Over half a year for an update, he needs to consider hiring someone to help.
Yeah, I'm really sorry about that. With the update I'm working on, and the last one, and the next one for that matter, they are kind of special updates in the fact that the MC get's to have sex with one the main girls for the first time. So, I've got in my mind how the story needs to go, to get to that point, and the whole update centers on the events to get there. This has made the updates bigger than I anticipated, which is nice in a way, but because of my limited time (full time job, wife and kids) and hardware constraints, it's making the updates take a really long time.
By far the biggest bottle neck in the games development is rendering images and animations. Not only does it take some time to set them up, but then they've got to cook for a while. Some scenes are so detailed that I need 3 or more renders that I have to piece together in photoshop to make a single image for the game. Some of these renders take over an hour just to cook. Then there are the animations, which can take the better part of a day just to set up, and then Daz has to render each frame individually, which means it has to render anywhere between 30-90, or sometimes even 120 individual renders for an animation that makes a 1-4 second loop. While I don't have an amazing machine to make the renders go faster, my computer isn't a dinosaur either. The most important piece of hardware needed for rendering is the vcard, and mine is an RTX 2080. Still, hopefully I'll be able to upgrade to a better machine soon.
I've actually begun a discussion with someone who might help me relieve this bottleneck a little bit. We're still early in our discussions, but he's got some experience running renders for another game developer, and I'm hopeful that will work out and cut down the time bottleneck of this aspect of game development significantly.
I've also begun playing with the idea of releasing the content a couple events at a time, so, give me some feedback if you think that's a good idea or not.
I feel your frustration. I feel this way on just about every game I follow. I know nothing about the game development world (lazy GenX) but it seems like such a painfully slow grind that discourages me from trying to learn how to make my own games. I assume this is why so many great games get abandoned, right before crossing the finish line. Starts as a passion project but eventually becomes a boring marriage.
I think this dev pumps out quality updates so I'm being patient.
This game definitely started out as a passion project, and luckily for me, it still is. I was certainly naïve when I started developing AFV as to how much time and work a few scenes in a game can take to develop, but I've always been very patient and I'm able to keep my focus on a project till it's completion. Not only that, but I love how the game is turning out, and I get so much energy from the people that let me know they love the game. While I have no intention of dragging this game out forever, and I do have the story's ending already in mind, I could conceivably continue to add scenes to the game until people let me know they're getting bored of the story and it's time to end it all.
Honestly, I love developing this game, and I know this statement is becoming cliché, but I hope for the day that game development could bring in enough money to completely replace my current job. I would love to do this full time.
