Dev Log Week 28: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Bat

Let me start off by saying, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I don’t want anyone getting too excited and needing to be taken to a calm, dark room where a handful of beautiful women soothe you with their ample assets. Actually, scratch that. I do want that, for each and every one of you.

What I don’t want, however, is to give the impression that I’m nearly done, because I am genuinely terrified about the amount of work still ahead of me. That said, I have officially finished setting up the stills for this episode. The render queue is locked and loaded, and the 4090 is begging for a rest. But I will not let it take a single moment of solace until it finishes generating the world I have created. Once it is done, maybe I will let it have a Pepsi and a nap. Maybe.

Alright, let’s dial back the rambling for a second so I can lay it out straight. I completed 118 renders this week, bringing the episode total to 2,294. There will be some unlockables that bump that number up, but that is where I am at right now.

No time to celebrate this milestone though, there is still plenty left to do. Since finishing the stills, I cracked open the animation files Nuii Pointer sent me and set up the lighting and cameras for one of the loops. That is now rendering away on my pose rig, which means I currently have no spare system to handle post work.

With both PCs tied up, I switched gears and created another background track for the game on my Mac (see below). There is a lot of music still to make for this episode, but I am trying to reuse tracks where I can to keep the music workflow efficient.

I have also completed the first pass of post work on around 790 images. In this stage, I go through and check for clipping or other issues that can be easily fixed, or note where spot renders are needed. Once that first pass is done across all images, I will start the second pass, which focuses on exposure, accents, finishing touches, and finally applying my colour grade. This will take a while, so between the music and post work, there is still plenty to do.

I will stop rambling for now, but I want to say thank you again to everyone who has been commenting on posts, chatting on Discord, or just sending kind words my way. It really helps to have this kind of support while pushing through the insane hours that go into developing a game like this.

When I first set out to make Moonlight, I had no idea how much effort it would truly take. I mentioned earlier this week on the Stone Fox Studios live stream that having a solid support network is absolutely key to keeping momentum, and all of you are part of that. Thank you for keeping me going.

Cheers,
Bat