It's the "Update" update...

Hello!

No waffle this update, straight into it.

Firstly, the 4090 is up and running. A few weeks later than I would have liked, partly due to it taking an extra couple of weeks to get here and partly due to, when it did arrive, I was in the middle of some testing corrections and not wanting to pull everything apart at that precise point. But, it's been running for about a week and, Good Lord, it's fast. Like, really fast. I was expecting twice as fast as the 3090 but it seems to be going closer to three times. That might either just be down to the nature of the scenes it's been bashing out or perhaps the processor difference is weighing in as well. Either way the speed is shocking and, finally, I feel I have the tools to meet my expectations* in terms of what I want to produce. It's also bloody huge being at least 50 per cent bigger than the 2080 for example. I feel I could shove tracks on it and start to invade small countries.

Secondly, I have a complete working build of Chapters 1 to 5 in the can.** Incredibly it doesn't blow up Renpy either. I hadn't really wanted to mention this, mainly as I had no actual evidence it could happen, but I was genuinely concerned that the combined build would be too big and just too complex for the Renpy shell to deal with. The coding for Five, for example, is bigger than the coding requirements for the previous four chapters combined (There is a lot going on in Five...) and I had an awful dread that, once put together, it would just refuse to either start or would crash constantly. Thankfully, it doesn't. So that's a win. 

I've been making a few render corrections to the chapters as I've been going along but on the whole it's pretty enough. There are a few points in the game where I suck my teeth and think a particular bit could have been better, but I've merely made a note of them for now and will improve them later on in future releases. Oh, there's nothing wrong with them by the way, it's just a case of could have been better. For example, when the Vanguard comes into land and fires her engines up, a few seconds of after burner effects would have been nice. That sort of thing. So not clipping issues or continuity problems. Nothing to spoil it for you just stuff I've made a note of to buff when I have some free time.

I also discovered that the animation files are three times bigger than they need to be due to some sloppy software design. It's a long story but in short the piece of software I use to edit and add sound to the animations bloated the webm files to a massive size. Since webm should be the smallest size and since they were smaller than the original files I imported I didn't think anything of it. Until I accidentally converted one using another piece of software and saw the file size reduce by a third... I've a bit of work to do re-converting all the files to shrink the size but that's a simple task.

Sadly, there are a few outstanding issues holding me back at this point and these, although the game would still work as a whole, are in my opinion game killers and so have to be dealt with.

Boxing with Chris

As a stand alone module (i.e. it's own separate build) it works well enough and I'm pleased with the way I've managed to make a "live action" boxing game in Renpy. She's tricky to beat but not impossible and the gameplay feels just right and graphically it's really smooth. However, once in the main game she either tends to fold like a paper cup or knock the living daylights out of the MC. Neither are exactly fun outcomes. This is nothing to do with my earlier remarks about the risk of the game falling over by the way. It's more to do with the way Renpy handles random numbers. Without knocking Renpy, it's not really a random number generator. As the designer of Renpy himself states " each time Ren'Py starts, an infinite list of random numbers is created, and a pointer starts off at the start of this list. Everytime you take a random number, this pointer gets advanced one spot down the list". It's why if you play a Renpy game and get a random event, if you roll back and try again you get the same event happening. So, it seems, that when in a self contained module, the distribution is sufficient for the boxing to work just fine, but when exposed to the larger game and the larger number of random events going on the pre-set distribution module isn't sufficient. It is, however, fairly easy to fix. I either find a way to reset the distribution at the start of the module or code in a weighted curve of success (for the Math(s) guys out there, I'm talking about the beta model distribution curve). The latter, believe it or not, would be easier to do I suspect and probably more likely to give you a better gameplay experience.***

Poker with Chris

 It's actually the same problem as above. Stand alone the poker works great. I think it's the best module in the game to be honest (and for those that have seen Vampy's game...well, that's saying something I think). But, as above, once it's in the main game the distribution module seems to be hitting the random generator problem. From being quite a bold and risky player (which fits her character) she's now become ultra-cautious and will spend most of her time folding. This is as much fun as it sounds in a game of strip poker... But it's the same solution as above. Fix one and I've fixed both.

Dinner with Amanda

Amanda works on a different coding system to the above and so her problem is slightly different. She is, however, being equally as big a nuisance. I put a fair bit of effort into the structure of this one as I wanted it to feel a quite dynamic conversation. A real one almost. But Amanda seems inclined to just want to get the MC drunk and pick arguments with them. Not saying that that's not fun in it's own way, but it's not happening organically in the way I want it to. I was really trying to avoid throwing lots of conversational menu picks at you (I'd pre-emptively patted myself on the back for being quite clever in how I'd gone about this) but I think I might have to default to the more traditional "pick what you want to say" model. It's the quickest fix and one that I know will work. Sorry, I tried to bring something new to the table.****

Trisha

Ah, Trisha. Dear Trisha. Blame this one on Daz 3D. So the concept of sexual shenanigans with the main characters in H5 is that you when you boff, you have a scene where you can pick subscenes that loop until you pick another subscene to replace it or have had enough. Each time you boff with that character you get additional subscenes. So the more you boff the more scenes unlock. So, for example, the second time the MC has sex, say with Trisha, all her original scenes are there as well as a new bunch you've just unlocked. Ultimately, if you stick with the same girl (or can somehow manage to juggle your girls well enough to get away with it) you'll end up with one hell of a smut library with them. I really like this as gameplay. For one it puts you the player in charge, to an extent, of the lewd scenes you get and how long they play. But I also like it as gameplay in that you're having to make a relationship call that can inpact on your storyline. Like boffing Trisha? Then to get more you're going to have to help her. So far so good.

The problem I've got, is that the scenes as made for Chapter Four used something called Ghostlights. These were an exploit in the older versions of Daz. They essentially used a gap in the code to drive better, faster lighting. In more recent updates of Daz this gap has been closed and these lights no longer work. What this meant was I couldn't just add new subscenes in the way I've outlined above. I've tried a few things, including Daz scripts and trying to match lights by hand but, although it would be good enough perhaps for stills, for animations and especially animations that you could play in any order, it's just far too obvious a difference. I found it really distracting to be honest and it massively takes you out of the moment. Given how hard I make you work for lewds sometimes, this isn't acceptable quality. I can't just say "Ah, it'll be fine." It's not.

The solution, the only one I had, was just to re-run the old animations under the new lighting and in "new" Daz. Thankfully, the 4090 is on hand and in this past week it has made *checks* 3,963 new renders to replace the old ones. Call it 600 a day. (Bloody hell!) It's a pity it didn't turn up a bit earlier but it's here now.

Me, being me, I of course took the opportunity to improve and extend the original scenes so you'll find they're prettier, longer and more realistic. I also buffed the menu a bit as well to make it a bit more obvious and easier for you to choose your subscene.

So, I'm not a million miles off. If the 4090 had turned up a bit earlier and if I hadn't had some unexpected random number problems I'd have been home and dry I think. But I'm going to slip into next month. Sorry. At this point I'd usually issue a batch of refunds for February (some of you will recall I've done this before) but I'm afraid I can't this time around. What with the costs of the 4090 (It was £4k) and the voice actresses the pot is somewhat empty. In short, I'm broke and I just can't this time around. Last months patronage was spent on the game and I don't have it any more. A bit embarrassing but it is what it is I'm afraid.

That's it for now. I'll crack on with the coding issues and let the 4090 sort Trisha out and I'll get this monster finished.

Apologies. I'm sparing nothing. Promise.

Notty

* I was going to say vision but that sounded a bit wanky to be honest

** Well, on the C drive, but they both begin with C.

*** For the coders out there, by God I've come a long way haven't I thinking about coding that in?

**** Oh. Table. Dinner. Pure accident there, I think.