~THG Derek December 2022 Update~

Hello everyone, Derek here.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays! I hope you're having a very joyous season.

A lot has been happening here since my last update. Things have been exceptionally busy in my own personal life, so I haven't had much time to prepare an update post for all of you.

However, this update comes at a great time, since as of a couple days ago I have reached a new big milestone in D401 development. I have now fully completed the last of the lightmap tweaking and basic optimization for 1st class. Most of 1st class now has final lightbuilds complete, except for a couple areas that are complete but need a rebuild for one reason or another. Sometimes it's because of a small error made in light baking, or an object got nudged (and therefore lighting broken).

The next steps for 1st class is to double check and tweak the collision, do the post processing, then it is time to create a devbuild to send off to our QA team, which will almost certainly result in a number of bugfixes and some spaces needing light rebaking.

In the meantime, two devbuilds have gone out to the QA and beta testing team and the testing periods for both has concluded and fixes applied. These devbuilds cover the Pool/TurkishBath/LinenCorridor level as well as the OfficersExterior/OfficersQuarters/Bridge/Marconi level. Over the next week another devbuild is slated to go out.

Once 1st class is complete, the last area to be completed are the new boiler rooms and coal bunkers. Lightbuilding for these areas is slated to start in the next few weeks.

Now to the content of this update. We've kept some of these a surprise until now, but they were included in the great Kyle snowball of 2022, and have now made it to the engine and are ready for V1.5. I am talking about cabins upon cabins, of course. The list of new cabins include B53,B57,B58,B59,B63,B81, and E23.

Additionally, over the past few days I've made a few visual tweaks and upgrades to the lighting and environment. The ocean material has been reworked again. The clouds have been switched out to a smoother static cloud system. This should also improve performance slightly. The horizon line between the ocean and sky has been greatly smoothened. I have also made a number of upgrades to existing materials. Most notably the decking has been improved. The roughness has been modified to make it more reflective. The normal has been improved, and an AO map has been created for it.

I have included the latest updated progress plan to this update. As you can see, there is very little left that has yet to be started.

At this point I am not yet comfortable announcing a release date. However, we are not that far off from that moment. I appreciate the understanding that I am trying to make a high-quality product, and this process cannot be rushed without sacrificing quality. This will all be worth it in the end, trust me.

Enjoy the look at the newly completed areas. Keep your eye out on our YouTube, as we've got another little surprise coming up in the next few days. We hope you'll enjoy it.

-Derek Verveer