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Hey, guys! What's up?!
Rough couple of months these last two, right? Jesus. I won't even talk about snowstorms and lava floods right now because at this point, anything's possible.
So, how have you all been this week? For me, it's been a roller coaster.
Built the PC and have been stress testing it for a while now. Everything seems to be running smoothly. Temperatures are under control. No instability.
I've been installing every app and software I need for the game. I didn't realize I was so outdated. That's good and bad at the same time, but we'll talk about it later.
I've also added a few other backup plans. I had some failsafes already, but this last catastrophic PSU failure left me a bit worried. So now we have HDDs, External HDDs, and Cloud backups. I think we're good.
I also didn't cheap out on power protection. I got a Platinum PSU, keeping it at 40-60% load, and a BEAST of a UPS. Seriously, this thing weighs almost 30kg/65lbs, what the hell?
Got an outstanding AIO. A good case with plenty of airflow. Anyways, really tried my best to ensure maximum safety and stability from now on. That might've left me a bit traumatised.
And getting 64GB of RAM in this Ramaggedon was a freaking nightmare, albeit necessary. My pagefile.sys was hitting 100GB... So, yeah...
Anyways, we have GREAT news. Good news, and bad news.
THE GREAT NEWS!
We are SO fucking back!
And now we're using a lot more animations!
Before, animations were a limiting factor. We mostly reserved them for NSFW scenes. Mainly because they were very demanding and took a lot of time, especially in post-processing to remove stuttering, smooth things out, rendering, and whatnot.
But right now I'm thinking this new build will speed things up. I was already trying this for this update BEFORE the PSU failure, but it was taking a lot of time.
Also, I dropped Photoshop and Adobe overall now that Affinity is free. Mercifully, Affinity can read my .PSDs, so that's absolutely fucking awesome. And DaVinci replaced After Effects/Vegas Pro.
Also, I'm diving into Blender now. Hopefully, we'll get some really cool animations in no time. It's great how we can export models from HS to Blender. This is extremely time-consuming, and my skill set isn't particularly professional in this area yet, I know how to do a small set of things really well, but there's still a lot I don't know. Anyways, it's nice to have new ways of making animations. And if one method isn't working well, we now have other options to fall back on.
Hoping for fighting animations soon
The Good News
Everything's going faster than I'd expected. New, better hardware is making everything run smoothly. Being able to power on and off the PC in seconds and getting right to work is refreshing, rather than having to wait 20 minutes for Windows to boot up, then another ten for it to be responsive, and a few more for all the apps to open.
There are a LOT of animations in this update. I mean it. Compared to other updates, the animations folder is four times bigger, and I'm still adding more. That does give me some concerns about update sizes.
Ignore the seatbelt clipping and the hair clipping, please.
So, I'm testing a LOT of different tools and ways of animating the scenes. A LOT of apps. Different camera styles. Frame rates ranging from 24 to 60. File formats. Different approaches to displaying the animations in Ren'Py. Anyways, this is a LOT of trial and error. So your feedback when you play the update is what's going to determine what I should keep doing or drop altogether.
Also, something you should know... I want to be upfront about this. AI is pretty much baked into every piece of software and hardware now, especially post-processing tools like Affinity and DaVinci. Frame interpolation to smooth out animations, FPS and speed adjustments, generative fill, background removal, code learning, subject selection, the occasional AI-generated short animation... even Photoshop was doing some of this stuff long before "AI" became a buzzword. It's just part of the standard toolkit at this point. I know this is a touchy subject for some, so I wanted to be transparent about it. Personally, I don't have any issue with using these tools, but I figured you guys should know what's under the hood.
Now, The Bad News
Honestly, I'm gonna be real with you all. This setback was not negligible. Two to three weeks without being able to work, waiting for the components. Another week for stress-testing the hardware and installing all the apps I need. And more time on top of that to get used to the new software and up to speed with everything... I don't think I can release this update by the end of the year.
Look, at this point, I think you guys know me. I'm not going to push a half-baked update. This is very different from the early days as a developer, when I was still figuring things out.
Looking at you, prologue. I really want to deliver the best experience possible. Everything; from the tools I use, to the music I choose, to the scripts I write; is me trying to deliver that experience.
Maybe I AM overambitious. Maybe I DO nitpick more than I should. But that's what made this game what it is... So, while it hurts to wait, hopefully it'll be worth it.
Frankly, I'm always a bit anxious about releasing a new update. "Is this enough? Is the quality there? Can it be better? Will the players like it? How can I make the experience better?" These thoughts keep hammering in my head, and they only get louder as the release date approaches. But well... when we have so many delays and setbacks, it's starting to get really intense. I think my heart is in the right place, here... but still...
And honestly, the improvements I wanna do, that's only possible because you guys give me the space to care this much. Your patience means everything. And I KNOW how much goodwill this is taking. So thank you for that, seriously. The update's coming. It's going to be worth the wait.
We'll still have another devlog this year.
Cheers!
