Chapter 4 info & Goal reached

Hello,


So, Chapter 3.5 has been released fully. (Now available for the Summer tier, too. (5$).
(You can find it HERE.)

This means Chapter 4 is on the horizon and has entered development two days ago.

Chapter 4 is around 20% to 30% bigger than Chapter 3.5.
This means we will probably head near the 2000 total render range again.

It'll also have four relatively big cinematics.

Two of the main events are the DND (Board game session) and we'll have dinner at Nick's place, revealing his two daughters. 

Nami also has a special focus this update. (We're closing in on something big.)
 

I'll make a special Dev log about the DND session as soon as I have some renders to show. I'm really looking forward to it.

You'll notice some significant Zbrush enhancements in Chapter 4. In the past months, I have learned so freaking much and Ch4 is where I'll apply it. (Stills and animations.)


And  I'll give my best to improve development speed... This also brings me to my next point. 

2. Goal reached.

We have reached a new goal in terms of support! Thanks to everyone who supports the game! (It's actually $ not €. Patreon needs to work on their site.) 

As you can see we're looking at a very big upgrade.

At the moment I'm rendering on a consumer PC. It's decent and has a 3090 and 96GB of Ram and a more or less high-end Ryzen CPU. 

But now I feel comfortable enough to actually invest some serious money into the future of this game and all that will follow. 

I have already configurated a few "Test-Workstations" and they are all about 12.000€ (14,000$) in price. 

The workstation will feature an A6000 GPU which costs around 5000€ to 6000€, a Threadripper, and 128GB of RAM.
All hard drives will be SSD's to increase the Daz loading speed. (Even if it's just a second for each morph, it will accumulate to a lot.)

I designed the workstation in a way that it can hold up to FOUR A6000 GPUs.
Two of them can be connected together for a total of 96GB of VRAM. 

"But isn't that an overkill for Daz3D?"

Yes. 96GB will probably never be needed in Daz. 48GB I'll definitely need.

But this workstation will also be there when the game switches to Blender in Season 2 and then the 96GB VRAM will be needed desperately. 

Besides the VRAM, four A6000's would also grant a very high rendering speed.

Now we get to the "problem." 

AMD hasn't released their new Threadrippers yet. (They were supposed to release in August.)
Apparently, they'll come out in November. That means I'll wait with the order until I can get my hands on a 5990X or 5970X.

This is going to be a huge step for the game. A 3090 + A6000 in such a powerful workstation.
I can't wait to work with such a powerful setup. 

And the three months wait will also give me a chance to accumulate more safety funds. 

In the end, I'm about to buy a PC that costs as much as a low-tier brand new car, and as exciting as this is, it's also very scary. 

So yeah, safety first. I don't want to go into debt ever. 

I did announce a post ago that I'd make a poll about Renpy and I'm still going to do that. I just need to research a few thingies first in order to provide the voters with some Pro/Con.


Oh right, before I forget it...
I won't be able to show the same amount of previews as with Chapter 3 or Chapter 3.5.

I don't want to spoiler anything about Nick's daughters or how the MC gets out of the cuffs.
You'll still get weekly to bi-weekly previews.

- Ocean
(: