If his style is so difficult and such a time consuming system, why doesn't he change it, and why do others have the ability to release renders that are just as good at a quicker pace? Yeah, he took time off, but that doesn't account for that short amount of a release between this and the last update. From 21-22 in Dating my Daughter there was 1700 new renders. I don't think it took him 11 months to do that. My guess is about 2. And he uses the same engine and same engine assets for the logic and code.
3 pascal still won't be as good as 1 Cuda. Daz can offload to Cuda core systems and only cuda core systems. That's why my buddies 1440p render took a minute and thirty seconds. You can argue that "it's a generic image" but try it out then. On my own apartment, Cailin model, Casual summer cut shorts. Try out a 1440p image and stop it after a minute and 30 seconds.
I don't use discord and won't offer my services since I am doing my own thing. Also, as I said, my GPU is trash, so I would be a detriment to anyone else who already has a system for rendering.
That hole you're in is of your own making, I'm afraid.
For example, Pascal is an architecture - it supports CUDA cards by NVidia. ICSTOR's 1080 Ti cards? Pascal architecture-based, like mine. My cards have 12GB RAM, his have 11GB each. There is better standard cooling with the 1080 Ti cards. Otherwise, they are pretty close from a performance standpoint, though his cards can be overclocked more reliably (unless you use better cooling solutions for the Titan X (Pascal) series.)
So, as I've said before in more words than now: you know some basics, but not enough to make sense of your original argument - or, your new ones above - about how much time it
should take ICSTOR from setup to final render of his scenes. I've addressed each of your points and the hardware one is the least important, but even on that you are unfortunately in need of more information.
Keep practicing and learning and maybe create your own game someday? It's a wide open field.
Why do you gotta go dragging me into these things! I'm trying to work over here!
In all seriousness though, being used as an exemplar of visual quality is a bit of an honor and I thank you for that.
I love DMD and I love the work that Dots has put into Melody, but his art is what I like to refer to as "out of the box". Very few (if any) custom poses, materials or lights. And there appears to be zero effort in trying to correct the rampant clipping, hovering and sometimes cringe worthy facial expressions.
Icstor's work is exceptionally detailed and his lighting is fantastic! His animations have no equal that I've seen yet. In fact I've cut animations from my game altogether until I can achieve a similar quality.
To that end, animating in Daz is complete and utter ass. I can't even begin to estimate how much time it requires for him to do a single animation, but knowing how long it takes to do a single frame, it's gotta be substantial.
The only developer I've been a patron of longer than Icstor is in fact Mr. Dots. But that's only because DMD was one of the first games I had ever played that I was like, "WOW, That's great shit!". I've been supporting both of those developers for over a year and have never once felt cheated, lied to or disappointed. In fact even though I harp on Mr. Dot's art, I'm infinitely grateful he found a way to continue his game after the "Great Patreon Shit Storm of '08". He could have shit canned it and moved on to a new project like a lot of devs did and he didn't, and for that I'll always have mad respect.
However, having become a developer myself, I'm ultra appreciative of the efforts of other developers and these days I'm doubly understanding of their delays.
It'll get here when it gets here, and I have every reason to believe that when it does, it'll be fucking great!
Hey, let's note that *I* decided to
not drag you into this topic because I know how busy you are (because
RomanHume is also a great example of a communicative game Dev and I know he's busy), unlike some people
*cough* goobdoob *cough*
One thing to note about MrDots' style is his project management: that team is a machine and super-reliable. Every single month another installment makes it out the door, almost always the same level of story and art production quality as the month before. They are extremely consistent and still entertaining, which is why I am also a supporter of that group.
I support you because your ideas and matching output are more unique and still entertaining, but I'm not clamoring for a certain amount of output, especially given your team's change in makeup the past half year or so. From your past performance, I know it will arrive.
But, yes: anyone saying that ICSTOR's level of care on things such as animations can be done via canned animation packages and easily tweaked just hasn't produced the same level of quality, themselves, IMHO.