2021-04-12 News

Time for another one of my favorite "nothing to report" posts!

Progress
Chugging right along. All systems are go. The Scrivener to Renpy Converter is working perfectly. The new Image Verification Script used to track down missing or mislabeled images is proving itself an invaluable time saver. And the Content Packaging Tool for scanning the game folder and stripping out the new content and uploading it to Mega is working flawlessly.

In fact, once the images for Lupita's latest playtest were rendered they were post processed, packaged and uploaded in only a few hours instead of the couple of days it used to take.

No more running the game and searching for missing images and then spending hours tracking them down and re-rendering them. And good bye to manually hunting and pecking for files that changed between releases and manually dragging them into a separate directory for zipping and distribution.

At this point I don't honestly know where I can trim any more fat from this process.

And the Art?
Getting faster and better with each live stream. The complex scene in which Emily is sitting in the restaurant was done in about four hours. That's building the entire room from scratch, populating it with people and assets, lighting it and doing the test render. And of course now that it's built we can use it over and over again for future scenes.

I'm almost amazed myself at how quick I'm getting at setting up the lights. That used to be the time consuming part because after each adjustment you had to wait a minute or two for the test render to complete before the next adjustment could be made. Emily's scene I think I nailed in the first pass.

So what's next?
We just continue to write and render. That's about it. I've got Lupita's next scenes lined up for this week's live streams and we'll be working on Emily simultaneously. The goal is to have Emily more than half way done by the time we wrap up Lupita so that it's just a short jump to Emily's release.

Barring any odd complications (meaning bizarre chuckle fuckery with Daz), we should be able to maintain the pace of working on two, possibly three characters going forward.

I said 2021 would be our year! So far it's panning out. We've got three scenes done for Lupita already and many more in the hopper.

That's about all I have for now! At the moment we have a strong wind, clear horizon and gentle waters. Let's keep moving forward!

As always, thanks for your support and we'll talk soon!

Salute!

2021-03-13 News

Alright, it’s that time again let. So let’s recap the week.

As I’m sure you $20+ patrons are aware, I have not yet provided the alternate images for the recently released Cassie chapter. I am still working on these. We created the images during the original artwork creation for Cassie’s chapter. But in an attempt to get Cassie’s chapter out as quickly as possible I hadn’t queued many of them until it was done.

I’ve had the machines running night and day working to play catch up and as soon as these assets are done I’ll post up the link. If you were a $20+ Patron in the Month of February or March, I owe you these images. Even if you’ve reduced or removed your pledge since.

Going forward I’m going to render these alternate images at the same time I do the core content so that there is no lag.

This week didn’t provide much of an opportunity to do the streaming. The real job kept encroaching upon my time (go figure the bastards want me to work on their shit during the time they’re paying for instead of working on my game…the pricks).

However, I did spend my evenings and afternoons working on other aspects of the game. Some character designs were finished and some additional rewrites done to tighten up the story. Some additional improvements and modules were written for the Scrivener to Python Conversion script to add some additional functionality that I felt would offer us more variety in the story.

Now that the conversion machine is built it’s proved to be incredibly easy to expand. The last upgrade automatically writes almost 30 lines of code based on a six character notation in the script. It’s a massive time saver because it not only writes the code but does so the same every time to ensure it’s error free. So no debugging required.

Thus the week wasn’t lost, I just didn’t have any convenient mornings available to do an uninterrupted stream.

One of my goals for moving forward is to have chapters that are shorter but dense. A lot of action in a tiny well paced package. Cassie’s chapter, while fun to do and play, can’t be a template for chapters going forward. Counting from when work on her chapter actually started, it took three to four months to put together. I want updates to be faster than that.

That said I’m going to start pacing out some of the plot in the hopes that we can achieve an update schedule of every month and a half to two months. This will give a nice steady stream of new content while allowing us to cycle through characters more frequently.

This means most new chapters will play out around the length of Amanda’s last chapter. A healthy amount of content with enough forward momentum to keep the story moving.

It is with this goal in mind I’ve started going through portions of the script and viciously trimming fat. Ultimately this was a good thing because in re-writing Emily’s newest chapter I had a ton of content that could not only be introduced at a later time, but could be done so in a much more dramatic and enjoyable fashion. All the while plot points I had in mind for later found opportunity to get introduced earlier and in a much more satisfying way. I’m just as excited about Emily’s upcoming chapter as I was about Cassie’s and as I am about Lupita now. (What can I say, I love my characters!)

Which reminds me, Emily won our recent “~Who’s Next” poll.

So when Lupita’s chapter is concluded, expect Emily’s to follow.

Starting next week I want to begin the 3-1-1 plan. I want to spend Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday working on Lupita. Thursday I want to spend working on Emily, and then if we are lucky and get to squeeze in a Friday stream, spend this day working on old content or creating custom assets in Blender.

That’s the tentative plan and if it works like hope, by the time we’re finishing up with Lupita we’ll be half way done with Emily. Emily can then move to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and the next character can fill up the Thursday slot.

 We’ll give a go starting next week and see how it plays out.

Finally, I’ve started putting together character cards to introduce new characters as they’re completed. They aren’t anything special, just quick easy renders and some back story. Since they’re so effortless to make I want to do a series of them, one for each character in the game.

I’ll go back and do some for the characters we’ve already met and as they’re done post them under the ‘characters’ tag on Patreon and Subscribestar. I’ve also created a channel in the discord to collect this as well. Think of it as the out of game equivalent of the journal for players to reference or review.

Again, I know they don’t add much. They’re just easy to make and I think they look pretty sweet when they’re done. I won’t try and convince you it’s any deeper than that. =D

Alright, that’s all I got for now. The real job might not have left me with any uninterrupted time to stream, but between those interruptions I’m still very happy with how much was accomplished. I’ll spend this weekend continuing my education on creating a Blender -> Substance -> Daz pipeline for custom environments and assets. And then on Monday, we kick off again fresh and drive forward with Lupita.

Everyone have a great weekend and I’ll catch up with you soon.

Cheers!

It's been a quiet week but not an unproductive one. The character design for Lupita's son has been completed and we'll be seeing him in game very soon!

News update coming tomorrow and then maybe we'll get some streams in this weekend.

Cheers and I'll talk to you soon!

2021-03-04 Daz Art Stream

UPDATED 2021-03-04 @ 16:10EST -> Added Test Render from Today's Stream

Start Time: 10:30 EST

Estimated End Time: ~15:00EST (3:00PM)

Actual End Time: 15:00est (3:00pm)

Content: Continuing on the Artwork for Lupita's next chapter. (In case you forgot, she was the house keeper.)

URL for Stream (And Recorded Streams): https://picarto.tv/doctoramana

All questions, comments and requests for Daz tips and tricks welcome!

Bring your questions or just come hang out!

Salute!