- Oct 9, 2019
- 712
- 3,690
- Oct 9, 2019
- 712
- 3,690
And this, kids, is why updates take months at a time.
So, what happened? Obviously, a large chunk was real life stuff. You can see there are huge gaps in my posts and on my slushe page, but I can't blame everything on that. There were some huge pitfalls I fell into, and hopefully other would-be devs read this to avoid the same mistakes I made:
1. VRAM Annoyances
I've spoken about this multiple times but the VRAM issue is popping up more and more frequently. I actually render fairly fast and have decent VRAM, but whenever I have 3 clothed characters in a room with more that 2 lights, it's a goddamn disaster. And literally it could render fine one scene and then the next render I do it VRAM stops it. It doesn't make any sense. Restarting Daz seems to fix it, but its annoying to save, close out and then load the scene and rerender.
2. Resolution Transition
I started with 1280x720 but now I'm rendering at 1920x1080. I heard 1280 is easier for anyone to run and keeps file sizes low but most VNs are coming out in 1920 now. I'm torn on this but even if this project just becomes a "proof of concept" I think I'll stick with 1280 for now.
3. Rooms / Backgrounds
This is one of the most frustrating things I've dealt with. Creating decent rooms that look realistic and don't add significant render time is the most frustrating thing in the world. MCs "bedroom" has ridiculous render times for me (I think the issue is emissive surfaces but I can't fucking find them) and the rooms I create look... dead. It's not really a huge deal in the grand scheme of it all, but it bothers me immensely. Like I said, I think this is one of those things that only I notice, but still.
4. Frustrated My VN Renders Don't Come Out Like My Pin-Ups
I don't know what the right answer here is. Even using the same characters, my pin-ups of them look WAY better than the stuff for the VN. I wrote a prior post about how it's actually easier to put a lot more work on one-off pin-ups and how the ability to use different viewport settings is way more fun than the standard horizontal view needed for VNs. In VN's you also have to string a bunch of renders together which makes posing and prop-blocking really important which is frustrating to anticipate. Also, to keep render times down I need to watch my lighting, I can't have 6 spotlights going in a VN render.
I did a few renders today for a scene. We'll see. I like the character designs (except for the mom, I really want to redo her) for all my characters too much to let this just die.
Raw (No Postwork):
So, what happened? Obviously, a large chunk was real life stuff. You can see there are huge gaps in my posts and on my slushe page, but I can't blame everything on that. There were some huge pitfalls I fell into, and hopefully other would-be devs read this to avoid the same mistakes I made:
1. VRAM Annoyances
I've spoken about this multiple times but the VRAM issue is popping up more and more frequently. I actually render fairly fast and have decent VRAM, but whenever I have 3 clothed characters in a room with more that 2 lights, it's a goddamn disaster. And literally it could render fine one scene and then the next render I do it VRAM stops it. It doesn't make any sense. Restarting Daz seems to fix it, but its annoying to save, close out and then load the scene and rerender.
2. Resolution Transition
I started with 1280x720 but now I'm rendering at 1920x1080. I heard 1280 is easier for anyone to run and keeps file sizes low but most VNs are coming out in 1920 now. I'm torn on this but even if this project just becomes a "proof of concept" I think I'll stick with 1280 for now.
3. Rooms / Backgrounds
This is one of the most frustrating things I've dealt with. Creating decent rooms that look realistic and don't add significant render time is the most frustrating thing in the world. MCs "bedroom" has ridiculous render times for me (I think the issue is emissive surfaces but I can't fucking find them) and the rooms I create look... dead. It's not really a huge deal in the grand scheme of it all, but it bothers me immensely. Like I said, I think this is one of those things that only I notice, but still.
4. Frustrated My VN Renders Don't Come Out Like My Pin-Ups
I don't know what the right answer here is. Even using the same characters, my pin-ups of them look WAY better than the stuff for the VN. I wrote a prior post about how it's actually easier to put a lot more work on one-off pin-ups and how the ability to use different viewport settings is way more fun than the standard horizontal view needed for VNs. In VN's you also have to string a bunch of renders together which makes posing and prop-blocking really important which is frustrating to anticipate. Also, to keep render times down I need to watch my lighting, I can't have 6 spotlights going in a VN render.
I did a few renders today for a scene. We'll see. I like the character designs (except for the mom, I really want to redo her) for all my characters too much to let this just die.
Raw (No Postwork):
- Oct 9, 2019
- 712
- 3,690
We did a bunch of reworks:
The game will now be more similar to a point and click adventure with mildly branching paths and sidequests that reward you with extras.
The premise of the game is pretty much the same except for two major changes:
1. It was a mysterious virus and not murders that kill off a bunch of the ship: The original idea may be redesigned and added in later so I don't want to go too deep into it.
2. The first arc is "The Election Arc." You're not elected Captain yet.
The renpy coding is long and tedious, but I'm getting the hang of call screens and variables. Days on the ship are split into a day and night cycle and you can explore different parts of the ship during these cycles and find stuff, interact with characters, etc. There's no time limit and you can move to the next cycle at anytime. I have a primitive "hub" for each cycle that looks like this:
Mission Tips will give you hints on how to complete your mission or how to do optional quests. It's not a sandbox per se, and you wont be overwhelmed with choices. It gives you an opportunity to find some of the more creative renders I like to make and give unnecessary bonuses.
Due to the branching storylines, the game will feature BAD endings which result in a game over.
It's more ambitious, but I think it will result in more attachment to the characters.
If you look at the hub picture above, you'll notice a phone. I have no idea how to code this without having like 40 goddamn call screens, so that's on the back burner for now. I want there to be a codex of the characters for easy reference, messaging, and a gallery for the extras.
Anyway, here are some screens:
The MC and Hange:
Your two mysterious benefactors who are helping you:
Rebeca:
The game will now be more similar to a point and click adventure with mildly branching paths and sidequests that reward you with extras.
The premise of the game is pretty much the same except for two major changes:
1. It was a mysterious virus and not murders that kill off a bunch of the ship: The original idea may be redesigned and added in later so I don't want to go too deep into it.
2. The first arc is "The Election Arc." You're not elected Captain yet.
The renpy coding is long and tedious, but I'm getting the hang of call screens and variables. Days on the ship are split into a day and night cycle and you can explore different parts of the ship during these cycles and find stuff, interact with characters, etc. There's no time limit and you can move to the next cycle at anytime. I have a primitive "hub" for each cycle that looks like this:
Mission Tips will give you hints on how to complete your mission or how to do optional quests. It's not a sandbox per se, and you wont be overwhelmed with choices. It gives you an opportunity to find some of the more creative renders I like to make and give unnecessary bonuses.
Due to the branching storylines, the game will feature BAD endings which result in a game over.
It's more ambitious, but I think it will result in more attachment to the characters.
If you look at the hub picture above, you'll notice a phone. I have no idea how to code this without having like 40 goddamn call screens, so that's on the back burner for now. I want there to be a codex of the characters for easy reference, messaging, and a gallery for the extras.
Anyway, here are some screens:
The MC and Hange:
Your two mysterious benefactors who are helping you:
Rebeca:
- Oct 9, 2019
- 712
- 3,690
It's retro. All the rage.Sounds interesting and I will probably check this out when I got some free time....
but surely they are not using ancient, dinosaur-like stuff such as clumsy phones on a space ship??
You have a point. I'll see about swapping that out with something more high tech
- Oct 9, 2019
- 712
- 3,690
I've been working on this intermittently and have thrown out any kind of release date. I had no idea what I was doing, and still don't but the work in my free time continues.
1. I can't get a solid messaging system to work. I wanted something similar to BAD, but at this point I only know how to work with static screens, so that kind of sucks.
2. Scene Optimizer is an absolute game changer. I was having VRAM issues which pissed me off because I started having issues rendering anything with more than 2 characters in it. However, scene optimizer, I realized recently, lets me optimize the textures of the set which no one cares about and then I can render the character models. The best thing is, since I use the sets repeatedly in each scene, I usually just have to optimize once, save and then reload and I can pose and render multiple times! I'm so happy about that, and I really don't see much of a difference.
3. I think we're up to around 300 renders so far, not including screens which by far takes so fucking long to code with all the triggers and conditionals. I'm having most the story stay evergreen, so divergent paths will either end in a game over deadend or unlock bonus content that is not important to the main story.
4. I think I fixed my text box woes. The text box is custom, still on the bottom of the scree and the box itself is completely transparent and now, hopefully, the text is readable. Which I didn't think would be an issue, but it was, so I had to fiddle with the stroke settings.
Soooo.... yeah. We're chugging along.
Have some raw screenshots (No postwork)
1. I can't get a solid messaging system to work. I wanted something similar to BAD, but at this point I only know how to work with static screens, so that kind of sucks.
2. Scene Optimizer is an absolute game changer. I was having VRAM issues which pissed me off because I started having issues rendering anything with more than 2 characters in it. However, scene optimizer, I realized recently, lets me optimize the textures of the set which no one cares about and then I can render the character models. The best thing is, since I use the sets repeatedly in each scene, I usually just have to optimize once, save and then reload and I can pose and render multiple times! I'm so happy about that, and I really don't see much of a difference.
3. I think we're up to around 300 renders so far, not including screens which by far takes so fucking long to code with all the triggers and conditionals. I'm having most the story stay evergreen, so divergent paths will either end in a game over deadend or unlock bonus content that is not important to the main story.
4. I think I fixed my text box woes. The text box is custom, still on the bottom of the scree and the box itself is completely transparent and now, hopefully, the text is readable. Which I didn't think would be an issue, but it was, so I had to fiddle with the stroke settings.
Soooo.... yeah. We're chugging along.
Have some raw screenshots (No postwork)
- Sep 30, 2021
- 227
- 388
- May 5, 2019
- 1,269
- 1,413
- Oct 9, 2019
- 712
- 3,690
I'll put the big announcement in the beginning:
I'm actively looking for alpha testers. Preferably native-English speakers. I'm really looking for bugs, literary cohesion, proof reading, ease of use and maybe people to bounce ideas off of. Bonus if you've used renpy before or know about design mechanics.
This is in really rough shape, I'm not too happy with the intro and earlier renders, but the game is taking form. If you're interested, message me here. I don't use discord.
I'm finishing the day portion of day 2 and once I'm done with night 2 I'll probably be ready to send it to people.
The Election arc takes place over the course of three days, so there's a day 3 and night 3 and an non sandbox portion that takes place on day 4 (election results) that also have to be done.
Some stuff:
I figured out how to make an unlockable gallery (by stealing someones...) and I think I figured out scene replay, but it involves me making a specific rpy file just for them.... so whatever. Now, I'm trying to make a pop up appear when you unlock something in the image gallery since a lot of the images are extras and non-canon stuff and not necessarily images that appear in the game when you do something extra. Also, the extras can be accessed through the day/night hubs in the game as well as the main menu.
When I get closer I'll try and make custom buttons and a sci-fi overlay.
This roster screen was a massive pain in the ass and I think it's because I don't actually understand image buttons. I did this all with call screens. It works and it's actually relatively simple to navigate, but it was REALLY annoying especially with so many characters.
Oh and yes, I changed MC's hair as you can see in the title screen. He was looking bald half the time and it was annoying me and I'm not going back to rerender it. Chalk it up to stupidity.
I still don't have a messaging system which is annoying the hell out of me and all the quest trackers I found are exceedingly complex so I might do a "hint" system instead that will point you where you need to go. This isn't a true sandbox so there's really only a finite amount of places you can go anyway and things you can do there.
If you're interested in being an alpha tester, message me.
I'm actively looking for alpha testers. Preferably native-English speakers. I'm really looking for bugs, literary cohesion, proof reading, ease of use and maybe people to bounce ideas off of. Bonus if you've used renpy before or know about design mechanics.
This is in really rough shape, I'm not too happy with the intro and earlier renders, but the game is taking form. If you're interested, message me here. I don't use discord.
I'm finishing the day portion of day 2 and once I'm done with night 2 I'll probably be ready to send it to people.
The Election arc takes place over the course of three days, so there's a day 3 and night 3 and an non sandbox portion that takes place on day 4 (election results) that also have to be done.
Some stuff:
I figured out how to make an unlockable gallery (by stealing someones...) and I think I figured out scene replay, but it involves me making a specific rpy file just for them.... so whatever. Now, I'm trying to make a pop up appear when you unlock something in the image gallery since a lot of the images are extras and non-canon stuff and not necessarily images that appear in the game when you do something extra. Also, the extras can be accessed through the day/night hubs in the game as well as the main menu.
When I get closer I'll try and make custom buttons and a sci-fi overlay.
This roster screen was a massive pain in the ass and I think it's because I don't actually understand image buttons. I did this all with call screens. It works and it's actually relatively simple to navigate, but it was REALLY annoying especially with so many characters.
Oh and yes, I changed MC's hair as you can see in the title screen. He was looking bald half the time and it was annoying me and I'm not going back to rerender it. Chalk it up to stupidity.
I still don't have a messaging system which is annoying the hell out of me and all the quest trackers I found are exceedingly complex so I might do a "hint" system instead that will point you where you need to go. This isn't a true sandbox so there's really only a finite amount of places you can go anyway and things you can do there.
If you're interested in being an alpha tester, message me.
