Archive for March, 2026

I lost count of how many attempts I did for these chain links. And it turns out that most of them were useless:

• Having a visible weld/closure point was too distracting.
• Turns out that rounded links look worse because it makes it more obvious which link is which when they overlap.
• A dark background is normally a big no-no for alpha textures, but here it actually looks better when you zoom out.

So here we are, I’ve put the two textures side-by side, so you can see the difference. I wanted an improvement, but not to the point that it became too distracting, and I think that’s it.

Some minor changes to the cigarette case after a friend started showing me some really nice engraved guns.

I’ve also done a lot of writing in the past 3 days, nearly 2000 words. And much more since the year started. The Froznovia manuscript is growing, but it is more a spider web than anything resembling a story. I really wish I could release more of it, but I have no idea how.

It has a bit of everything, mostly lore building and chronological data, but also a bunch of new elements and characters: Erika getting the Von Kraul arm from her father Leupold, a visit of the Von Kroenen family vault in the Wurmingstein imperial fortress, an interrogation scene with the daughter of a diplomat… Hell, I even wrote a mini scene involving a social media influencer being forced to Vlog her own arrival in the Froznovia penal colony (this is absolutely not canon, but it was funny, in a way that a corpse is funny).

It helps me cope, it serves as a conduit for some really dark thoughts.

I have to say that from the previous post to this one, the cigarette case is looking quite epic. The clamp on the cigarette side it cool, if a little weird, and the one on the memorabilia side is functional, without hiding too much. I could put the crest on both halves of the case to save on texture space by making both halves identical…

I also included two really terrible pictures of the chain texture upgrade I’m trying to make, the color is too dark and wrong, the little weld spot is distracting and will be removed, but the shape is what I’m trying to go for.

So please, I’d like some opinion on the look of those chain links if you don’t mind, because I really want to be done with that update!

As far as the big TouchBound update goes, all the primary locks are now up-to-date and ready for release, all that is missing is the accessories & the heavy-duty locks. The accessories use a lot of the regular lock code, so I’m not worried of breaking anything when I update them later. As far as the heavy locks go, I do want to make sure that the cuffs don’t require an update for them later, so I still need to do that.

I have not abandoned the little smoking kit project, but I’m probably not going to make a softpack, it turns out that a nice little metal case gives me some space to store the lighter too.

Nothing quite new here, just more PBR locks. I’m done debugging the new optional data block for locks and applying it to all the core locks. And this morning I’ve made a PBR refresh of the lock tray. I tried to go for something that looks like silver with a little bit of patina, and it turned out like that.

It certainly beats the original…