Two New SITA Sets
I’ve been doing lots of cool stuff for the sequel game Something’s In The Air (SITA), but I don’t want to show it all because that would spoil the game. But a few teaser renders wouldn’t hurt. Back in October 2010, I was showing off sets I built for downtown locations. Those sets will show up in SITA as well, but so will a few others.
Heidi’s Salon
The above picture is Heidi, one of the datable characters in the game, but the salon shows up in three different stories, so I had to build a set for it. After searching every 3D source I could find, no one has ever built a “hair salon”, not even a barber shop. I found a few pieces scattered here and there, and found a tanning salon that I could convert. Basically it took a while to come up with something resembling a beauty parlor.
For you sticklers of continuity, Heidi’s Salon does make a brief appearance in the Date Ariane game:
And if you are really a stickler of continuity and still upset about Ariane’s change of hair style. She does shows up at the salon for a change of hair style:
Looks, like Heidi has her work cut out for her.
The Dress Shop
The second set I’ll share with you is the new Dress Shop. The dress shop is of course very familiar to players of Date Ariane, and was built using props from The Sims 2. In fact it is the last thing in the Date Ariane game that uses stuff “borrowed” from other games (earlier versions were mostly made from video game screenshots).
Well I had much better luck finding a pre-made boutique set I could exploit. So dress shopping in SITA looks like this:
Maybe if I have time, I’ll redo the dress shop in the first game to match. I’ll add it to the bottom of a very long “to do” list. Hope you enjoy the preview. Next on my list to do is a giant crowd scene at the night club. What was I thinking when I wrote that scene?
Date Ariane Games 
Love what you are doing with this game. Eager to try it out. Really enjoy your blog as well.
Render the people in layers from back to front. Render the background without the people. Import all the layers and apply one layer on top of another with the background at the bottom layer. As long as you render only the people and nothing else, they shouldn’t interfere. You can also shadow-catch, so you can get the shadows to belmd in as well.
That’s the game plan. In fact, I’m doing one better and doing two images with every background character slightly moved, then using the Renpy engine to swap the images every half a second so it looks like everyone is dancing.
Oh, man, I had a story idea that was partly in a hair salon, and then thought, “Where am I going to get props?” If you couldn’t find any…
😦
Even worse, I went to see if I could relocate the stuff I did find at Content Paradise, and it is now gone!
Dear Brokering Artists at Renderosity and Daz 3D, No one anywhere has produced a hair salon set yet. Whoever manages to make one will have a monopoly. Get busy!
I finally found a hair salon. The makers called it a “Hair Studio” and didn’t add any key words to make it show up in searches for “salon”, “beauty parlor”, “barbershop”, or any other common sense search criteria.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=63912
Since I built my own, no going back, though I think their chairs are better than the ones I found.
Howdy Ariane
A quick questions:
Will the game be able to save progress?
Yes, game saves are built into the Renpy engine.
OK cool. I remember you saying you got ideas from Visual Novels and renpy is a vn engine.
I remember reading this post:
https://arianeb.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/visual-novels/
Have you played/read any more vns in the interm?
Ariane was my main inspiration for getting into 3D art graphics. Everytime I think I’m getting somewhere with it, you show me how far I’ve still to go 🙂
Keep up the good work!
Hey Ariane.
Sorry if it’s already been asked, but is there a rough idea at this point of when this is going to be up and running?
Everything looks fantastic so far!
There are 6 stories. I’m done with story 1. I’m within sight of finishing story 4 (Which is the biggest content wise). Story 2 is graphically challenging, looking forward to tackling it. Story 3 is a writing challenge, both literary and also musically, and I haven’t written music in over 10 years. Story 5 is a graphic novel of sorts, actually two short graphic novels. Story 6 is a programming challenge. I am likely to be an expert on Renpy and Python scripting by the time it is done.
When I think about all that I still have to do it seems overwhelming, I just take it one challenge at a time, and note my little bits of progress.
when will you realease story 1?
Soon™, John… LOL!! I don’t think it’s a good idea to ask ‘when’. It’s an ongoing joke at the DAZ-forums of the word “soon”. Some say “DAZ Soon™”. Maybe this might help….
http://www.wowwiki.com/Soon
Read and weep. Or laugh. 🙂
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