nottravisgames
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It's the "One way or another..." update
🕑 Added 2020-09-28 20:55:12 +0000 UTCHello, and apologies for the radio silence of late which was rather enforced by circumstances.
I fried the CPU and killed the PC during the polishing work. A somewhat blunt opening but I can't really think of a better way to put it.
I've been without it for a couple of weeks (hence my complete absence from everywhere) as this one wasn't cheap. The fault is mine ofc. Not only because of the sheer punishment the PC has been taking of late (which must be, if we include re-works, over 10,000 renders easily since May), but it seems I bodged the repair to the motherboard earlier this year which is what caused her to go. I should explain that in replacing the motherboard I had to switch the CPU over and in, doing, so re-apply thermal paste between the CPU and the heatsink and it seems that it's this bit I didn't do correctly. The fact I'd added a load of cooling to the PC to stop it overheating again mitigated the flaw in the repair but ultimately it just went.
I didn't screw it up entirely, else it would have gone much earlier, but one of my forum members read through the "live" blog I was doing on the last repair and found the smoking gun.
"Case seems hotter than I recall and I'm fairly sure it's rendering about 10% longer than before.".... which I really should have followed up on rather than wishing it away as if anything was saying the CPU would be getting hot it was that...
So where does this leave us? Well let me talk about Chapter Three first.
Chapter Three.
The situation sucks, although thankfully the chapter doesn't. It's, say, 2/3rd polished, 1/3 unpolished at the moment and the polishing is bringing the game out even better. The polishing isn't just spot rendering or graphical tweaks I should add. For example it may be extra content, there is an easter egg which the MC can unlock by some repair work. Think of it as a hidden object type thingy. Yet this isn't just a hidden image. It's a fully scripted one hundred render lewd and comic scene. Or it may be a tweak to the gameplay interface. Again, for example, when the MC is deciding what tools to use at the moment they get their toolbox drop down but I've added as a part of the polishing work a "hover box" which appears before their selection reminding them what the tool is and what it can be used for or it might be the odd extra animation to break up a scene slightly. So all good stuff and all designed to make your experience more enjoyable. Are these absolutely necessary? Well maybe, maybe not. But do they do make the whole thing better.
So whatever I'm screwing up, it absolutely isn't on the quality front and it certainly isn't for lack of effort. Two PC kills rather underline that latter one.
I'll wrap up the polishing in the next few days, let the testers have one final run at it and then release it. I did think about releasing it as it is and thus making the September point but, if I'm screwed, I may as well be screwed with a quality product than something that's half and half.
As to pledges and version releases, I stand by what I said earlier in that the release version available to you will be the higher of your pledge in August or September, so yes...if you want to cancel your support in light of my latest disaster (and no, I don't blame you if you do) you'll still get the version you pledged for and I'll PM you the link. I might be rubbish (or unlucky) but I'm not out to screw anyone over. My hardware issues shouldn't mean you lose out.
Going forward...
In between chain smoking whilst bemoaning my fate (just what I've done to annoy the little Gods of developers, I'm fucked if I know but they have my card marked it seems) I spent some time asking myself the question of just what was it that was going so wrong all the time.
The key problem is that I'm trying to be one of the best at this lark but without the supporting infrastructure to be able to achieve it. There is a Catch-22 here in that I need more hardware to make this game more quickly. A single PC is finding it hard to take the strain. But for more hardware I need support. For more support I need to release product more quickly. To release product more quickly I need more hardware...
I'm not in the fortunate position of already starting with a load of IT kit nor have having a great deal of support and yet, scrappy underdog that I am, I'm trying to match, if not surpass, my peers that do and go toe-toe with the very best. So how do I break this circle? Because unless I do, we're going to have more of the same-old, same-old of me working hard and falling flat on my face every time and my nose is getting a bit sore doing that. Trust me when I say I'm as unhappy about me screwing up as you, quite rightly, are. Yes, alright, there were a lot of new mechanics in this chapter that took some time to get balanced and I was keen to get the animated bonus done as well but I can't keep going "oh well next time will be different" and hoping it will be. I'm tired of letting you down. I want you laughing at my jokes, enjoying my story and enjoying my smut - not listening to me explain again what went wrong this time. This is all the more frustrating as large chunks of the game were completed months ago.
Yes, I could compromise. Do I really need a chapter that needed close to 9,000 renders? I could cut material, reduce the animations, trim storylines etc - but would you really want me to trim the game? Especially once you've seen Chapter Three I suspect the answer would be no. But something has to be done. Something has to change.
So for Chapter Four I'm thinking of doing something different. Of late I've been completing the stand alone modules first then doing the main game but if I flip that on it's head it allows me a possibility to break this circle to everyone's benefit. H5 is designed to be played as complete chapters but is modular in nature. It lends itself very much to splitting down into parts and what I'm considering is exactly this with the next chapter coming out as a series of modules.
The first release would be the main story. So that is the first part of the day up to and including all the freeroam but stopping when we get to the evening choices. After that I'd complete each evening module and then update the main game file. So when I complete the "Caverns" module, I'll just announce it and update the file. If you're not going down that route you can ignore the update and not have to worry about downloading something you're not interested in. I'll carry on doing this with each module with Chadders domme path being the last and with that one I'd then bring in all the final results screens, FAQs etc. Each update would be when it was done and not tied to an end of month. So if "Caverns" takes me a week, I update it in a week. etc etc.
If you prefer playing a complete chapter then all you have to do is wait until it's finished but meanwhile there is primary evidence of my progress and, perhaps more importantly, regular updates as opposed to this "waiting on a promise" system that I currently have. Given that my testers have stated that some of the modules are larger than some other games monthly updates this might not be too shabby a way to go.
Do I want to do it like this? No, not really. I'd much prefer to have a couple of high end machines with one churning out the animations and the other dedicated to gameplay and core renders and whacking out a complete end to end chapter every couple of months. But I don't have two machines and I'm simply not delivering in a sufficiently timely manner for people to have faith in me.
In conclusion....
I'd welcome your thoughts on my proposal first and foremost but, more importantly, I wanted to let you know the situation and my future plans before the month end so you could cancel your pledge if you so wish. Especially as I will ensure that you still get the release you pledged for. If you do, I totally understand. I won't hold it against you and you're always more than welcome to come back or, indeed, after you've played the chapter to pop over to my forum and let me know what you thought regardless.
But before you do, I'd like you to consider this. You know I can write; you know I can entertain you; I spend time making sure the gameplay is on point; I care about your experience; my images aren't too shoddy and, if the testers are to believed, my recent animations are top tier (yes, including the lewds). I'm making something completely different to most games out there and to top it all I also have an absolutely filthy mind...
With the tools to do the job I could give you the game of your life. Your support helps get me those tools.
Notty
Comments
Phillip Scott
I back after my own real life dramas and have to say you put to much pressure on yourself. Forget deadlines and enjoy telling your story because you are a true storyteller and stop trying to keep up with everyone else with their high end setups and zero imagination. Let it take the time it needs to tell story you want but dont forget to enjoy the jaffa cakes on the way.
Dante Red
I know my reply is a bit late but I agree about updating the game one piece at a time being a good idea. I honestly think that your game is one of the better ones on Patreon and I really enjoy the humor in it. I would also recommend trying to make weekly or at least every 2 week updates, since it helps keeping in touch with the fandom.
Pezzo1
As @TotesNotTea said, I'm with you all the way. Imo, I would rather wait more and get a full chapter but, I understand that for the sake of your mental state, workload and safety of the rig the option to release modules one by one might be the best. Regardless of your final decision, the choice is yours Notty, and you will have my full support for both :) Stay strong and remember to relax tho
I actually think the piecemeal thing might be a good idea. If you're stressing your rig this hard and don't have the capacity to keep things running at the pace you want it to, you have to play safe. If you blow things completely to pieces beyond repair, how long is it going to take to update things then? Even if some people wait for the full chapter, if it's decreasing the risk on your rig and helping you out from a workload perspective it's probably worth at least experimenting with, and if you get to the point where you can upgrade safely, or you can get things running faster without needing to worry about introducing new mechanics and coding, then you can go back to full releases later.
Xsandman78
Sorry to hear of pc woes. Personally, I don’t have much interest in piecemeal updates, so i’ll most likely Wait for full chapter releases regardless of longer timescales.
hisstoryman
Welcome back to the land of living PC's! Now get back to work! ;)
Dur-Dan
I was going through my feed a couple of days ago and was wondering why there had been such a long pause. That explains it. And it's one of my biggest fears every time I buy new PC parts and put them together that something should go wrong with the CPU and the cooling paste. I'm really sorry for you that you went up hardware failure creek without a paddle twice and fingers crossed that you've now paid your dues to the IT gods and they will smile on your work again ;) I only became a Patreon recently because I really enjoyed the game version I played. I appreciate honesty and communication and you tick both boxes for this, so of course I'll stay as a Patreon :)
Juicy
I suggested something like that, but it does have some problems. People volunteering would need the *exact* same assets that Notty uses on their computers. And Notty wants to produce this in a completely legit way (no illegally "shared" assets), so this could be expensive for some. She also did some re-texturing herself, so distribution of such textures would be at her own discretion. Another problem is, that some renders might be massive spoilers. Which would be a bit of a shame if they got out, though that might be more of an organizational thing, to make sure she'd do such renders herself. Then there's spot-rendering, which Notty uses a lot for small problems, like clipping outfits. I'm not sure that would work when original render and spot render were made on different computers. Iray is a bit odd, it doesn't always produce the exact same result for rendering the exact same scene, and it wouldn't surprise me if differences were more noticable between different machines. Even the tiniest difference in how light is calculated can alter the shade of color on an image, and spot-renders that should fix an image might actually become noticable. There are definitely renders that Notty could outsource to others, but I think that would primarily be test-renders, for her to get a feel whether an idea she has for a scene would work the way she imagines or not. This can still reduce her workload a lot, especially at the start of a chapter she's working on, but much less useful when she gets close to release.
TotesNotThea
You know my thoughts on this from the forum; you'll have my continued support in any way I can help. 🙂
Xerus
Sorry to hear about your hardware failure, Notty. You have my continued support!
Just a random thought, unsure of how it exactly works or if it is possible with used software: But could Crowd Rendering help you out? (as in, you can use the PCs of volunteers to render (parts of) frames)
