd need the complete layout of the house before I could get the tiny details down, which meant I went downstairs and started finalizing the entire floor plan of the house and creating it.

After most of the downstairs area was finished (which was a huge chunk of the time invested), I could use it for some renders with Maria, here's one of them:

(Some of the renders below were also taken on this map)

After the initial ~5 weeks of work on it back in January/February, I got extremely tired of the architectural and interior design expertise that it required and I moved onto working on other stuff, but I always knew I'd obviously have to go back to it. Since then, I've worked on it in really small stints here-and-there, but my focus obviously shifted.

However, the moment finally arrived because the next 6 scenes take place inside the Linwood house, which meant I had to finalize everything which can be seen in these scenes. Ideally, I'd really want to avoid showing something now which ends up getting changed next chapter or the one after, causing you to think: "didn't that look different in the past?"

If you're wondering why I've been building a fully custom house, which is totally valid to question because I'm insane, then let me share my thought-process:

I wanted this place to feel truly unique to Aether; there are many maps that AVN devs use in HS2, but at the end of the day, you will see maps used across different titles, and with my creative goals, I wanted to avoid someone going: "oh, this is the same house from xyz" I recognize that I can't do this all the time with all environments because of the sheer amount of time it can take. Especially now, as things are different compared to when I quietly worked on Aether and nobody knew about it yet. There are future moments and scenes that demand specific assets that will require extra time, but I believe the effort put into them will pay off. There are other AVNs that create their own environments and in my opinion, as not just a dev but an AVN-enjoyer, those projects always stand out to me and I remember them in particular depth and detail.

Overall, I've made amazing progress on the Linwood house. Something that I dreaded and just couldn't be bothered to work on in the last few months became a MUST and I finally finished it - it was the garden. I don't know why, but I couldn't figure out what to do with it. I think cutting the garden to half its original size had eased some of my worries and helped me understand that it doesn't need to be perfect, just cozy enough to feel like home. Some of this may seem silly to you, but you'd be surprised how tough it can be to create something from nothing with no direction or knowledge on what is and isn't acceptable from a design standpoint. If I create something and it's clearly designed by an amateur, that's not very immersive then is it? (I admit the garden might still be amateur but time is a lot more of the essence now than before lol)

There are a bunch of additional things that I fixed/improved. Most of the work on this whole map have been the design and actual architecture - putting walls, windows, doors etc. all together, perfectly aligned to make an actual full house out of nothing. For the first task - well I'm not an architect, nor an interior designer. And for the second one, to say the least HS2 is not designed for something like this... at all. But, the amazing modding community of this game have created a good amount of assets that one can use to do something outrageous like this (I don't think many people do this... I don't recommend it, it's masochistic). Back in February I even had the idea to make the entire neighborhood myself... yeah, thank the gods I abandoned that stupid idea very quickly.

I've also been making some renders which will be framed photos appearing around the Linwood house (the Ella graduation render from Dev Log #7 was the first one for this purpose). Perhaps you've already seen some of these on our Discord but here is a render dump of them:

As a side-note, beyond all the designing and some rendering, I've done a bit more lore work and some brainstorming for other chapters and events.

I originally intended to talk a little more about my new job in this post, simply because it's impacting progress just as much (or perhaps even more) than I thought, but I had decided against it because I don't want to bitch about my problems. In short, things are not easy... or good... like at all, for many reasons. While it puts food on the table, I can see that it will cause issues later-on, stuff that I'd rather not get into, but in this labor market it's almost impossible to land a job, so switching isn't really an option either. I'll take things one day at a time and keep pouring every minute that I have outside of my day-job into working on Aether, it's pretty much the only thing that makes me happy after all. (and I ended up bitching, my bad I guess)

I also wanted to mention that the resurfaced health issue I mentioned before is seemingly going away again. Thankfully, I could address the problem just like I did before and from what I can see, things are stabilizing, which will definitely help me out in enduring these difficult weekdays.

That's it for today, whether you've read all that or not, I appreciate you all for being here. Your support and your interest in Aether means a lot to me, especially when life is very stressful.

Much love!

-Khronarch