This is a big one.
The "intro' segment has been fleshed out today, with additional details added to the street scene immediately preceding the theme proper; Rebalancing texture memory has allowed me to inject needed detail into the buildings, and I've even come up with a way to make the street appear appropriately wet -- which brings me to the next major addition:
Through some VERY creative GPU load management, I've been able to implement a dynamic rain effect. this includes falling rain, as well as an out-of-focus wet-lens bokeh effect complete with randomly falling droplets on glass - the bokeh is additionally, subtly in motion and changes over time, so it will not create image-retention issues for OLED screens. ( I often mention that we create these themes with OLED TV's in mind: This is meant to reflect the fact that we use deep blacks, and leave NO static images onscreen to minimize image retention.). This is the first time we've done dynamic rain to this degree, and I'm actually happy with the results for once.
Additionally, primary foley and ambient effects have been added.
Audio features multiple inspirations, from Vangelis to Akira, with sweeping electronic ambient effects. Of course falling rain ambience has been added as well. Additionally, I'm going to be experimenting with multi-channel audio with this theme, so stay tuned.
The theme loop point is actually visible in the video - We set a seamless audio loop point in the music and the theme backdrop, so the intro and associated elements do not play again until the console is restarted.
(If this also happens to give you Midgar vibes . . . well, it wasn't my original aim, but as it's unfolded I decided to lean into it. Truthfully, I'd love to tackle that if Square Enix wants something special for FF-VII remake . . .) ;)