UPDATE: Familiar Things & New Experiences – April 12, 2024
(As posted, sort of, on our Patreon Page)
Hello every, I know this update is a bit late, but buckle-up… I promise, this is going to be an interesting ride (it has been for me at least) and rather
LONG update!
I know that I’ve been pretty quiet on the updates lately, been very hard at work over here learning
NEW things and I hope that you will be as excited and as impressed as I am, as well as going to outline to you some of the new decisions that the wife & I have come to in things and informed Epadder & Sierra3 about.
Part of these decisions were brought on towards the end of February where… in
COMPLETE FRUSTRATION & ANGER at Daz Studio, I almost decided to chuck it all away and quit!
Seeing that I am still here and hadn’t opened this with an “I am sorry and regret to inform you…” message, you can pretty much guess that everyone talked me down from the ledge and helped me to figure out some things to help me take a few breaths and calm down!
So, you might be asking, what brought that about and allow me to talk with you about
ANIMATION…
Yes, animation, the bane of any Daz artist, since Daz Studio’s animation tools
SUCK and the reason why most creators who have animation in their games use Blender… but, in my case, I didn’t feel like trying to learn… yet
ANOTHER... program, while I am honestly still learning Daz Studio… and, since we plan to release our game eventually on Steam, I wanted to have Animation for our game’s Main Menu, rather than a boring still image like I’ve done in my previous games.
I am pleased to report, after
MANY LONG HOURS and also nearly $600 in software that would allow me to use Motion Capture files and import it into Daz (skipping Blender completely), as well as many hours of doing timing and keyframe animation for character facial expressions, we will have animated character in the game’s Main Menu and can see that in some of the examples that I’ve attached to this post for you to see (since Patreon doesn’t really allow multi-video posting) for yourself the results.
The way that these will work, is that it will feature not just the Main Characters of Brent & Carley of the game, but also many of the other top characters of the game, in a variety of different outfits and will all of them will be randomized… so each time you boot up the game or return to the main menu you can get a different character or different outfit that the character wears… plus, as you play the game and build a relationship with that particular character, you will also (if you choose) be able to see the effects of your relationship with that particular character by choosing the way they are dressed or… ahem… undressed!
wink
While I am still learning, tweaking and trying new things, I am very pleased with the results that you’ve just seen… however, doing these had presented a new situation for me to consider and that is, time… while impressive, what you see above took anywhere from a minimum of 12 hours to 33 or more hours of rendering time, even using an RTX 3090!
So, my first situation and hurdle that I wanted to jump was ‘Reduce Render Times’ and the only way that I could do that, since I am maxed in RAM, have the fast CPU out there and one of the best Motherboards out there, is by getting a faster graphics card… an RTX 4090.
Thankfully, talking with the wife, she agreed that we’d use our tax return and her yearly bonus from work to purchase it, was all excited and ready to share the above news with all of you, but wanted to get past April Fool’s Day, so that you all knew I wasn’t fooling anyone and then on Thursday it happened… the SSD Boot Drive on my system died!
No worries, after having built a Top Tier system, I was ready for something like this to happen… made sure that I had a spare M2 SSD as a backup boot drive to fall back on… in my head, it would be as simple as going into my BIOS during startup, changing drive loading order and TADA back up and running… erm… what I failed to consider in that marvelous plan was being a ‘doped up on ass-kicking painkillers to near zombie status, due to excruciating pain that probably should be in bed and not on a computer, let alone in a computer’s BIOS’ state… but, yeah, little details… and being doped up and thinking I was all good, I opened the BIOS and fiddled around and… couldn't switch to the backup SSD... let alone figure out how to find it, so... yeah, it didn’t boot up or work.
UGH!!!
So, Friday of last week, still doped up and feeling really freaking stupid, the wife helped me load the system into the car and she drove me and it to the computer store, where… with her help, we checked it in for Service & Repair, which at the time I also purchased the ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090 for them to also put in it and drove home.
NOTE: I found out on this Wednesday afternoon that it was the motherboard that died, as it was no longer identifying the M2 SSD's drives or any of the 5 slots in my system, at all. So with the warranty, they are rebuilding the system from scratch, with new motherboard, new CPU, new DDR5 RAM (96gb) and adding the new RTX 4090 GPU into it.
It was my intention, that while the computer was being serviced (which I was told would take 5-10 days due to backlog, but longer now as they will rebuild it for me), I would just use my laptop to do some writing for the game and stay connected to Patreon, Discord & X (formally known as Twitter)...
Yeah, what I didn’t count on is that trying to run much of anything on a 20+ year old laptop, not a bright idea… so last Saturday, I convinced the wife to use our savings to purchase her new computer that we were going to get her when she got her bonus on April 19th and just let me use it till my system is repaired and back home… so, back to the computer store we went and got her a top of the line pre-built system with a 4090 (
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already in it for her (and me to use till I get mine back).
It’s not as good as my system that died, which is all maxed out, but still damn good and has been letting me render more of the animation for the game’s main menu. And, yeah, animation renders that were taking 12 hours to do on my 3090 are taking just a little over 6 hours to render now, so I am definitely going to like having that in my system when I get it back!
Also, while having our conversation about getting the graphics card and the wife a new system of her own to use to work on with us and also to play on, we decided that when she gets her 'sign on bonus' in November/December for the new company that she is working for, we’ll be picking up another system that will act solely as a rendering box, allowing us to continue to work on our regular systems while large sets of animation will be done on the rendering box.
Additionally, once we’ve acquired the bonus, we’ll also be looking at finally getting a MoCap system of our own to use for our games (as there is a lot that we had to leave on the cutting room floor for plans after leaving Unity, but will be able to do once Epadder has a better handle on GoDot), which will enable us to do more than what MoCap is currently out there… and, yes, that means adult animation.
So, after having a frustrating spat and almost quitting, we’ve decided that we will be investing a lot more in this and our games… that is just
HOW MUCH we are
COMMITTED to doing this!!
With that said, and before I close this, there is one final thing that we all decided and it is this… I am going to
TAKE MY TIME on this game and I am going to do this
RIGHT. Before I release this game (or any future game), I know that cannot keep pushing myself these long hours that I had been working and just get in the habit of popping a narcotic pain pill to keep working and living in a cycle of pain.
Nor do I want to release a half-assed, thrown together piece of crap that I am going to have to pause what I am doing, have all of your wait as I go back and redo things, so that the game can go on Steam… if I am going to employ the time, money and dedication to doing this, I need to do it
RIGHT the
FIRST time and make the game ready for both you and for Steam or it isn’t worth doing this… and not at the sacrifice to my health.
Each spinal surgery (7 and counting) I undergo brings me closer and closer to having to live the rest of my life in the wheelchair that Brent Chambers will be confined in at the start of the game and, unlike him, there is no magic or alien technology (that we know of) that will help me out of it, once I am in it…
…so that is the way it is going to be from now on.
Sorry, but if that isn’t
OK with you then I won’t be upset if you drop or cancel your pledge to me, your name and email is stored in a database and I
WILL ship the first release to you when it is finished, if you wish to leave.
For those that can stay and who choose to continue to support us, I’d like to have something
SOLID out around the start of summer… some of you who are my beta testers will get it before that and will have to be honest in the views about size, function, grammar and value to the player… the first release is going to be a pretty decent size, as there is a lot of setup and world/character building and the decision to actually do the rewrites were worth it… it is definitely
VERY MUCH a “
WICKED CHOICES” game and story now… but, yeah, it has been taking some time and want it at a state that doesn’t need me going backwards in the creative process…
So, that is where things stand right now, I will understand if you want to bail, won’t fault you for it and
THANK YOU for the time that you were here supporting us and you can expect the link to the first release in your email when it comes out.
For those who decide to stick it out (as many of you have seemed to already decided at least till now), we
THANK YOU TOO and we really hope that you enjoy what we’ve shown here today and revealed and know that we haven’t stopped and won’t stop (hell have been spending too much to pack it up and quit, like what the wife and others told me the last week of February)… so, yeah, you’re going to be stuck with me for a while… just keep the faith and we’ll keep you updated!
Thanks!
~Jack
Otherwise, yes, you won't play Preston, but as one of three possible protagonist.
