Dumbass developer forgets to talk about development (again)

Quick fire excuses:

Forgor ADHD med shortage for >1 month Typing hard my hand hurt owee oof ow my hand internet slow I've been uploading this status update for 5 weeks (Albanian ISP) the last update where I said I'd be better at communication was a joke and you all fell for it coma finished the whole game then scrapped it because I can do better social experiment budget constraints

Sincere excuses and actually worthwhile reading:

I'm actually just really fucking stupid. I did the thing again where I was waiting until I hit a milestone to deliver a status update and that milestone started creeping away from me. Regardless, I'm rendering the penultimate chapter right now. Writing, for whatever reason, has presented more of a struggle than ever this time, and that's where the time sinks have gone. I'm also working overtime right now to try and make this more than an "I'm still alive 👍" type update so bear with me while I improvise.

Anyway, I'm writing... "different" things this update, this is probably the 3rd unique challenge I've had to write, so that'll probably be the reason why it keeps halting me. Especially if we pretend I'm not just tired and scrambling for motivation on the daily. It's kind of hard to talk about writing as it happens, I'm not really sure what I can do or what other developers do about it. I guess what I can talk about is the current and upcoming renders as there's been a few changes. Namely, a whole bunch of plugins I was too scared to install in case I break things. Realm Invader was already one of the best-looking AVNs made in this engine, but it looks like I can bring it further. So there have been two huge improvements to my renders which'll start to come into fruition. Firstly, the shaders I use have been updated, it's kind of hard to explain what it specifically means, but things such as skin and how light interacts with people and objects is improved. Secondly, voxel-based global illumination. This was actually available years ago, but was broken until recently. Think of it as a middle ground between rasterization and ray tracing, light should bounce, diffuse, and reflect properly. Not only does this make lighting more natural and realistic, but it can possibly make scene building a little faster as I'd need fewer artificial lights.

Anyway, I'm just going to attach a dummy render to show what I'm talking about. Don't think too hard about this render, it's extremely low-effort. The point is that I didn't add any lights to the scene. (I'm still figuring out the hair shaders, though, they're the toughest to get right)

Subscribestar doesn't let you insert images into the body of text as far as I can tell, so see attached, Before on the left, After on the right.

The same goes for animation tools, I've got a bunch of new ones. And, believe it or not, my animations can look even better now. Well, the porn ones at least. What I can't know until I try is where this sits on the [better animations <=> easier to make animations] spectrum. I mean, hopefully both, but you know...

Preview dump soon, might double dip and do two small ones as I dig through this chapter. I'm also thinking of maybe doing a minor spoilerpost for supporters or something, I think that'd be cool.

So that's the gist of it: Writing made me consider institutionalization, rendering will also make me consider institutionalization but at least they'll look good. Miya does NOT say the N-word in this episode but she does fire her gun. And EVERY girl with a route actually makes an appearance this episode.

Sorry I'm so shit at my sole responsibility.

• Gary

(PS. I listened to a band called SikTh. Holy shit, they were like 10 years ahead of their time.)