Report #13 🔥 Super Duper Important

Hold on to your seats, this report is gonna be simply bombastic. There has been a ton of changes over these two months. I'll start with the little things and end with the most important news that EVERYONE SHOULD READ! Thank you :)


Discord bots and kitchen hosting

Yeah-yeah, I know, they’ve been around the server for a long time performing simple tasks: monitor spammers, welcome newcomers, delivering hearts, etc. But the problem was that these bots lived on the working computer, which is why they could not always do their job and protect the server. So, that’s why I decided to order a Raspberry Pi 4 and move the bots to it...

And they were moved. To the kitchen. On top of the fridge. On a napkin. Because it makes noise like hell!

But it works and can even send messages :)

Someday they will talk...


Scene Optimizer my lifeline for developers

The moment I started working on a huge beach scene that had to have a lot of details and characters, I got stuck because the people selling assets at Daz Store had no idea what optimization was. Spending a day or two cleaning the stage is just dumb monkey work. So, I spent whole two weeks on a script that does that itself. Genius. Simply genius. But it does it much better and faster than me doing it by hand :}

The official Daz store already sells a well-known Scene Optimizer among developers for $25, but this garbage takes 30 damn minutes to do its job!!! And does not have any usable logic to its features. How does that compare to my optimizer? Well, it is written in two languages ​​(Daz Script 2 and Python). It is based on the LOD system, which is used in game engines like UE or Unity. It works 50 times faster thanks to multi-threading, changes texture resolution depending on distance, removes garbage and does much more. This allows Devs to render huge locations with limited video card memory.

Guess which picture has the original scene and which one has the optimized one? The original one takes up 21GB of memory, and the optimized one takes up 1GB.

And here I am looking at this thing and thinking... I can sell this to other developers so that they can make renders in large locations, not in toilet stalls :} So, I sent an application to Daz to become a Daz Published Artist and publish the script! Hehe! I've been waiting a month for them to check everything and still waiting… Explains a lot about why Daz Studio is so slow.

Just for fun, I made this video demonstrating the absolute advantage of this tool has over the garbage that is sold on the Daz Store >:D Watch with sound!

https://youtu.be/EXDaagYtTiE?si=K2ZR1BksgPqoTUpF

By the way, you may have heard from other developers that their video cards do not have enough memory, and that they have to buy Quadro A6000, which cost almost 5K dollars. So, now you can tell them that they are wasting their money :)


kRigger strategic resource of keyclap

On a previous report, I discussed developing my own rig, which will be used by all characters when posing and creating animations. Well, it's finally finished. Not completely, of course, but I can already work with it. In total, two months were spent on thi− damn, it took a long time... But wait! Watch the video first!

https://youtu.be/L_g2H8_ho-Q?si=ND11GMIvtyk5MB9u

I had to go through rigging course and at the same time transfer all I've leant into code,  and ask for advice from real animators in order to make the most professional rig possible. After all, the quality of the controllers will determine how believable the characters’ emotions will be. All this, of course, is done only for working in Daz. But a month ago a thought came to my mind, which made me sit down and think seriously...


Blender waste of time, a disaster or progress?

Now we've reached the craziest part.

As soon as I somehow thought that I was just wasting time in Daz, I got sad... After all, it’s true that all I’ve been doing for the last year is fighting with the program, and not creating content. Any task in it took an unforgivably long time, and simple animation took the whole day. A specific question arose. Should I stay where I am, create content, earn money and pay off debts? Or, should I switch from smearing charcoal on the wall to painting with brushes and canvases?

It was scary, very scary. I felt like I was about to betray the program I've worked with for so many years. What if nothing works out and I just lost a month? I wanted to switch to Blender only after I finished this game, as all normal developers do. But my desire not to sit still made me try it. There was only one task - transfer one character and adjust the skin shader so that it looks more or less the same. I tried to do this before, but nothing worked. Do you think it worked this time? Of course not. I didn't even take a screenshot because it looked terrible. And I went to bed angry, thinking that I don’t need all these challenges, and that I have to continue to work at Daz, where everything works out for me the first time.

But the process has already begun.

The next day, the first thing I did was not launch Daz, but Blender. I put my anxiety aside and I began to try to do at least something in it. As soon as I managed to create something more or less beautiful, I came to the conclusion that it was time to pack up my stuff and move onto Blender.

For the first two hellish weeks, I kept repeating to myself that the render engine is just a tool. That it really all depends on the person. I had to re-learn the Blender tools and research the information I need... Good luck doing that with Daz xD

I set myself a deadline of 1 month. During this time, I had to transfer the main characters, their clothes, set up shaders (and without ready-made locations this is difficult to do), make sure that the Shape Keys are transferred from the characters to the clothes and the character’s skin does not pass through the clothes. And there are also locations, kRigger’s unfinished facial rig, the vital Scene Optimizer and other scripts needed for work.

Guess what? I managed to do almost everything in time ;)

Before this I only made test renders to check individual details, but today I made three full renders in Blender for the first time.

With the new program came the opportunity to come up with a radically new way of working. In Daz, I did this: put the characters in poses (15-20 minutes), saved the project (30 seconds, yeah-yeah, slooow), rendered the frame (2-5 minutes), postprocess and edit in Photoshop (1-3 minutes).

But now everything will be completely different, and this is how I see the new process: put the characters into poses using the power of Blender, a graphics tablet and a generated rig by kRigger (5 minutes), press the “freeze scene” button and go to the next frame, as if the whole project is animation. This will make it possible to move through frames and easily control absolutely everything at any time.

Blender is fast, allowing you to open and close projects in seconds. The rendering process itself will now take place separately at night, which will increase the clarity of the renders by a factor of two.

Well, was it worth moving? :>

It's been a week since I released the initial version of "Our Bright Days". I received tons of good and bad reviews from people and I'm really happy to see all the support you've shown me! I spent few days on reading all the comments and I took into account all the constructive feedback. I also found some really good people who are ready to help me with the game and my bad Engrish. So, thank you all!

Let's talk about the future release that is going to come up within a few days. Please, don't expect much, as the coming release will be all about proofreading and making the game more friendly.

Release TO-DO (0.1.1):
1. Disable rollback blocking for the timed choices. Block rollback only after the warning message.
2. Add some more instructions about the game GUI.
3. Add a choice to either use the default Ren'Py navigation for dialogues or the custom one.
4. Add skip button and rework auto-forward and hide interface buttons.
5. Make the rollback function save last 100 steps.
6. Make it more ADHD friendly (reduce the number of transitions used in the game).

Finally, I can proudly say that I release the game. It's been so long since I uploaded the demo version of "Dizzy City Life" and now I'm so happy to be back. All this time I've been training and improving myself in coding, 3D modelling and animating. So now I'm quite skilled to create games for you!

I'm not sure if I can release the game updates every month, because I'm really being serious about the quality. But you can help me to save a little bit of time. English is not my native language, so I really need someone's help. In a few days I'll create a post with all the information about the game proofreading. 

Here you can download the free version of "Our Bright Days" 0.1.0 [ENG/RUS]:

itch.io | MEGA

I also included some animations in this release, so you'll be able to preview the new gameplay feature - ILAE (Interactive Layered Animation Engine). This thing is meant to replace the default WebM animations. But don't worry! The game will give you a choice to select between ILAE and WebM animations.
If you l like the game, then please consider supporting me to unlock all the other features like Fruit Gallery and exclusive themes.

P.S. Here's the link to the old "Dizzy City Life". Just to see the progress I made :)