Corporate Development Memo (11/8/2020)

Oh my God, the election is finally over!  I went through quite a crazy week for work, but I didn't forget about spending time on doing some great 0.4 work!  So starting tomorrow I am officially hitting the ground running hard again, but I did do a lot this week:

1) I have outlined about 30 scenes, and have separated them by normal computer and stronger computer needs (based on complexity of scenes) to render them well.  I did a lot of asset hunting (scenes, clothes, etc) and such.

2) I did make a purchase decision on the computer!  What I don't know yet is exactly when it will come, as it depends on the supply of RTX 3090 cards, but it seems like within a month or maybe 6 weeks at the latest.  I am pretty excited to get my hands on it!  This computer is directly from the funds from all of YOU, so you are directly impacting the game in a more positive way.  I am also using this computer only for this kind of thing, and not an overpowered Minecraft system or anything.  :)

My only worry with this card is that the new Daz program BETA is having little issues with supporting the card (current normal version does NOT support the 3000 series cards) but I feel fairly comfortable it will be working within a month hopefully.  I am really excited to see how my speed can improve, although it won't be a pure speed 100% increase or anything as I will also do more complex scenes.  I am so anxious to see what happens!  Oh, I also learned two newbie things I was not doing before (not rendering while sleeping being a huge one, thanks Zoey Raven!) and just doing that might help on speed too!

3) The picture above is from someone I have been hinting at, but I can now say that I am getting some formal help in an official capacity from someone I now consider a close friend, Anais!  We actually work together in real life, and I will confess now she helped with about 225 of the 992 renders for 0.3!  I released 0.3 Test and hoped no one would notice a difference in quality, but I think she will end up better than me long-term with art!  Anyway, the picture above are two possible "visitors" to the facility, so please let her (and me) know what you think of them!  If you see her on Discord, please welcome her!  We attended the same university and sorority, and I hope she can really help on this project and make it even better!  Some of the scenes she did for 0.3 were -- the Veronica lab scene for dom path, the Dominique plant scene on dom path, the temple scene with ninja character, the clothing store/dressing room scene, and a few others.  I am tending to still do the sub scene art as I am being particular about certain facial expressions and camera angles, etc.  Do not fret about my influence -- I am still directing her on every single shot/render to maintain a certain style of the game, this is much more to help me survive the time crunch of my life and still deliver to you all a great game!

So this week I am going to start working on the renders I can easily do with my current computer (this is why I split the scenes in outlining), and keep writing more dialogue, etc.  I actually believe I will make 0.4 slightly smaller (never a promise, just a hope) so it can come out a little quicker.  Maybe a more reasonable thing like 750-800 renders, a little less than 30k words.   Regarding release dates and renders, I may adjust this with a new computer (I hope!), but it seems pretty clear for me so far that a reasonable rate of pace is roughly 250-325 renders a month, give or take a dozen or so here and there depending on time.  I did 0.1 with 457 renders in about two months, and I took a little over three months for 0.3 with 992 renders.  So I am going to try and tweak release date guesses based on this kind of pace as I get closer to finishing.

I hope everyone had a great week!

0.4 Update:  2,724 words, no renders yet but I really did a lot of planning and asset hunting!  Going into normal mode starting tomorrow!