Let's see. Philly completed 73 static renders and 6 animations this week. His average is 76 static and 4.6 animations renders per week. His static render rate has been almost invariant during development. His animation render rate has varied a bit more, but is still relatively consistent. Here are the charts.
From the charts, it looks like we're still a month or so away from matching Chapter 9's static render totals. Given how consistent his static render rate is, he's probably running a full queue so I doubt that time could be improved (other than by having fewer statics than Chapter 9, obviously). That's broadly consistent with Philly's suggestion that he will "hit the last chunk of the update" after next week, especially if Chapter 10 winds up being heavier on animations than its predecessor. All in all, I'd say we're probably still estimating an early August release (at least until we learn more about the scope of the chapter).
As for this weeks render, finally an ass I care about! The setting is pretty clearly back at the Stairway to Heaven, so it looks like the chapter will extend beyond the MC's roadtrip with Sonja and Gloria. On the one hand that's good, because we didn't really have much downtime in Chapter 9. On the other hand, I do worry that we're going to get yet another derivative Katie sex scene.
Don't get me wrong, I love Katie as much as the next guy and her first proper scene in Chapter 6 was fantastic. But since then we keep getting more of the same: no new setting, no new topics of conversation or new things to try out. It feels like Katie's arc has been on hold for the last year even though she remains a frequent participant in story. Hopefully she can start to shake things up now, but it's hard to believe we'll devote a lot of time to events back at base after we wrap up the mech-hunting roadtrip.
I guess we'll see. At any rate, worrying about less-than-optimal Katie content is clearly a first-world problem.
