Mini-update news

Hello,

I decided to throw together a sort of an mini-update, since I figured its important to show activity in the first few months. There´s plenty of progress being made behind the curtains, but most of it is either not the visual kind, or I want to keep as a secret. So this will be very rambling-heavy. To reward you, I did add a few more pieces into the media section.

1.1 Audio
Im happy to announce that Jesse Harlin (the_simian) has jumped into the sound department. Audio, to me, is the more powerful half of an audiovisual project, especially in horror, and Jesse doesnt disappoint there. He´s already working on some very nice tracks, and for a preview, I´ll link you up to the menu theme for Flesh. Its less scary or stressful, and plays alot more with the sadder, melancholic elements from Flesh´s story. I created a menu background which supports the music piece, and if I want to suck into the atmosphere, I just look at the menu for a few minutes. But for you, that remains to be seen in-game then. I didnt upload the song into Flesh´s profile, since Jesse already did a better job in his profile. Here´s a link:
Moddb.com

..Also, a friend of mine, Chris J. Im not sure If he has an
moddb profile, and if he wants his real name here, but yes,
he´s a brilliant voice actor and helps me out with the dialogue
that goes in-game. So thanks to Chris!

1.2 Visual
Now there are multiple types of ghouls to look at. Three, to be exact. There might be more, but yet again, Im being annoying and not telling, or showing. I added an group shot of them into the images section. Then there´s another screenshot, featuring slightly more detailed and gritty manor level. There´s also a few mood sketches out of the first two levels, the outdoors, and the manor. These I originally made for Jesse so he had something to work on (later on I gave him the mod) but yeah I decided to upload them here. Once I get there, I´ll create sketches of the later levels and upload them here too. But thats far far away from today.

1.3 Technical
I´ve fixed a pile of bugs from Flesh, reverted the third-person camera back to the one that Valve coded in, since I noticed, despite its bugs, it works like a charm for what I need. Yeah I gave up on the entity-based thirdperson camera, it was too buggy. I´ve added small stuff to the code, namely, different models for the ghouls. Me and Jesse have talked about adding some dynamics to the musics, to support whats going on in the monitor, and Im pretty sure the musics will play a huge part in this mod.

2.1 Some thoughts and some answers
Things are going really smooth and I think if I just work on this a few times a week, Valve doesnt destroy the EP2 SDK like they did last week, as some of the modders out there might have noticed (it affected singleplayer mods, and the client code, I think, and kept me up all night in panic), this will be done this year, easily! Im planning for a release somewhere in October, so that it gets darker and colder outside again and people might have some time to play this. Im pretty excited of Flesh right now, and I just need to keep three rules in my mind: No daydreaming, no polishing, work on it each day. To be honest, I´d rather just play it and daydream, but its too good to have any halts.
Some of you have asked if there´s a background story to this mod, and I can answer: yes. There´s actually some of it in-game, so yeah I do have a few cutscenes, some documents you can read, the usual. Its a big part of Flesh actually, there´s plenty of history to the surroundings and the characters, but I still havent found an way to present it on the mod profile. Most of the story slowly unwraps as you explore, read, and listen. The other reason is, the story evolves and changes constantly, as I might to add some subplots, or cut out some elements, just to have more emotion and feeling to it. So yea, there IS a storyline, and Flesh has grown pretty heavy on the story department, but its so mysterious and sometimes vague, that I still havent found the energy to create a post here with the details.
The other thing is, there´s plenty of concern about not having any weapons or combat in the game. Im sorry to say, but one big part of Flesh is that you are the target, not them. This might feel boring to some, but to others (like me) its the antithesis of boring. Boring shooting and fighting, that is.

Ok, Im done with my ramblings. Enjoy the added media, give a listen to Jesse´s song, and track this mod. I´ll probably update in 3-4 weeks again, once there´s more to show. Do track this mod, its rewarding.

-Henri