It's the "Two PCs!" update...

Let us take a moment to mourn the end of my oft used phrase "I only have one PC. " It served us well throughout it's life. We saw it grow; play in the fields; watched as it developed into a fully formed phrase and urged it on as it strived to turn into a meme - and yet now it's time is over.

For on Wednesday I get another a black box! Oh yeppity, indeedy-do! Thanks, guys. I've needed a second really since the start and it's down to you I now have one. :)

I had lots of options when it came to getting extra firepower and, no matter which way I went I'm sure they all had advantages and disadvantages. I've talked before how ideally I would want a 3000 series card but those are as rare as hen's teeth at a decent price at the moment and so I've compromised going for a lesser, cheaper second PC to get me through  Four and Five and then we can take stock again. Essentially it's just going to be an animation slave. I'll set everything up on the main rig and then copy it over and let the slave just churn out the renders. The big advantage here is production doesn't grind to a halt elsewhere image wise as I wait for the animation images to flop out.

For those that are curious it's a 2070 card powered machine. So it renders at about half the current pace of the 2080. But that doesn't really matter as a) it's more heft and allows me to render the stills without delay and b) unlike the stills where I'm constantly faffing with the individual images this can just run 24/7 so that slower pace isn't as much of an issue. It was also cheaper and, with an eye on a 3000 series, will ultimately get replaced. But even if it only helps me get both Four and Five more quickly and with flashier animations then it's worth it.

Other stuff!

I spent a couple of days  handling the commissions from the "Thea" tier which was rather fun. It's a nice little palette cleanser in a way as I tackle a variety of very different images and helps bump up my skills. The guys very kindly posted them up on my discord so if you every wanted to see Annie as a pirate, Chris pole dancing or Sarah as a space princess just hop over to the patron chat there (Since the images are owned by the people who commissioned them I don't feel as though I have the right to pop them up here.)

Game stuff!

A few things here. One of the sets I was wrestling with was the vehicle travel. No matter how I set out the stills for this part of the game they just didn't really seem to work, lacking any real sense of movement. In the end I settled for having the background animated as a movie with the in cab stills on top.

It took me a little time to learn how to do this, and to do it reasonably well, but given that, as the game goes on, there is the potential for a lot of vehicle travel (if you so choose ofc) I wanted a way of showing these scenes that would be consistent in principle throughout.

Other than that my main focus was on the VR module. I'm pretty happy with it generally. The script is tight, the stills are good and the mechanisms work just fine and feel balanced but some of the animations do need some further work.  Not that there's anything especially "wrong" with any of them, they just could be better. Either in terms of some slight improvements or the storyboarding for them. Ordinarily at this I'd be freaking out a little, wondering how I'd fit amending these in with the rest of the render production to get the chapter out next month, but of course I don't have to worry anymore. I'll just tweak them and get the slave PC to churn out the corrections/additions and just carry on with no delay on the main PC.

Progress stuff!

In addition to the above I've also been producing the stills for the main game, including having to make a "barracks" dress uniform (which was a lot more difficult than you'd think. Apparently most asset designers have either zero military experience or expect female soldiers to spend most of their time moonlighting as strippers....). Learning how to trick the asset into doing things like raising the rank tabs as metal bars from a flat surface was a small challenge but now I know how to do it, it's something I can utilise in quite a few places.

Oh, and Amanda's office got a bit of a rejig as well. Mainly surface stuff tbh but it looks a bit crisper and less plastic than the original design.

Progress reporting stuff!

I want to spend the next week or so closing down individual scenes. We have a lot of them this chapter, as I've said before, and I'm uncomfortable having all the parts ready for so many of them but not many slotted together. It probably is slightly inefficient for me to deviate from optimum production to taking a step back  to closing down individual sections but I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable in my own mind  in respect of the game progress reporting. There is something very concrete to being able to say "18 out of 25" sections done or whatever as opposed to "13,000 renders made so far"

Potential blocks stuff!

Nothing to worry about really but I like to be honest and give you full disclosure. One of the other things I'm been having a few stabs at this week was the boxing with Chris.

I can't quite settle on the interface for it nor how I want to display it to be honest (i.e. do I go fully animated etc). I'm going to put this one on the back burner for this week and bash through putting as many modules together as possible and get the VR corrections out of the way instead while I think a bit more about it.

Annnnd that's about it for now. I'll keep cracking on and we'll speak later.

Notty

*Oh the header image looks a bit strange composition wise as I had to take Jane out of it. Apparently she's too lewd for Patreon and it threw a wobbly at me....