Fun with Billboards!

Just a little mini-update before tomorrow’s weekly post. We’ve been working on some fun stuff over here that we’re excited to share.

Ever play a Virtual Novel where the main character goes some place public, but the only people in the image are the perhaps the MC and the person he is there to talk to? Maybe the characters are on a date or they are having a cup of java in the café, but they’re the only ones there!

I know, I know, it’s a small thing. But in my personal experience, that small thing can really fuck with my immersion. Thus we decided a long time ago that when we did our project, we were going to commit to doing more detailed renders.

Later, we of course learned that having so many models in the screen eats up memory and destroys any chance of doing a fast and economical render which is why most devs don’t do large crowds.

Then we discovered billboards! Billboards allow you to render large crowds using little memory at a blazing fast speed. We shopped around and soon discovered that billboard collections are not only expensive, but don’t exist for some of the places we want to go (like a strip club for instance…).

Thus, Fecal spent ten minutes learning how to make billboards from scratch and within two hours we had a fully populated strip club, complete with custom models, poses and angles.

I was so excited with the final result (and how little time it took) that I wanted to share it with you immediately.

Based on the previous character information we provided on Lita and Lola, you may have guessed that one of Roger’s next destinations will be a house of ill repute called Caligula’s. 

And so I am pleased to bring you a sneak peek of what the interior of that august establishment has to offer.

Enjoy!