As someone who has no clue about rendering and stuff, what does hardware update means for us? I know that the renders can be upgraded to 4k, the animation quality and character models will improve, and that in turn, it will take a longer time to actually finish the production of the next episode. So, this should mean:
1) Longer dev time
2) "Better" picture (it's already good and the changes probably won't be that noticable
3) Bigger size of the next episode
4) Better requirements to actually run the game? With how things go rn, will we need fucking NASA supercomputers to actually finish the game or will casual idle PCs/laptops work? Not to say mine is bad, but it it's exactly the best out there
basically, better hardware=faster render speed...
And to make it very easy to understand regarding being a dik and how DPC works... the whole DEV cycle is build around the animation render queue... the faster the animations are done, the faster the episode would be finished, cause everything else of the game is done faster than the animation queue. (in comparsion... this episode has more than 7000 still renders, and he is able to do more than 400 a week if he focuses on them, and has done so in this dev cycle too)
But its a twosided sword, if the render queue would be way faster, DPC needs to work faster on the other stuff too, which will lead to an unhealthy workload. Which he already experienced. Episode 8 is a HUGE episode, and was done very fast considered the content... (7 months? dont remember exactly anymore) and DPC was burned out after episode 8, complained a lot, and needed a break which lead to the idea of the much loved interlude. quote "i just need to do something different in a differen pace"... so he reworked his work shedule and how he is doing things with being a dik.
And he LOVES to create animations... so... why not create a lot of animations, and use those animation queue as a time keeper for the rest of the work? Thats how DPC works nowadays. The animation queue is running NONSTOP. And basically can finish around 1 animation per day with his current hardware. This episode had 392 animations... 14 months DEV cycle... well you can see how that turns out.
Increasing the quality is increasing the time needed to render. He upgraded the hardware to RTX4090 about 2 years ago. which increased the animation speed ALOT... so what was it that DPC decided? It made room to increase the animation quality, from 30 fps to 60 fps. (nobody cares about that but him though) so, basicaly each animation takes double the time as a 30 FPS animations... with that in mind, the hardware upgrade doesnt increase the render speed anymore, cause the 60 FPS negates this gained speed. So he COULD have done more than 2 animations per day in 30 fps, but decided to stay at 1 animation per day but in 60 FPS so the workload stays the same, which is reasonable..
That people demand more and faster updates is nothing nerw, and many think "why doesnt he hire help" well... help would not increase the workspeed at all, more likely slow things down. Cause than DPC has to micromange everything between the people he hired, check everything twice and on top of that... its really difficult to trust people in this feild of work completely. And in the end, it would mean more work with less fun for DPC, cause he loves to create everything in this game by himself... from music to the minigames. And especially the animations. Its just how DPC is.
