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Corporate Development Memo 13th of April 2025
Hello everyone!
Just another weekly update, and will try and keep this organized!
1) I will just start with the simple game update first.
I did another 105 renders and this brings the total to 1062 renders! This is about half of the update! I have been pretty consistent with a metric of 100 renders a week. I hope to later ramp up to a bit more as I get closer!
2) What this practically means for me is that I am going to take this week to shift to a more "big picture" and game testing type of week since I feel it's about at a point (roughly halfway) where I want to play test everything and see if/what tweaks I might want to change for my outline for the rest of the update. I might expect a lower render count this coming week due to both working on the sub poll images (kind of a tough one to do too) and a lot of game testing and kind of focusing more on big picture stuff. I feel this is about the right time to do it but it's a very critical and good part of the overall creative process for putting together a narrative, etc.
I will try and report a more formal count of all paths and where I am overall next week. But so far, I have done more dom path renders than sub so far and this will likely shift after this week to balance it out more. I am kind of where I expected to be overall right now, so nothing really negative or problematic at all so far.
3) I did cut the sub poll as I said I would since I accidently put it at 14 days versus seven. The Olivia "movie night" scenario won out. It's a pretty tough one for me personally in that it has multiple locations (it's really three distinct scenes plus a screen element in one of them) but I kind of like the idea too so I'm looking forward to working on it! This will be on my tasking for this week.
4) I have started writing the dom ideas and will try and post them this week. The sub path always gets way more submissions (I have I think only 2 dom poll suggestions right now) so I tend to do more ideas on my own for this side. I'll try and remember to only set it for seven days this time!
5) On the personal front, a mix of good and bad are impacting my time up and down for the game in the short term. I expect everything to hopefully calm down or work itself out by May. Taxes are all now done! Whew! That is a BIG lift off my back because my taxes honestly are nasty and complicated with how I individualize literally everything I can in small discrete chunks (an example being each individual rental property being its own LLC) and it takes a while to do accounting/finance for it.
I am on Lanai for two days this week (I rarely want to be too personal about certain things but will mention it's around my birthday!) so got a nice little celebration/relaxation trip for a few days with my man! One of my favorite golf courses I've ever played is there too (Bill Gates even got married on the 12th tee there!) and I haven't been there in a while as it's honestly not a good value to price/experience ROI to me! (I think visitors pay 550 dollars to play the course now yikes!)
On the negative side, the pissing content between China and the United States is currently decimating a friend of mine in China who I have used for furniture and other interior design items, etc.
The unfortunate reality now is that a 125-145+ percent tariff is not 34 percent anymore and it's beyond a practical ability to absorb the cost with no exemptions for like electronics versus our stuff. So we're looking at Indonesia stuff now and it really hurts that I'm turning away from her right now to be honest (I am very much a people person about how I deal with a business...I invest in the human/passion behind the company more than any other factor as a long-term strategy unless there are serious macro issues that override talent) but it is what it is right now.
I am still eating the entire cost of everything on my side that I ordered already (about six months out of stuff) to help her out just to survive, but I can't order new stuff right now at current prices as I have in my mind a fiduciary duty to also make sure my own employees can work and get paid too and the costs are currently going to be too high.
Hopefully things change later.
One of us may have to travel to Indonesia in a month or two for a week if things don't improve with China by the summer. My business partner has never been there and I have, so I'm hoping he gets the chance to go even though he's a bit nervous about the country.
6) Steam languages are progressing -- the walkthrough/gallery/bio stuff are also moving. This stuff will take some time so I won't always be updating this every single week. But suffice to say I am trying to make sure Patrons can somehow get a way to get the Steam Version, etc. As I learn more on all of this stuff, I'll put it all together!
7) Last minor note and may as well get it out now. It is very likely I will pause billing for December 2025 and those of you that know me a little better can easily guess why
But I will have an update out before then for sure and likely Steam is out by then too. But more on this later as I am being careful about being specific about especially dates/plans and such.
8) There's still a little bit of time to send dom ideas, but not too long! I'll be really trying to work on this Wednesday when I get back 100 percent.
9) I'm now looking for a second system for the game with another RTX 4090. I think it would help for both backup and having some extra rendering ability -- especially for longer/nastier rooms and animations. Daz Studio itself is in a big mess -- it CANNOT upgrade under its current version to the RTX 5090 and requires a brand new version of Daz Studio. Not a patch or update, but an entire new code (distinct from the current Daz) and version (Daz Studio 5). The 5 series will never be compatible with the current Daz 4.x versions from what they are saying.
What it means practically for now is that no one can use a 5 series card with Daz Studio for the foreseeable future. It's kind of scary looking for a 4090 because basically it's used stuff at this point and this is not my wheelhouse/area at all. So I feel like I'll be playing the silicon lottery game or something.
I always feel like I'm working so fast and that it's short but now I look up and it's a really long update! Sorry! I am rambling writer by nature (I often cut down a ton of dialogue from KG too initial versions) and need to get better at being succinct.
Please have a great week all!
Love,
Tess
