RealmInvader
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Important update and a mitigated disaster
🕑 Added 2024-01-23 09:15:58 +0000 UTC
I ain't spoke in a while.
Despite living in a nightmare for 2-3 weeks, things are looking back to normal-ish.
I alluded to this in my last patron-only update, but I'm kind of stressed and tired regarding the development of Realm Invader, this also includes a negative feedback-loop in which my dwindling work-pace is only causing more stress. Regardless, I've still been working throughout this radio silence of mine.
Worse came to (almost) worst when I found myself in the midst of technical difficulties. For those of you who don't know: I've spent almost all of my hard-earned Realm Invader money on a shiny new PC. This has been a long time; putting this money aside, and I couldn't have done it without my supporters, and I couldn't be more grateful.
First things first: Windows 11 is fine. Stop crying about it.
Second thing second: Holy shit the 4090 is fast. What the fuck?! 2-3 hour long render times have been reduced to a mere 20 minutes, not only that, but the stupidly-high 24GB of VRAM allows me to actually multi-task while rendering as well, no more staring at a black screen for 3 hours. I genuinely can't put into words how life-changing this is. Apart from the misery of waiting such a long time, it's now feasible for me to tweak animations after rendering. If I find myself unhappy with an animation (not 100% happy with the way something is moving, AO too high and causing artifacts, etc...) it's no longer demoralizing knowing I have to go for a walk or sit around while it renders. My motivation to fine-tune animations has skyrocketed. Studio also handles like a dream and I'm no longer berated by the fans of my 2080Ti screaming at me as I work. I haven't properly played any games on it yet, but I've run a few just to benchmark it. Let's just say I can't wait to take it for a ride in between updates.
64GB of DDR5 RAM is letting my computer run smoother too, not to mention Studio has a weird way of utilizing memory where it'll use on-board RAM as well as VRAM while rendering. I would often cut it close to the 32GB I had before. Now? Not even close.
Now the processor... this story isn't so nice.
The CPU is by far the largest jump in hardware I've made, going from an i7-7700k to an i9-14900k. This jump is truly astronomical, and yes, this processor is rapid.
It also gave me the most headache.
Heavily multi-threaded tasks, such as compilation, emulation, and video encoding would all crash, and occasionally blue-screen. WHEA logs would give either Translation Lookaside Buffer errors or Internal Parity errors. I've spent more time over the past 2 weeks looking at the BIOS screen than any non-technician should. I was very worried that this update today would be me informing you that I am RMA-ing the processor, and won't be able to work on the game until that process was completed. Thankfully, the final step on my attempt at troubleshooting (BIOS Flash) brang some much-needed stability, and I can finally run these productivity tasks.
So the processor works, but unsurprisingly of Intel, it draws a dickload of power, and still thermally throttles even with my expensive AiO cooler hooked up to it. Classic Intel. On the bright side, it's speedy as hell and FFmpeg no longer crashes (In fact, I'm encoding as I type this)
The reason I'm resurrecting myself now is that I'm no longer stuck between a rock (PC shitting itself) and a hard place (animations).
Just now I finished animating/rendering the final animation in this long batch. The final long batch of this update. I've still got about 150 more renders to do, but I no longer want to kill myself which is always a plus. So, unfortunately, PC panic and deteriorating development speed have probably added another three weeks to this update. Yes, I'm just as unhappy about it as you are.
Stress levels are easing out, and we should be back on a normal schedule. Thanks to everyone who stayed subscribed as I was feigning death.
- Gary
P.S. I urge the remaining Gatekeepers to make your custom requests. January is almost over.
Comments
Lyuke
Glad you were able to solve your pc problems! I hope that work will be less stresfull for the upcoming days letting you relax a little!
althea124
Glad you no longer want to kill yourself! :3 Ya got this!
