Progress Update

Man the hits just keep on coming. I finally got over the flu, and went right into what we'll call a "Dental emergency". In fact, this post is pre-written and scheduled to go out while I'm at the dentist, getting things finally taken care of!

That said, I did actually make some progress this week. Set up the new PC, got that up and running, and man does it zoom. I ran a quick test- a render on my old build that took 1 hr, took 13 minutes with the new one. 

Because of the whole "dental emergency" bit, plus having to spend a full day setting the new PC up, I didn't get as much done as I would have liked, but I did make some decent progress. I finished up all the renders for 3 scenes, and later today when I get back I'll work on the next one and should have that finished today as well. 

By next week I should be back on pace fully, (barring any more sudden emergencies), and then we'll start making some really swift progress. 

As of right now, here's where we stand. Ch1 I haven't really started on much. For the prologue, renders are at this point about 50% done - I have 3 major scenes, plus the game's first free roam to render, and the rest is done. I should easily be able to get all of that done next week (I expect free roams in general to take a lot longer than a normal scene, but this one is going to be fairly small so it shouldn't take more than a day or two), and then we'll be working on CH1. The first few environments for Ch1 are already built, plus about 50% of the biggest one of the chapter, so I should be able to make pretty good progress there as well for a while. Just looking at what I have, and what environments I still need to build, I should get through everything up to the first CH1 free roam (Much bigger than the prologue, and at about the halfway point of the chapter) this month without issue. How long that one takes me I honestly have no clue - I'll have to get there and see before I really have an idea how long they'll take to fully design. 

Luckily, while I was waiting on the new PC, I got the majority of the writing and coding finished - I'd estimate about 50% of the coding and 70-80% of the writing done. I'm going to pause on both of those for a while and focus all of my time on getting renders out as much as possible. 

That's all for this week - hopefully next week nothing major goes wrong, and I can knock out a few hundred in that time - that's the current goal at least - we'll see how it goes. Speaking of next week, next week I'm going to add the first poll! I'll give more details next week, but for now I'll be running some polls on all the "extras" in-game. (Stuff like the minigame renders you can buy, or phone wallpapers, etc). I have a few things I want to add, and have room for plenty others so I'm willing to let everyone else decide.

And for anyone wondering "Wait, won't doing those take time away from working on the game?" The answer is.... not really. Doing a single one of those, if I put some serious time into it, doesn't take more than a couple of hours, it ends up being the sort of thing you do to chill and relax when you absolutely need a break. Mostly, it's an exercise in avoiding burnout. During Alive I did quite a few of them on my downtime that I posted in various places (or added to the TV screens!) - this time around I just plan on adding them to the game directly, that's all. Honestly a lot of devs do these sorts of renders for that exact reason - sometimes you need to take a break, and do something "fun" - otherwise you quickly find yourself trying to "force" the work, and the quality suffers. Being able to break it up with something else every now and then helps you come back re-focused. Not that any of this really matters, it's just a thing I've seen people say to quite a few devs in the past, and honestly it's the sort of thing that doesn't take too much time and generally is actually helpful overall. 

Well, I'll be back next week with hopefully a screenshot or so, info on the poll, and a poll! Until then - Have a great week!