Well, I have to confess, I didn't even realize how fast 2018 passed by.
Still, the future looks bright! 2019 is the year in which you will be passing time in the dreamy worlds I'm creating! Rejoice ;^)
(remember follow/check my Pinterest if you'd like to see which images-references I'm using!)
So, what happened?
It was a year full of discoveries.
There were two games that helped me a lot define what I wanted to recreate in my mod:The Talos Principle and Assassin's Creed Origins.
The first one (I strongly invite everyone to play it) is a masterpiece. The ancient roman ruins landscape and ambience is very well made, and it inspired me to directly visit the archeological sites of Pompei, Ercolano and Ostia Antica. While I was there I realized that my mod definitely needed to have those ruins in it as they still give you a sense of bliss, of mystery; a remain of ancient times.
Regarding the second one, while I didn't really enjoy the overall game since it was an historical mess of politically correct absurdities and errors, I did enjoy taking a stroll through Cirene. Combined with what I already saw in the roman districts of Ryse: Son of Rome, I felt that my mod needed to be expanded a bit to include an "intact" part of a roman city as well.
However, a big dilemma popped up in my mind: how to join the two things?
How to have a ruined ambience and a intact one? I spent months - I'm serious, many months - trying to find a way, and I was surely going into the wrong direction. Then, one day, the solution appeared: I just needed to create a particular imagespace (lightning) for the intact part, which will be a "shadow" of what that world once was.
That was the turning point, the point where everything started to make sense.
In the meantime I also learned how to better use 3ds MAX, Blender and Bodyslide, and it helped me tremendously in importing new assets that I was once unable to import into Skyrim.
So I decided to change plans a bit: you will start the exploration of this particular world in the "shadow of the past" part, and you will realize that it is only a dream that keeps living due to the strong memories of the people that lived there. Openings to the ruined present will show up and you will need to go through those to reach the garden of the satyr.
Might make no sense to you now, but you'll understand once you're there. I've written a book with all the story.
I also plan to add several new armors and clothes for this world, but on the first release they might be a bit "buggy" (meaning you might see the armor stretch or move in a strange way, I'm still learning how to fix it, however it's nothing immersion-breaking).
Will 2019 see the release of the new version of the mod? YES.
Is it really going to be THAT glorious considering the amount of time you put in it? SCREENSHOT FOR YOU, A GLIMPSE OF THE FORUM (100% new and refined assets) AND THE NEW ARMOR.
Yes, it's definitely glorious. So grateful for this update, it's stunning what you're creating here. Have a wonderful New Year, hope it showers you with all the best!