I'm Not Thea Lundgren!

AKA: TotesNotThea
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Jun 21, 2017
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My thoughts are as follows. Remaster the shit out of it until you are happy with it. :)
Yep, totes this! :)
As you know, I'm against this. If people want to pause patronage let it be their choice not yours. They are adults enough to make the decision for themselves. All you have to do is be as informative as you always are.
Yep, totes this too! :)
Heh, without meaning to brag, I did make a suggestion of having an off-month BP available to patrons as a bonus, so naturally I fully support this. I've said this many times, but BP is fantastic! Defo a nice thing to entertain ourselves with while we wait.;)
I made this suggestion too! I don't remember if it was here or on Patreon, but I recommended releasing it as a PDF as an extra bonus or something. ;)
 

Akamari

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May 28, 2017
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I made this suggestion too! I don't remember if it was here or on Patreon, but I recommended releasing it as a PDF as an extra bonus or something. ;)
OK OK, I admit your suggestion inspired me to expand on it. I actually did present it as such, so don't think I just stole it without dues (back then). ...so let's call that a team effort? :giggle:
 

Huitieme

Scholarrior
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Game Developer
Oct 9, 2018
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As you know, I'm against this. If people want to pause patronage let it be their choice not yours. They are adults enough to make the decision for themselves. All you have to do is be as informative as you always are.
Re: pausing the Patreon page, I wouldn't advocate in any way, since as Akamari pointed it, pledgers are adults and it's their prerogative to pause or not the pledges, but as a dev myself (hu hu hu), I understand where you're coming from.

For those who don't know, I decided not to activate the pledges on my patreon page until chapter 1 is out, because I knew it would take a lot of time and didn't want to deal with self-culpability as well as potential accusations of milking. The amount I would get is nothing compared to Notty's pledges, but it's a necessary price for peace of mind, either from external or internal reasons.

So if you think pausing the Patreon would help you feel better, follow your heart. But as said a lot of time, I wouldn't recommend it. The best solution, if you really feel guilty, would be to warn your patrons and they may remove/adapt their pledge in consequence.
 

Sulring Durgul

Active Member
Sep 2, 2018
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My thoughts remain unchanged: DO NOT PAUSE YOUR PATREON PAGE! DO NOT STOP TAKING PATRON DONATIONS! We are supporting the artist, not hiring a contractor for piece-work. Sharing some of the remasters on Patreon for those patrons who aren't here (are there any :unsure:?) keeps interest up there (along with keeping other things up.)
If you feel you absolutely must do an extra BP for the Patrons, go for it. (I know you have the chops to put one of those out in no time at all, relatively speaking.) But for all the gods' sakes... DO NOT PAUSE YOUR PATREON PAGE! DO NOT STOP TAKING PATRON DONATIONS!

There, I've said my piece... you agonizingly stubborn woman! It's a good thing we love you so much, else we'd toss you into a skip!
My thoughts are as follows. Remaster the shit out of it until you are happy with it. :)
Chapter Four is a big release that can approach wider audience. It's a sound strategy to bring the older chapters up to speed in terms of render quality and unify it visually.
As you know, I'm against this. If people want to pause patronage let it be their choice not yours. They are adults enough to make the decision for themselves. All you have to do is be as informative as you always are.
Heh, without meaning to brag, I did make a suggestion of having an off-month BP available to patrons as a bonus, so naturally I fully support this. I've said this many times, but BP is fantastic! Defo a nice thing to entertain ourselves with while we wait.;)
^ This ! Totally agree with Frap and Akamari: no Patreon pause while you remaster, and give us a BP magazine to read while we wait!
 

Nottravis

Sci-fi Smutress
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Jun 3, 2017
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Guys, I'm staying quiet whilst you all have your say on this, but in the meantime...
By the way, now that your mad skillz finally surfaced, maybe you could also throw in a few wallpapers. The landing Vanny, for example, is a work of art ;)

That it is... I may have already downloaded it and blown it up to screen size in Photoshop...


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somebodynobody

Engaged Member
May 11, 2017
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My opinion as probably the most critical regular of this thread.

You shouldn't pause your page. Patreon is about being a patron of the creator and not paying for the product. That would fall more in kickstarter or those other backer/share ownership type sites.

You should be up front with your patrons and tell them basically what you said to us, minus the whole pirate thing, and give them a couple of your best changed images, and that extra BP you mentioned. If you have not you may want to mention if you ever get that super pc and the final re-render with the additional MC choice.

Pausing your page hurts the income to get that new PC to speed everything up, but also some people will probably leave anyways, instead of maybe a small drop in patron money influx you kick yourself harder by getting none. Financially a bad move for both you and the game, and purchase of jaffa cakes/cigs.

Now other than that I will nitpick the image as I normally do. Other than the hand rails I joked about, isn't the dust a bit on the dark side? Looks much closer to smoke than kicked up landing dust (the portion closest to the Vanguard) especially since the dust is so light in color in the rest of the image.
 

Nottravis

Sci-fi Smutress
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Jun 3, 2017
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My opinion as probably the most critical regular of this thread.

You shouldn't pause your page. Patreon is about being a patron of the creator and not paying for the product. That would fall more in kickstarter or those other backer/share ownership type sites.

You should be up front with your patrons and tell them basically what you said to us, minus the whole pirate thing, and give them a couple of your best changed images, and that extra BP you mentioned. If you have not you may want to mention if you ever get that super pc and the final re-render with the additional MC choice.

Pausing your page hurts the income to get that new PC to speed everything up, but also some people will probably leave anyways, instead of maybe a small drop in patron money influx you kick yourself harder by getting none. Financially a bad move for both you and the game, and purchase of jaffa cakes/cigs.

Now other than that I will nitpick the image as I normally do. Other than the hand rails I joked about, isn't the dust a bit on the dark side? Looks much closer to smoke than kicked up landing dust (the portion closest to the Vanguard) especially since the dust is so light in color in the rest of the image.
Oooh. A bit I'll answer (not touching the patreon thingy just yet so more can have an opinion).

Nice spot on the vanny pic but delib choice on the colours. So dust at the bottom but exhaust venting at the top where the engines lay which I figured would be darker.
 

noname777

Member
Jul 8, 2018
255
401
Now originally I was just going to do some of the Vanny interiors. the MC's room and the hallways which would have been around half of One, about a third of Two, a quarter of Three and, say, a tenth of Four. A lot of renders for sure but mostly fairly simple and not too demanding which meant I could do the end of September.

(...)

As to how long, I honestly don't know. On the upside a lot of the earlier renders were very simple in construct and so remastering them isn't taking that much render time. Certainly much less than when they were originally done with some taking around 15 minutes as opposed to the original hour. But certainly not September at any rate. Not now the workload has increased.
To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed. Originally Chapter 4 was planned for July (well, it should be April according to the very first statement) and now it turns out that it will be released in October at the earliest. :rolleyes:
At this rate, I don't think the game will be completed before 2021. :(
 

Akamari

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May 28, 2017
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To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed. Originally Chapter 4 was planned for July (well, it should be April according to the very first statement) and now it turns out that it will be released in October at the earliest. :rolleyes:
At this rate, I don't think the game will be completed before 2021. :(
You really should pay attention to the circumstances. There won't be a remaster every time obviously and I thought you knew by now what happened in spring. No offence, but I don't understand why do you dwell on the early "estimates" so much.:rolleyes:

If you want a release rate, you should look roughly at two months release period going forward. Chapter Four is completed. It took about six to seven weeks to produce.
 

DA22

Devoted Member
Jan 10, 2018
8,098
16,712
To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed. Originally Chapter 4 was planned for July (well, it should be April according to the very first statement) and now it turns out that it will be released in October at the earliest. :rolleyes:
At this rate, I don't think the game will be completed before 2021. :(
Well 6 more chapter after 4 at one per 2 months seems reasonable and addition of female mc plus potential date and rework if needed after and that date you mentioned may well be right. :) Choice is between good work with a happy Notty that takes her time or likely abandoned game before end, you take your choice. Me I will happily wait and practice my Zen and patience a bit more. Though as everyone here I would be happy enough if full game was here and finished tomorrow, but since Notty is Innocent she cant do magic except with renders and story. :p
 

Nottravis

Sci-fi Smutress
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Jun 3, 2017
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If you want a release rate, you should look roughly at two months release period going forward. Chapter Four is completed. It took about six to seven weeks to produce.
Yep. Which was the same for Three. So that much is consistent, which given 36,000 words plus @700 renders per chapter isn't too shabby with the kit I have,

Obvs it would be nice not to re-render the earlier stuff but there you are.

Edit: For context, unlike some devs, I don't have a sixteen card rig. I don't even a duel higher card rig. I have a single, second lowest graphic card rig. I defy anyone to produce what I produce in that time frame to the quality I've been recently kicking out.
 
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Sinphil

Member
Nov 15, 2018
423
902
Wasn't too happy with that last render try so will park it for now.

Now then....

ON DATES....


So Four is finished as we know. Almost hit the end of August but the water stuff slowed me down a bit. But then came the remaster...

Now originally I was just going to do some of the Vanny interiors. the MC's room and the hallways which would have been around half of One, about a third of Two, a quarter of Three and, say, a tenth of Four. A lot of renders for sure but mostly fairly simple and not too demanding which meant I could do the end of September.

But, as a few of you suspected, once I started.....along came mission creep.

For example the landing scene in One I wasn't going to touch but you've seen the remaster of that yesterday. How can I possibly settle for what's currently there when I can make it look like that? Would you?

Same goes for the movement system, the character idents when speaking, Vanguard on approach, Sarah's room etc etc. It's the difference between night and day. So now I'm remastering approx all of One, most of Two, about half of Three and I'm having to redo a good third of Four (Sarah's, the Mc's bedroom plus hallways in case you were wondering). I'm too scared to count them all but well over 1,200 renders is my guess.

It's a lot of very unfun work. Remember I'm a writer not an artist so the thought of having to do that many renders, especially old ones, isn't a fun activity for me. But it simply has to be done as part of the launch of Four.

So how long and where does that leave us?

As to how long, I honestly don't know. On the upside a lot of the earlier renders were very simple in construct and so remastering them isn't taking that much render time. Certainly much less than when they were originally done with some taking around 15 minutes as opposed to the original hour. But certainly not September at any rate. Not now the workload has increased.

I was tempted to release Four to patrons regardless - but I have a pirate as a patron. I know, I know, I hang around with pirates all day so what's my beef....but bear with me.

The whole point of the remaster is when Four hits and the interest rises due to super-smut, new players see it in the new perfect glory and go wow - not meh. Of course existing players get the knock on effect of all the interiors, movement, char icons etc now looking much better too.

But there is little point in me doing all of this remastering in support of Four if a murkier version of Four will get released within the hour. It will be the murky version with all the unremastered work that does the rounds and so all this effort will have been pointless. And yes, it will happen. Three was released with a game breaking bug and, although I let everyone know within the hour and had it fixed pdq, some little scroat despite knowing this still decided to pirate and throw out the bugged version rather than waiting half a day and pirating the working version. So, if I release Four in it's current state that's the one everyone will see.

I don't want that to happen and so can't, and indeed won't, do that - so for once on here, piracy actually isn't your friend...

So what am I going to do?

I haven't entirely decided. I obvs need to make a call and let Patrons know asap for sure but I have a little while yet - but sooner rather than better for a host of reasons not least of all the value for money angle for them.

My current thoughts are very much to freeze the patron page, crack on with the work and unfreeze it when it's done. No one can deny I'm not working on the game of course (indeed arguably harder than ever before) but given that a lot of what I'm doing is in respect to older content, it's debatable how much benefit patrons get from this.

I'm also minded to release "Bored Pilot" to all current patrons this month as a separate download just so they'll have got something for the money this month. Of course they'll have to be a new BP for Four (oh the shame!) and McGruders one will also hit the PDA at the same time so the collection remains complete in game of course.

Anyhoo, I'll just leave this here for now. I welcome your thoughts as always before I make up my mind.
I rather you tell the story the way you want than get caught up in some schedule. I am becoming more and more frustrated with the fixed schedule release system. Seeing the pressure on developers removing the joy and killing the creative spark while forcing compromises in quality and story lines. Reluctant Archon was great example this month with his end of Chapter two confrontation reduced to bad guys crash party and then run away.
 
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