Upcoming work on the game...

Oh... and I also cancel a LOT of my renders part way through. I'm an amateur at Daz studio, and often spot something out of place or some pokethrough on clothing that hasn't shown up in the preview :)

Cloud rendering would be nice... but unless they're offering it for free, I'll carry on doing it myself. Ive already spent a small fortune (by my standards) on the assets for the game and I'm still buying more. The Patreon support (Thanks, guys!) is going some way towards covering this, but until and unless I break even, cloud rendering won't even be a consideration.

Hey Tiggertoo, thanks for working through the difficulties and getting this out. It can be really stressful being a creator and you will always, always, have idiots that don't read and will always be upset. That will always be there, count their voices as invalid. As far as spending render time, it might not be a bad idea to invest in using cloud rendering farms, that way you can set up all your scenes and let the renders run off async and get the high quality you need without sitting around twiddling your thumbs. Keep up the great work!

Guy Fawks

I have... no problem with this.

Schattenjäger

Thanks for the positive comments! And yeah, I definitely think a bi-ish-monthly demo is the way to go forward. I did some work on the game today and enjoyed it a lot more now that I'm not putting so much pressure on myself :) I'm actually quite excited at the prospect of being able to put together a more complete demo without so many time constraints. @Ducky... it's a nice thought, but I doubt I'll ever make enough from writing this to replace my full-time job :p But it's definitely a fun hobby! @eman... I actually started off doing exactly what you suggested. Static backgrounds with character sprites over the top. But I reallly wasn't happy with how they looked. So, I decided after about three weeks to move to fully rendered images. Yeah, they take more time to produce, but I think the different angles and changes to the backdrops add a lot to the game. Plus, I'm able to do proper lighting/shadows etc. I know it's going to take me longer to finish the game, but I think the extra quality of the images is well worth the tradeoff in time. And yep, it's going to be a big game. I'd be surprised if it weighs in at less than 10GB by the time I'm through, but just about everyone these days has terrabytes of hard disk space and a fast enough internet connection to download the game pretty quickly.

Don't burn yourself out over this, you are making lots of extremely detailed renders. I think having blank screens would be fine for upcoming demos, the content can always be added later so you don't push yourself or your computer too hard. Honest critique though, I think your method of doing every pic as a full scene render isn't going to scale up very well. The feb demo almost reached 1gb and you having to work around the clock to constantly make renders has to be a grind. Maybe keep the full scene renders only for special scenes and just stick to character models pasted over a single static background image for transitional scenes?

eman

Seriously take breaks as needed. You don't have the current funding to treat this as a full time job, so it shouldn't have to be that! It should be a fun hobby for you at this point! The update schedule you suggest is more than reasonable. And I don't think there's anything wrong with updating the non patrons with the previous version. Honestly the Feb demo by itself is more than enough to show the vision of your game. The idea of slowing down for bigger updates actually has me pretty hyped!

Ducky

Building a video game single-handedly is a lot. I think most sensible people will understand if you switch demo updates to 6 to 10 weeks. Personally, I think it will be good to pace things and then get more complete content wrapped up when that time passes.

Voca Labs

Take the time you need rest is well needed and deserved.

Angeloid