Dev Log Week 13: Was I Ever Sane to Start With?

Welcome back to the chaotic ramblings of a dev just trying to make this all work. This week I have mostly been screaming into the void while wrestling with new tools, hating my hardware, questioning my life choices, and consuming enough Monster energy to possibly trigger a Super Saiyan transformation.

Why do I hate my hardware? Good question, Jimmy. In my posing rig, I have a 4080 Super. I bought this card to save money when I started working on the game. While it is a solid card, I keep finding myself smashing into its 16GB VRAM limit as I try to create more ambitious scenes. Even with optimisation, these scenes are still a nightmare to work with. I cannot solve this straight away, but I would be lying if I said I hadn’t seriously considered selling a kidney to buy another 4090 or even a 5090. That is assuming the Monster energy hasn’t already rendered my kidneys worthless.

Meanwhile, my 4090 has turned my office into a sauna as it continues its month-long render queue thanks to the animations. This has made me seriously question whether it would be smarter to bite the bullet and switch to Blender animations for the rest of the chapter. I plan to make that decision after all the still renders for this chapter are done, so no matter what I choose, it will not delay the stills.

New Tools

This week I finally jumped into Marvelous Designer. Huge thanks to Barra for showing me the ropes and walking me through it a few times until I got comfortable. This means I can now create realistic clothing morphs for special renders and potentially game scenes. It gives me so much more creative freedom to make those steamy scenes that will hopefully make your eyes weep with joy. Maybe.

Pathing and Story Considerations

I have been putting off writing the rest of the chapter for now. Instead, I have focused on still renders and building up a good render queue while the animations are chugging away. This has given me time to think and chat with other devs about how this chapter plays out, how it fits into the overall story, and how to tackle some teething problems I created back in Chapter One.

What do I mean by teething problems? The biggest is that I got greedy and introduced six love interests. For the sake of the story, I have decided to roll that back to four main love interests. This means Evelyn and Kelly will be demoted to side girl status. I know this might disappoint some of you, but I need to make the best choice for the long-term story while it is still early. I added them to the main roster during Chapter One because they were so damn pretty I wanted players to fall in love with them. But now that I am mapping out the endings and the MC’s personal choices, their paths conflict with the core story I want to tell. I would rather write satisfying, consistent endings than force characters in just to tick a box. That does not mean there will not be fun with these two, but they will serve the story better as side girls.

Render Numbers

With that painful truth out of the way, let’s talk numbers. This week I completed 129 renders, bringing the current total of stills to 746. That is nearly half of Chapter One’s final render count, and I still have a long way to go in this chapter.

Plan for the Week Ahead

This week I plan to get some serious writing done and move closer to finishing the script for this chapter. I also want to hit at least the same number of renders as last week, as I really want to smash through that 1,000 render milestone soon.

As always, thanks to everyone on Discord for keeping me motivated. Thanks again to everyone on Patreon. I love reading your replies and seeing you engage with the project. It really brings this whole thing to life.

Thanks,
Bat