Hello people! With November 23rd launch (Season 2 Episode 3 for Android), I'm officially closing S2E3 and focusing on what's coming for S2E4.
[...]I'm glad that the majority liked it; the usual issue is the time it takes, and that everyone always wants more content . But I want to share with everyone what's coming, and I will also include a poll in this post.
The most requested scene for me to continue is the massage center, so I will focus on it in the next update. Expect massage content for S2E4.
Aside from the most demanded content, the most requested thing is to not make the updates take so much time. Here I want to share with you some things. I will try to be as non-technical as possible. You all know that during the development of S2E3, I build a new PC with the newest graphics card (RTX 5090) so I could do the animations faster, but there was an issue, the program I use for the game (Daz 4) do not support and will not support this new kind of graphics card, so I won't be able to use it... They developed a new version (Daz 5), but they rushed it to say that they support this new generation of computer graphics cards. The program is buggy, has issues and incompatibilities, so it's something that's half-baked, and I will not switch when I clearly see that it will give me more problems than solutions. In short, all the effort and money that I put into building the new PC can't be used at this moment for the next episode. Aside from that, I searched for months for someone to help me with animations and couldn't find anyone. Honestly, both things were a let-down... That was the only way to keep the number of animations and reduce the waiting between episodes, but a new idea arose!
For those who played S2E3, you could see that I started adding some AI to the game, like 5% (little bits) of the animations of S2E3 were built with AI, the rest were normal animations. Building AI animations, compared with animations with Daz are faster, and easier, but here is the catch, doing animations with Daz is not easy, doing animations with AI is easy, but, a quick/easy animation with AI comes with bad quality, doing a good animations with AI is not easy, it needs knowledge, a good computer, etc.
I want to become a pro with AI to make outstanding animations that can match or surpass my normal animations, doing this will allow me to go considerably faster in the development process, for example, the animations of S2E3 took me like 4-5 months to do, I think that with AI I can cut that in a quarter of the time, what I was doing in 4 months, I can do it probably in 1, this would be a VERY BIG change in releasing times and amount of content.
Again, I'm not talking about bad quality AI animations; I'm talking about Pro AI animations, which are not easy to achieve, AI is a technology that is currently changing the world and in my humble opinion, everyone need to know how to benefit from this technology instead of complaining or going against it, it's like a wave that you have to surf or you will drown if you don't want to surf it.
I'm planning on going heavy on AI animations in S2E4 and showing everyone the true potential of this technology. I know there are people against it, but again, I'm not aiming for easy animations; I'm aiming to go pro mode to deliver professional results. As you all know, I built the translator program for the game, and I want to develop a program that helps me with the animations, taking the best of AI, and tweak it to make a new program to take IoM to the next level. (Honestly, I think it will be easier to do this program compared with the translator, and I trust in my knowledge and abilities to build it)
If I achieve this, the development time could be cut to almost 50%!!! (It would be a HUGE change for IoM)
Previously, I was thinking of training someone to help me with animations, but explaining Daz would be a very slow process. By making this change, I can search for people who are experts with AI, or teach someone AI to help me; that process would be simpler and faster, so it changes my perspective for the future.
My current plan is the following:
1) I will take a week off for vacation starting November 25th. (I need to recharge the batteries and keep the creativity flowing)
2) I will be learning AI and doing tests nonstop throughout December; during this time, I will also start building a program to help me create animations with this new technology.
3) In January I will start developing S2E4, with all the knowledge that I adquire during the December I will apply it to the next episode, and in Discord I will be posting some progress with the animations, remember what I'm saying, I'm going pro mode, I aim to give the very best animations possible, trying to surpass my current ones.
If everything goes according to plan, an update that took me 8 months could take 4 , and if I find someone to help or teach, it could go even lower. I'm very hyped and motivated because it would change a lot the development of IoM, bringing the same amount of content, with better animations in less time...
A critical aspect of this is that the images will remain 100% the same (0% AI). This is something I'm not planning to change, and I think it would be a big mistake to change it, so expect the exact same for images. The idea is to start using AI for animations only, and maybe not for all of them.