Spook’s Progress Posting #5 – It’s Alive. It’s Alive…!

I’m starting things off a little differently this week, because my week’s been mostly different than the last few reports. The big news of the week is Sexbox2099 is built and alive! Check’er out, already sporting Little Toscana Uniform colours!

I spent my last week end, pretty much all of it and then some of Monday too, putting our new powerhaus of a render-box together bit by bit and she’s already being put to work. Sporting a new 16GB graphics card, it’s an upgrade and a half over the PC I was using thus far, which was my own personal kick-about machine for the last decade.

The new machine is working well, with programs and files all installed already, which was what some of this week was also spend on. Not everything is 100% just yet though. I’ll admit I’m not much of a hardware guy and I may have made a mistake or 2 along the way in assembling this beauty. I’m still wrestling with getting the cooling loop properly set in my spare time. The CPU spikes high and fast, something I still need to iron out before I can really let her loose on renders, but we’re still making kick-ass progress even with that being the case. I want to be careful with her however, as we’re looking at the machine that I’m hoping to build huge amount of beWilder content with over the next decade to come. Making sure to get the wrinkles ironed out right and not rushed is going to pay off big time in no time, I’m sure.

So here’s another look at the new little set-up I’ve built for myself.

I’m really looking forward to getting creative all up in this mini office, though I might have to wait a couple more weeks before I can because the other great news of this week is we’re getting into the last pushes of completing the version on our plate! Hoo-rah! Let’s take a look at the bars and grin!

This week I managed to polish off the last of the outstanding gameplay CGs, even with all the hardware wrangling mentioned above. With that, now all 103 CGs (105 if you count the 2 redo gameplays I did in pre-version practice) are made and on their way to being displayed! I managed to get that far by Wednesday’s end, so Thursday and Friday we mostly used to test how many renders can be made in a day. The temperature issue mentioned above threw a bit of a wrench in that, but even with it I managed to get 20 or so images through it over those 2 days (hoping that increased when I get the cooling loop sorted), as well as get them post-prod while it happened. Last and not least, I got my fingers in the engine again and mounted the completed, now-game ready images. All the gameplays and the Noe-Damon scene are all ready and playable in the game now, tested too, and that’s the increase you can see to Asana’s bar above. Just the 3 main scenes to do the same for now.

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This is the part of the post I usually hit y’all with a teaser, but this week I’m going to have to leave you all wanting, again for good reason. We’re getting so close to the release at this point I don’t want to overshare and over spoil, plus I dare say the pics of the new PC are enough proof of life/work for this week. You don’t get a new beauty like that every week after all!

So instead of an image, let me tease you in a different way: With release dates! How does that sound? Muhaha! Now, I’m still going to err on the side of caution just in case, not wanting to carry on the old “tradition” of missing important dates, but with only so much left to get done and fewer variables in play now I can go out on a bit of a limb at this point.

At this point I’ve got 68 CGs set up and in need of rendering, then post-production, which I’m hoping and expecting to be able to get through that in 6-7 working days. As they go through the process in batches, I can be keeping the post-pro and engine updating trailing just behind the rendering, keeping all the wheels driving us forward at the same time. I don’t suspect I’ll be able to be finished in time enough for the next Friday/end of week progress post, but if I can stay close to the curve, I just mentioned it might just be worth working through the weekend after this one to get it in the Daring’s hands all the sooner. We’ll talk all about that next week when we’re that close.

The long story short: The goal now is to get v0.23 released to the Daring sometime between the 9th-11th of July, allowing then for the Brave to follow 2 weeks after, and the Bold by August (at which point I’ll want to be significantly into v0.24). How’s that for a tease to please?

Misc News of the Week

There’s no miscellaneous news this week, everything was headline news.

The Week Ahead

I pretty much already laid it out above, but I’ll give the quick version here for TL;DR purposes. The week ahead will be trying to get through as many renders in the pile of 68 as possible, at an expected rate of 8-12 a day, depending on what the new machine can handle while I wait for some expert help in resolving the cooling concerns. As the machine renders, I’ll be manually post-proing and engine working right behind it. The more we can get through in the week ahead, the sooner in the week after we can hope to have a new release in our hands again.

If the timeline to play time speeds up or slows down significantly, I’ll let y’all know on the Discord, so keep an eye out there if you’re already on the edge of your seat waiting.

So that’s the week that was, #5. And what a week it was! I’m pretty proud of myself for being able to put together a beast of a box like that, as stressful a process as it was, and even more I’m proud to be so close to releasing a new version again. Almost there, hang tight, and until then…

Be sporting Little Toscana colours yourself, and beWilder!