October 2023 Newsletter
I can't believe spooky season is already upon us! The scariest thing about October is that there's only 2 months left in the year after that 😱
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News:
The big news this month is that I've been steadily chipping away at unfinished areas around the P&B. Just a whole lot of clean up if you will. There's a lot of partially sceniced or roughly finished areas that just needed a little more polishing to be complete. Now that I'm using Surveyor 2 a lot of that work has been expedited with the use of the scrapbook. I'll get into it in more detail in a future video or live stream, but the takeaway is the ability to make scenery templates that can easily be painted around trackside scenes. It's sped up my workflow tremendously which is great news when trying to close the gaps on the P&B (especially that boring mainline scenery).
I've got another P&B video on the way which you'll see on the 6th and that'll probably be followed by another one fairly shortly after that. I'm going to try something different with some of my route videos going forward and aim for shorter, more focused videos in the 8-15 minute length. I'm thinking by producing shorter more focused videos it'll help me get more content out to you guys and take some of the pressure off having to do a 30 minute monologue. Besides, I can see the Youtube metrics, most of my viewers are only watching about 8-12 minutes of my videos anyway, so why waste my time on dead air 😉
I've had several people asking me to do a tutorial video or live stream on how to use Surveyor 2.0. I think a live stream will be the best way to cover the bulk of how it works and how best to use it so right now I'm just trying to decide when a good day to do the stream will be. Let me know what days/times work best for you in the comments below ⬇️
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Patreon Benefits:
Executive: Access to the latest P&B download will be on October 2nd. The biggest addition in this installment is the newly built Grafton Dockside area. This addition is going to add a whole new dimension to switching the Grafton area. Going to be a lot more to do now (as if there wasn't enough already).
Dispatcher: The monthly Patreon live stream for Dispatchers and Executives will be Wednesday October 4th, 7-9 EST. I'll be covering some of the basics of Surveyor 2 (for you guys requesting it) and will probably spend some time working either on the P&B or modern DB&EV.
Project Manager: The asset pack for this month is super cool in my opinion. I found a pretty generic model of a modern apartment complex on CGTrader and it's made in such a way its mega simple to reskin. This pack will consist of 3 gray and white building versions (as purchased) as well as a set of reskinned ones. I'll probably skin a few more variations of these in the future but they're simple enough you can probably come up with your own designs.
Station Agent: Weekly Wednesday hangouts continue as scheduled. I have a trip coming up at the end of October so there won't be any hangout on the 25th.
If you're not part of this tier and are curious what it is, basically every Wednesday from about 7-9 PM EST a group of us jump into a call on Discord and spend the evening talking shop and working on projects. Usually I'll stream something I'm working on and lately its been the P&B. If that sounds interesting, check it out! Is always a good time.
Model Railroader: I've really been neglecting this tier unfortunately and it's mostly because I haven't had time to catch up on everything else. I have a backlog of content to write about and I'm hoping to get to it soon. I've done a lot of work on the layout over the last few months from the expansion, track laying, wiring, scenery and now the start of some scratch building projects all to cover. Here's a few recent photos of the layout though.
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With only a few months left in the year, I've certainly got my work cut out for me if I want to have the P&B ready for beta by January and that's probably the scariest thing I can think of 😮