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Happy Sunday everyone! I know that last week the update was a little short but I don't forsee that being a problem this week x)
Anyway that's another week down and another week closer to release
I know I've been super quiet this past couple weeks but I am spending every free second I have working atm. I'm still aiming toward the Alpha release on June 20th but it seems likely that the PM scene will be cut short (the final scene likely won't be included until the Beta and much like the Mod Shop Gathering it'll offer you a save prompt to continue when the Beta is released). I'll talk more about Paul below - for now here's the progress of both Daz & RPGM for the Alpha.
Progress List:
-Byron Beach - CG 100% / RPGM - 40%
-Instagram photos - CG 100% / RPGM - 100%
-Date with Viv Pt1 - CG 100% / RPGM - 100%
-Date with Viv Pt2 - CG 100% / RPGM - 0%
-MSCheating1 Route 1 - CG 100% / RPGM - 100%
-MSCheating1 Route 2 - CG 100% / RPGM - 100%
-MSSharing1 Route 1 - CG 100% / RPGM - 100%
-MSSharing1 Route 2 - CG 100% / RPGM - 100%
-DwP Pre - CG 100% / RPGM 0%
-DwP PM / PC - CG 70% / RPGM 0%
-DwP Return - CG 0% / RPGM 0%
So I've divided the Paul scenes up simply to demonstrate just how large the whole event actually is. I've just been in a really creative writing mood recently so I haven't moved much on the Paul scenes but as you can see above I've almost cleared the entire patch in RPGM lool! I mentioned in the previous post that the CGs were taking over an hour each and that isn't an exaggeration - it's likely undercutting it a bit. Because of how the scene plays and where it happens; there is only one place in the set that the characters can be and it's a really difficult place to light nicely (characters backs to a wall means you can't really backlight it - CGs look cheaper without so it's a puzzle to solve with every shift in camera angle).
Some good news (at least for me) is that I've finished all of the photoshop work with only the Paul scene remaining - this is actually a bigger deal than usual because the Instagram stuff is surprisingly tedious to do, I use a generator online then put all of the pieces together in this enormous photoshop project I made ages ago. That and the new instagram photos are all completed with the corresponding in game album updated (and working correctly still!
) so that's great!
The scenes I haven't written yet are the "sex" scenes - Byron / Viv / Paul. Generally I find sex scenes particularly difficult to write quickly - they often take a lot more play testing / tweaking & rewriting to get the right feel. So the abundance of "100%" in the list above is fairly misleading because there is still so, SO much to do
This week I actually learned a couple of completely new techniques in RPGM one being "Shift Mapping" which makes some mapping problems possible where they weren't before. I haven't gone back and attended to any of the old maps with this new knowledge yet but I likely will over time. The only difference to any old map is in the West District (before and after shown in image above). This was made possible by my finally learning about the passable directions of individual tiles which I'm quite sure is a beginner skill but I'm terribly slow. It's a really sweet little underpass that allows access to the buildings at the top of the map. Calvin (& Vicki if on Sharing) and Irish Bobby both live in these buildings - you will visit them in Episode 3.
Something I've talked about before but been pondering more and more whilst working on this update is how important the recollection room is gonna be from here on out. For example in this update (the alpha at least) there are 4 Mod Shop events but on your individual playthrough you will only be able to view one of them, the others you will have to go and check out in the RR. This will drastically cut into each releases "playtime" but it's an unavoidable aspect of having meaningful choices and branching plotlines - Jayce's party will be much the same in that the RR will house a hell of a lot of scenes you will never have seen in your playthrough, another good example I brushed past a second ago is visiting Calvin's house in E3 which has several determining factors to the events available there - Cheating / Sharing being the obvious one. Another is if Sharing: Does Lisa bring Danny - Yes / No. And that's just half an example of one event. If we take into consideration say Marcus, Rubbins, Neon, The Council, The Mod Shop, etc not to mention the paths that haven't even been introduced yet we end up with a big old web! ^_^
Given the size of each of the events there is realistically only 4 events per playthrough in the Alpha and that's assuming the player is on Paul's Blackmail route lol! (Viv's scenes will play out regardless of route but those on Viv Romance will encounter a steamy sleepover)
One last thing regarding the game, I had another little brain spurt the other day and I thought to myself - "why don't I have any small 2-3CG events in the game?" I think the answer to this question is basically because I couldn't think of a way to correctly implement this kind of event given the style of the rest of the game but I think I might've cracked the case. This would probably be an obvious conclusion for MOST of you I'd wager but I think because I'm now a developer and no longer a player for the past year and a half that I've lost touch with what it's like to actually sit in the passenger's seat and enjoy the ride. I'm gonna create some of these smaller events which will be mostly sexual in content for the Beta and then poll it afterward to see if they landed well or not. Some ideas I have for now are some sexy fun in the Mod Shop with Danny & Moddy (Flat is on the sidelines until a bit later ^_^) which will alternate based on who's working each day. I think doing little events like this around the maps whilst also adding new variations and new iterations of harassment events will breathe a good amount of life into the game. Also having some "Greyed out" choices like "Requires 35Dev" or something in this repeatables is a nice thing to look forward too, maybe players will even have a little route around the maps to check and see if they can view any additional content yet, who knows! I understand completely that this sounds so basic and fundamental to making a RPGM game but genuinely guys I just struggle to see it sometimes and I am convinced it's because I'm not a "player" anymore. Regardless! The product will be amazing in the end, we just gotta meander through it until I equip my thinking cap y'know! x)
In other exciting news I've basically ordered a whole new PC - all new components except the graphics card. It's been on the to-do list since the game began gaining traction to upgrade my rig (not just the GPU) and with Nvidia's 4k series seemingly just around the corner I decided to throw down and prepare myself with a new computer. This includes a new i9 12900k, a 1200W PSU (this is just in case my current 850W isn't enough for the next gen Nvidia cards), 64gb DDR5 RAM, New Mobo, etc. When it's all built it's gonna be an total titan of a machine, I am extremely excited to see what kind of preview / render speeds I get when I purchase one of the upcoming Nvidia cards - render times aren't really a concern for productivity but the Iray Preview lag DEFINITELY is as I test every image with the preview over and over again to correctly adjust poses & lighting so I hope all of the upgrades can offer me some reasonable increase in development speed. The only stress now is transferring everything from this old scrap heap onto the new PC and making sure it's all "compatible." I'm no wizard when it comes to computing I'm simply hoping that mirroring the directories will be enough to run Daz with the same folder setup on another PC though I suspect like everything else computer related that it'll take a few headaches to get it all working correctly! ^_^
Anyway I'll be finishing off this release on this PC before moving everything across.
And just one final note - I want to rename the releases from here on out because it's causing way too much confusion and that's my bad ^_^ so I suppose this update will be called Lisa 2.6 Alpha then Jayce's Party update will be called Lisa 2.8 or something like this. It's a REALLY common query I get: "Where can I download Episode 1" and I think this change will solve that problem (at least I hope so!)
See? One week writing script instead of posing CGs and I write like a man possessed! If you made it all the way down here go grab a coffee, you bloody well earned it
!
Hope you've all had a great weekend, much love everyone <33 xo
//pG