2 year anniversary

I’m going to take a different approach today since I don’t have any preview renders ready for this progress report that I can share without spoilers. Instead, here’s a short post about something that happened two days ago.

On that day in 2024, the prologue was released. A lot has happened since then. Initially, there were difficulties and constant re-rendering behind the scenes, but now the process runs “almost” smoothly. Despite my full-time job, this allows me to stick to what I consider a decent release schedule of two big releases per year.

A lot has also changed for me personally in 2026. After almost 20 years at the same company, I had to find a new purpose again. On top of that, I had to make an unplanned move to continue fulfilling my other responsibilities. Overall, despite the uncertainties, this year has been almost entirely positive in terms of the game.

Briefly about the numbers after these 24 months:

Words

• 230333

Static renders

• 20261

Animation renders

• 28500

Chapter 6 is still on track for release in mid-to-late December, assuming the world doesn’t end. After a brief detour in Chapter 7, we will head into the home stretch with Chapters 8, 9 and 10. Provided the chapters don’t spiral out of control unexpectedly and become massive, my original target completion date of late 2028 remains realistic. A possible Steam release, assuming Steam still allows AVNs by then, would be in early 2029. As I did last year for Chapters 4, 5, and 6, I’ve also attached a small preview poster for Chapter 7. For the final three chapters (8, 9 and 10), this will require more work since they effectively mark the endings of the main love interest routes. After Chapter 7, I’ll need to put more effort into writing the script since I’ll have to split each ending into three parts, spreading them across the final three chapters for each of the main love interests. This effectively turns 3 endings into 9, since each route needs a suitable place to end each chapter.

Chapter 7 presents the final and most significant challenge. As few people know the technical difficulties involved, I’ll keep this brief. Currently, I have several setups in place to ensure a smooth workflow. My 'best' PC has a GPU with 48 GB of RAM. This enables me to use six to seven G9 characters, a large set and low-resolution background characters. The focus is on 'use'. While you can work with this number of assets in Daz3D (program for posing and rendering), the experience is akin to playing a game with a 300 ping. It's possible, but absolutely no fun. This is especially true for scenes that require hundreds of renders, meaning weeks of frustrating work. Chapter 7 contains a scene that will exceed these requirements because it in theory needs over a hundred background characters. Once Chapter 6 is finished, I’ll need to put a lot of work into the planning to make this possible. Unfortunately, buying better hardware isn’t an option because it would cost over 20,000 euros and wouldn't improve the software's performance. It would merely allow more characters to be loaded. But that’s a problem for my future self, two months from now.

In terms of timing, we’re now officially in the home stretch and in the second half of the development cycle, which is expected to conclude by the end of 2028.

I hope you enjoy the next chapter, due to be released in December.

The regular progress reports will resume next week.

That's it for this time. Until next week.