Continuing Onsen Part 3

Before I get into today's devpost, here are the results of the latest VR headset poll:

According to this, the majority of patrons of this project use a VR headset with a majority using Oculus devices. This looks very similar to the last Steam Hardware survey.

Now, the onsen. The past few days I optimized and began placing the building into the world map. I had a lot of issues cutting down geometry because the roof shingles had many triangles and were usually always visible. I managed to cut the entire onsen building model from 600~1M tris to 80~400 tris (best to worst case scenario respectively).

The placement of the onsen will be right behind the town in a secluded path to the top of the canyon. This was a strategic placement to reduce draw calls and neighboring town model geometry. The giant canyon wall is used to occlude the new japanese building props:

I did receive a few comments regarding the realism of having a Japanese onsen near a Mexican town. I understand it may seem out of place. As a counter argument, I had a Chinese restaurant complete with a traditionally built Chinese building in my hometown when I was growing up in Mexico (It has long since been demolished). Consider it a very rare occurrence. There is no lore for this game (yet anyways).

However I too was also worried about how out of place certain props and textures will be near the town. As a result, I made sure that there was a slight thematic change in the environment when going into the onsen. The road to the onsen will therefore be a sort of "spooky path" as if someone has holed up in a remote part of the town.

It is still a work in progress and I expect to add several stones to make a nice stone walkway. It has a decidedly japanese feel with tall bamboos and thick greenery. The lighting is nowhere near done and it is still missing a few other ornaments (namely a stone lamp). I will be using the following image as reference:

In other news the game's official mascot (after months of delays) is 99% done. Her name is Merida and will ship with the game from now on (Shinobu will be available as a card like always):

I'll have plenty of good looking progress pics next devpost.

Stay tuned!