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The story for Chapter 7 and beyond is still a struggle. Just when I think I have only a few things to wrap up for it, I read it back over and make yet more adjustments. Hopefully all this extra time just makes it that much better.
This week was an interesting one for me, but started off pretty well. A great new coffee shop opened up on my birthday, and now I have fancy coffee close by. Unfortunately, I am starting to see some symptoms of burnout here lately, so I am proactively taking a step back to lighten my load until these symptoms go away. I'm not dropping anything, but I'll be dropping my daily hours I commit to everything for just a bit (that is more than just my stuff here). Fewer YouTube videos, less dev work, and more frequent breaks. Once you reach burnout, there is no telling when it goes away. I do not want that again.
On that note, I am looking towards my next project after To Be A King by jotting down ideas as I let my mind wander. It's therapeutic as there is no pressure at all on that right now. A lot of things to figure out, and now is the time while I am months away from beginning anything in earnest there.
I am in love with the story telling aspect of all this, but I'm increasingly dissatisfied at some of the limitations in Daz. Don't get me wrong, Daz is still remarkable for the quick setup of single renders. But everywhere else, it leaves a lot to be desired. Especially since I'd like to push towards a more cinematic experience. With that in mind, I'm exploring using Unreal Engine for my next project. I am not sure how yet, and that is what I'll be spending a bit of time exploring while I wrap up To Be A King over the next several months.
The downside of doing something real-time in Unreal Engine is that I'd need to actually set requirements for the computer you, the player, have. With GPUs still expected to be scarce for another year or so, I'll have to see how possible it is to utilize static renders and cut scenes in Unreal Engine to form something closer to a visual novel. The alternative is getting very good at game optimization very quickly for a real time experience.
If things begin to look possible with Unreal Engine, there will be demos available to some patron tiers. I'll need to do a ton of testing to ensure I'm not missing some big issues. At this moment, I'm excited about the possibilities. Which only means I clearly don't know much about Unreal Engine!
In any event, why I got into this in the first place is to tell interesting stories. Anything that improves that is where I want to be. For all the faults of Daz and Renpy, they are damn easy to use to create visual novels (well, after a few years using them, that is). I looked at Blender, but if I'm going to make the leap to something different, I prefer Unreal Engine for several other reasons. If it doesn't work out, I will have learned many other things that will be useful, at least. Maybe a short game called "Princess Valentina: Warrior Princess" happens if I can't develop my next game using Unreal. There is still an Unreal project somewhere on one of my systems where a poorly imported Valentina can run around a roman palace and sort of fight people with a gladius.
I have new CPUs coming this weekend, which is nice. They aren't the latest gen, but it was too good a deal to pass up, especially since Unreal Engine loves it some CPU power for actually doing development.
That's it from me. The progress tracker will be back with updates once the burnout symptoms lift, but right now I don't want anything that reminds me of how far behind I feel most days. I'll be taking this one day at a time, and I appreciate everyone's patience. It isn't for lack of desire that we aren't much closer to a Chapter 7 release. I keep telling myself, "Roy, this is still only a hobby." Somehow it takes the majority of my time though…
Have a great weekend, and I'll continue to do some fun renders for everyone when the mood strikes me (like the one above). Now for me to research how to have any future Unreal Engine games I create require the Epic Games Launcher. *evil laugh* (And yes, I'm joking. There is no way Epic is letting my content in their marketplace).
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