I'm back! Feels a little like a George Costanza moment in that something will inevitably go wrong. But I'm nearly 100%. Not doing any sports yet, but it doesn't feel like I'm going to melt into a heap of biohazardous material either. The real downside with being sick was that I had 6 days of rendering scheduled. I tried, but no good.
I'm not posting a render today, because I don't want to give away anything in scene 3. If I don't finish by Sunday, I will render something for your enjoyment. Scenes 3, 4, and 5 are really all connected. Kind of hoping to be done with all of those this week, but unsure as they require a fair amount of posing...which is usually what takes the longest. I might invest in a couple of posing packs, but I'm always a little hesitant as they are almost never perfect. However, if they get me close, it's probably worth it in terms of time spent. I still have about 10 renders to finish scene 2. Currently at 130 renders for the chapter.
Tom of Adult Game Reviews posted a proper review of Pecker PI on his Patreon (the previous was just a live playthrough of first chapter). It was overall quite positive. Currently you have to be a Patreon to watch, but it will be free on youtube in a week or so. I'll post a link when it's up.
DogCat Studios (a friend and proponent of Pecker PI) released his newest version of The Power of Truth. He is such a positive and hard-working developer and is always up for helping out when I run into trouble (coding springs to mind).
It finally feels like I'm back in the process and I'm excited to work on chapter 6.
Well, I got sicker. Probably flu. I tried to write a Diary post from bed on Thursday, but I forgot what I was going to write...so not extremely successful. Anyway, I'm better but still not 100%.
Progress has been a little slow due to me being laid out. Chapter 6 is coming along. About 90 renders, and scene 1 is coded. Doing some rendering today. Will be close to finishing scene 2.
Sorry, a day late on the log, but wasn't feeling so hot yesterday. Not better today, but for some reason I have renewed motivation. I have updated links with some bug/spelling fixes. That will be the last of the chapter 5 fixes. If you come across something, I will add it to the to-do list for next release.
I tried to get off to a running start on this chapter, but there is always some sort of emotional steam release at completion of a chapter and this was no different...despite my best efforts. Writing doesn't seem to be affected, so that is what I've been doing along with some promo work. This release was also (by a mile) the most successful in terms of new patreons. Mostly free, but the project also doubled the number of paid subscribers. I am thrilled on both accounts. Thank you all!
Today I'm continuing renders for scene 2 and starting the coding for the first scene. I am determined to finish this chapter faster. How much faster, you ask. I have no idea. There was definitely some events and issues that slowed down the release of chapter 5, and I'm hoping to avoid at least a couple of those. Along with coding as I go, that should cut down on the development time. I'll work a bit on putting up a Steam page, but I won't be doing any re-renders of chapter 1 until I'm ready to publish there (chapter 8). With everything going on with the payment providers, who knows what that will look like then. In the meantime I will be focusing on chapter 6.
I hate to promote this before I know if it's a positive review or not. But I think it's worth promoting for the sake of giving a platform to those who spotlight AVNs. So please check it out at Adult Game Review
Alright! The free release is here. There has been some further corrections to spelling and a path trigger that didn't engage. I'm hoping all issues have been fixed now. Thanks to wibble, jufot, DogCat and LuckySpices for catching some mistakes...yes, even I make mistakes, but it's clearly not that often:-) Alright, it's not that uncommon, but I will deny it all if asked.
Saves are broken. They may appear to work, but you might miss content if you don't start over. It'll take a few minutes to skip through to the new chapter. Hopefully not a deal breaker. It will also ensure that the replay album works correctly.
I had to rework some of the scene order in the next chapter for flow, but it's all mapped out now. I got a good amount written this week and like I mentioned in a previous tier release, I have finished renders for scene 1. This month is looking pretty good for rendering. Dinner at Bellarosa will probably be the roughest to get through because of the number of characters, which will be a bunch of partial renders since my graphics card can only do 3 character renders comfortably at a time. I'll rant about that as I get to it. It's scene 11, so I'm not going to worry about that just yet. There will be scenes with Danielle, Det. Turis, Valerie, Victoria, Gabrielle, Camille and Hannah. Obviously varying degrees of intimacy. And another flashback to the war...this time Sgt. Babcock will be surprisingly nice to our hero. Just kidding, he will be his usual terrible self.
Friend of Pecker PI and fellow developer The RedMyst has made a Steam page for New Antioch, so if you'd like to help him out with a wishlisting, that would be excellent.
I think that is about it for now. As soon as I get to rendering in a serious fashion, I will start posting Pocket Diary entries again.
Some would call it just the tip, but I'll stick with Half Log (I know, it's terrible). I will be traveling for vacation shortly and just wanted to post a little update. Scene 1 is rendered. I will start the coding as soon as I get back home. It actually makes a ton of sense to code as I go. Not only because it avoids being a mountain to climb at the end of production but also works to find out early if I need to render another few images. Sorry, no preview as that would spoil last scene of chapter 5.
I will still post release link for Private Dick tier this weekend. Just without renders.
It's been a little bit since I last opened my beloved diary, but it's so jam-packed with idiotic statements that I had to leave it alone for a moment...to reflect.
Now that chapter 5 is released, I am working to fix a few things. Which will, by the looks of things, all be fixed by the next tier release. Now I have to explain why they weren't just fixed by first release. I was stressed out by the amount of time that this chapter took to finish...that's it. I will update the link on Sunday for the next tier release, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
The list: All player cards, album working, minor bug fixes, some spelling,
Player cards: are going to be done today. All pertinent characters will have one. They are all in chronological order, so if one is locked and you have played through the whole game, just go back to an earlier save and skip though. That should unlock it. Sorry for that inconvenience.
Album: Currently working on the album functionality. It looks like all will be resolved without breaking saves, and it also looks like it will be able to add player name to all the replay files. You will have to enter your character name again at the beginning of chapter 5. But that is it. And it will insert the name in all replay files. There is one thing that I'm unsure of and that is the image representing the replay. Currently it's just an out of focus blob. I need to figure out what and how to fix that once you unlock a scene. I've also changed the coding for animations so that the music doesn't get cut off while in the scene, so that needs to be reflected in the replay.
Bug Fixes: Currently I've caught a few (some thanks to DogCat Studios), most seem straight forward. Although one is testing my patience. The text box (which you now can get rid of in preferences) doesn't want to display in the correct spot. If you don't need it, turn it off. I'll try to fix it, so it doesn't look like...well, shit.
Spelling will be done by next tier release.
And lastly. The first render is done for chapter 6! Only 1,500 or so to go!
Thank you all for being patient. I will start rendering seriously today (first scene is written, most of the chapter is mapped out.) I will make no more projections, as I seem to be almost clinically insane with my rosy predictions.
I'm working on a few things to make sure that in the future, my to-do list is just putting together good chapters. The replay gallery is one of those items. It appears that the problem is simple enough, but it would require changing the code at the very start of the game: The player naming the MC. There are a few options, but I'd like to fix this before next tier drop this coming weekend.
Option 1 I would change the original name code (cleanest option on my end). Pro: Your MC name would appear in all replay files, you wouldn't have to ever retype it. Con: Breaks your saves.
Option 2 I would keep the name code as is. Pro: Saves are good. Con: You would have to input your MC name in every single replay situation.
Option 3 I would keep the name code as is, but add new name input at beginning of chapter 5. Pro: Saves upto chapter 5 are good. Con: You would have to reenter your MC name at the beginning of chapter 5. Your MC name would be blank in replays from Ch 1-4.
What do you all think? I'd prefer to do option 1, but I'm tired of breaking shit:-) 3 is probably the best compromise. Let me know.
It's finally done! Some 18,000+ words, 1,500+ renders, 18 animations. There are a few things outstanding that I will work on in the coming days. I'm adding player cards to all prevalent characters. Currently there are place holders for the ones I haven't finished. So if you open the screen it will show doubles of a bunch of the characters. I did this because it's the fastest way to make sure that the characters that you have unlocked show up in the correct spots. It's probably a days worth of work to put the rest of the player cards together. Second priority will be the gallery, which isn't triggering the replays currently. No idea how long that will take, but once that is done and working, coding should be easy. I massively underestimated the time it would take to code the chapter. I know I've thought about coding as I go before, but for the next chapter I will absolutely do that. It would have cut 3 weeks off of the production process. If I can get to it, I will start writing and rendering the next chapter tomorrow. I hope you enjoy chapter 5.
Cheers!
ps The game link will be in separate post. Uploading as I'm writing this, so should be up in 10 min.
I imagined that this wouldn't happen, but it did. I was going to do an all nighter to finish coding last night, but I didn't. I completely under estimated the time that it would take to code the chapter. Probably due to the fact that it's been a bit since the last time. New chapter will be done this week, of that I am certain. I'm on scene 10. It will be done before Friday and I will release to upper tiers as soon as it is.
During the time between tier releases I will finish all the player cards that are of note. I'll put in place holders for the top tier release, so you unlock the characters as you go and not have to go back to the beginning as you unlock them when you meet them. I'll also work on gallery to make it functional.
That's it. Sorry for the wait. Maybe the most unfun post ever. I promise it will get better once I can release this chapter...which is starting to stress me out.
Alright. I will start with apologizing to all of you. The week and weekend got eaten up by RL work (it was brutal) and I am truly sorry. I will deliver this weekend, I was going to try to finish during the week, but I can't make another prediction that will be wrong. I will release chapter 5 during the weekend, take a couple of days off, then start back up with chapter 6. With any luck, chapter 6 will be done in a more timely fashion.
Again, sorry for the delay and I will be back with a finished product.
Well, if all goes according to plan, next weekend will be the drop of chapter 5. Don't you love that my first impulse is to cover myself in case something doesn't work out? I know myself well enough to know that I will work as hard as I can to get to that goal, but I often over promise. This one I have a good feeling about. I should insert audio of myself laughing at my own naivety here.
So I thought I'd give you a run down of this chapter's change log. 1500+ renders, 15,000-ish words, 19 animations (animations are still sort of work in progress, but I think it's almost there), 40+ new songs (not including chapter 5), a handful of ambient tracks (city noise and combat sounds), working on completing player cards up to end of chapter 5 (this could be problematic to finish as my internet provider has been down, going on 24 hrs, and I rely on Daz stored assets to some degree. And in particular ones that I hadn't downloaded at all since reinstalling the whole thing).
What remains to be done this week: A little bit of writing, editing some ambient sound FX, coding the chapter, taking a crack at the gallery (low expectations on this one). Gallery will be next on the to-do list, but I'm not holding up the release for that.
The upside is that I am crossing some stuff off the to-do list.
No real setbacks this week other than internet failing. Have to use hotspot from my phone to write this update.
It's been a while since the last update. So long in fact that I fear people will have expectations of greatness. And I can see how time spent corelates with the assumption of quality: the longer it takes, the better it will be. Let's deflate that balloon right now. It has taken longer than I would have liked, but don't expect it to be better. Pecker will fumble, LI will look sexy and the mob will be the mob. That's it. I'm excited because I have finished the animations...there are 4 I need to rerender for various reasons, but those will be done tomorrow. I plan to release chapter 5 to Shamus Tier and above on weekend of 21st.
Animations. If this project ever goes anywhere, I'll commission the damn animations. It takes forever to set up. I think the current batch are better than the previous, but I really don't know. Maybe you will tell me once the chapter is on its feet. It has been a time sinkhole for sure, along with a busy RL week. I honestly thought I'd have this chapter out by now. I feel like the animations are all in the details, so a lot of little tweaks. I bought Spring Dynamics for DAZ, so I'll give that a try next time. Can't afford any more delays as I am feeling some real pressure to release this chapter (although, you all are awesome and really accept that it will take the time it takes, and I appreciate that). I've rendered 210 still frames for the animations so far (actually 270, but I had to re-render twice). I'm confident that I can get another 60 out today. I'm hoping to start the second scene set up tonight and get through one batch before bedtime. I had also forgotten that my graphics card can't handle the load and overheats if I run too many images at a time. Convenient amnesia? I'd say so. I came up with a bit of a work around, ice. No not I.C.E., but the frozen wet stuff. Seems to be working ok for now, until it melts all over my PC and shorts the damn thing out...I'm sure that won't happen. There would certainly be some crocodile tears in that aftermath.
So, animations are all that I'm doing at the moment. Then coding the chapter and that will be it. I don't know exactly how long it will take me but know that I am working in excess of 10 hours a day on these damn things. Not your fault...my fault:-)
Another cross-promo image for you. Not as sexy as I hope the animations will be, but all 4 of the previous mentioned devs have been real asset in different ways. Here is The Power of Truth's MC.
During the release phase I'll probably add some player cards that haven't been finished, but right now that seems like extra-curricular activity. Don't worry, it will all be sorted by chapter 10.
Alright. It's been a week, but I finally think I have a decent handle on the animations. First set rendering now...and I cross my fingers that it turns out well. It's always hard to see prior to a full res render. With the help of Esteban (FuckOMatic dev mentioned in previous post), who has answered all my stupid questions, I now have the beginning of a fair grasp. I will never say I can't learn more because there are always ways to improve. But right now, I feel pretty good, and I will try not to second guess myself too much. What I hope to accomplish in the next two days is to finish the animations. The setup is really what takes a massive amount of time, so I will find maybe 3 different angles on each setup that are nice and enhance the moment. It is one of the things that I felt secondary when I started Pecker PI, but I understand now that these scenes should have some weight and be presented in a way that enhances the experience. So, I'm hoping to get through 1 scene today, maybe start on the second. Each will probably have 9 animations (3 set-ups each). I was going to do some kissing animations, and as I mentioned before, some expressions, but I will focus on the big stuff and then probably move on so I can release this chapter. Funny how the to-do list doesn't get any shorter;-)
I had a bit of a moment today (never a good thing with me). I was working on the animation setup, and I was really focused on the motion. Finally, I had an initial motion that looked good...but wait a minute. Why is the MC looking so small. Turns out that I reset all the morphs for Pecker while starting the process and now closer to a finished set up than to the beginning, I have a basic genesis 8 figure doing all the heavy lifting. Fortunately, I hadn't gone crazy with the morphs for Pecker (about 35 changes), so I decided that rather than starting the animation setup all over, I'd just dial in the morphs. A little time consuming, but better for my mental health:-)
I'm finished with the music, so next in coding will be some fixes and beginning coding chapter 5. Again, animations will be focus for now. Once that is done, it shouldn't be too time consuming to get the chapter on its feet.
My friend The Red Myst just released chapter 6 of New Antioch, which I think is well worth a look.
Now I will continue the work to finish up the chapter.
Sitting at the computers and in dire need of a distraction. So, I find my diary and run my hand across the leather binding (yes, I'm pretending it's real...so what?). It's blank pages stare back at me with a want to be of purpose. I abide (much like The Dude). I put pen to paper and the words flow. My inner thoughts, secrets, and desires become eternalized. Fear of discovery hits me like a sledgehammer. I need to hide the diary from prying eyes. This is mine...MY precious.
Alright, enough of that. Currently I am working on a couple of things. Replacing most of the music and coding the animations so the music doesn't cut out when they are played. It's going well. All music and ambient sfx are complete for first two chapters. I've been putting together some ambient audio for street scenes and flashbacks. It kind of breaks up the wall-to-wall music a bit. Hoping to finish music pass for first 4 chapters today. I decided that I wouldn't touch the code for chapter 5 until I have the previous chapters done. It is just hard to chase down error messages if the scope is too big. Parallel to this, I am going in with renewed effort to get the animation renders started. Esteban (FuckOMatic dev) has posted a very helpful how-to video, so I think I'll be good to go. I've also thought a lot about the animation approach, so now, surprisingly, I feel good about things again. Still have to do the work, but attitude is everything...until it isn't;-)
Other than that, I have to code chapter 5, swap code for player cards to reveal at appropriate time, code fix the gallery (still a dark horse), maybe start to replace some renders from first chapter (depends entirely on how fast I can render animations which are first priority for renders at this point) and then I release the new chapter.
The image above is a cross promo with New Antioch (which will roll out the latest chapter in the next week or two), in addition to that, there will also be cross promotion for Move the Chains, The Power of Truth, and 0 End. It will not change the game experience, but I like the idea of the subtle promotion. Some would call that genius, but I remain humble.
Alright, back from my work trip. I decided to get some stuff done that I know I can finish in a timely fashion and to be honest, I needed a break from the frustration of trying to get the animations to do what I want. I decided to start with finishing up the post work on the images, which took me about 9 hours yesterday. The upside is that those are now completely done. I still have 5-6 renders that need to be done for one scene, which I will probably finish right now. It is a bit of a check list of things to-do, so as they say about eating the elephant: one small bite at a time. I just don't want to get so in the weeds with one thing that I lose patients and have to come up for air.
The downside is that there likely will be one more case log after this one. But I'm plugging away to get everything done. I'm not sure what is next on the list just yet, but I fear that it is some form of coding. It usually takes me a few days to get through that, but this time I'm aiming to fix a couple of items so we will see.
Anyway, forward momentum is good. Above is Nurse Jennifer, who serves as the catalyst for one small flashback at the end of the chapter.
I posted a pocket diary on discord and this will just be an extension of it. I've been stuck in animation hell for the last couple of days. I'm still in it, but I am considering a release sans animations. I don't like it, because I was going to add to the number of animations. Facial expressions of the lady, shit that adds dimension to these scenes. Am I frustrated? What makes you think that:-) I added the latest plug-in of FuckOMatic to the repertoire, thinking that 5 months later, it would be a breeze to plug in my characters, tweak a bit and off to the races. This is clearly not what happened (this may just be the result of subpar documentation, I still think it is a useful tool). I just want to make decent animations. They don't have to be perfect, but they should be good. I dabbled in animation when I was a kid. I bought a super8 camera with money I made from picking strawberries at my uncle's strawberry patch. I made both hand-drawn animated films and Claymation. How is it that I can't figure this out to a satisfactory degree? Wow, this is really turning into a rant, isn't it? But it isn't satisfying. I have things to do, and this is just not how I wanted to spend the week. I've made some inroads, so I may just step away from the animations and continue the other work that needs to be done for the release.
Enough of that. On the upside, a friend of the project has supplied me with assets for the Bellarosa dinner in chapter 6. Wibble is an asset creator and has a handful of wonderful assets available in the daz store. You can find them here. I already had a couple of his assets wish listed and will purchase as soon as I see them on sale. Don't think badly of me, I can't buy assets that are not on sale. I have purchased well over 2,000 assets, if I purchased at full price...let's just say, this hobby can't be a hobby anymore.
Anyhow. I'll be out of town on a job this weekend, so case log might get pushed to Monday.
This will be the second to last case log for chapter 5! I will leave a slight window open for coding as that is my real Achilles heel, but I cannot see a future when chapter 5 does not get released in the weekend of the 30th. I'm currently rendering scene 15 with two different locations. I know I could speed things up, if I stuck to established locations. I love new environments, and I think it adds to the three dimensionality of the story...so I will continue to add:-) This particular environment didn't take too much work, and we get to meet a new character. I know, there are lots of characters already, but be patient...it will all pay off in the end.
I have worked on the next chapter's writing quite a bit this week. It wasn't one of my goals, but the inspiration and ideas were there, and that is something that I try to capture when I can. This is to the detriment of coding...which I hate, so good for me. It won't affect the release of chapter 5, but might speed up the process of chapter 6, which is the chapter that has the weakest road map of all. There will be a large scene at the Bellarosa estate, which will probably cover 2-3 regular scene's worth of content.
Anyhow. Very close and if I can get the coding that I anticipate done, it should be a little quicker from here on out when it comes to said coding.
Another no image log, sorry. Rendering of scene 14 is finished. I think the scene is the largest scene so far in the game by render count. Almost 200. I am in the process of creating one character for scene 15, which will include one new environment. I'm contemplating a true cliffhanger for the end of chapter 5, but because it's taking me so long to complete these chapters, it may not make sense. This week I will spend on coding and some leftover writing. The following week I have a bunch of render days, so that will finish the chapter. If I'm not overly optimistic, I should be able to get most of the coding done and be able to just plug the last scene and the animations into the game and voila! Done. This will, of course, be less hassle free than my rosy prediction, but here's to hoping. Why not lean into the smooth-ride-thinking and be happy until it all falls apart?
I heard a great quote/proverb the other day. "If you are not the chef, you are on the menu." I have to try to work that in somewhere. It is afterall a dangerous environment our MC lives in. I don't think that will be particularly hard to shoehorn in. Speaking of shoe horns, that could be used in an icebreaker for one of the love scenes in the future (maybe not;-). I'm getting ahead of myself. The chapter will be done very soon. I will spend as much time as I can in the next couple of weeks to finish it. At that point I will start writing the next chapter immediately and try to get a jump on the process. There shouldn't be too much extra work to be done when it comes to coding the UI after this chapter, so that can be crossed of the list. My goal for next chapter will be to shave a month off of the process. I think that is a better goal AND achievable. 3 months for a chapter would mean that I work on the game as a full time job. It was a nice dream, but I think I'll start with an achievable goal and move on from there.
Quick mention of how happy I am with scene 14 visually. The environment is quite low res, but most of the imperfections are hidden by my generally shallow depth of field. Some stuff bugs me a little, but the price of high resolution environments is the slow churn renders. With a scene like this one (a fairly long scene) it would have been murder timewise. Now I feel like a genius! No just joking...nothing has changed since the last diary post. It's taking everything I've got not to post a preview render or two, but I think it would spoil the experience. I'm also taking my time to visually explore the scene. It will be done today...by now you know my projections are worth next to nothing. Friday will start the process on scene 15. I think at this point I have got the look of the project down. Part of it is, of course, learning as I've worked on the project. In retrospect, not the way to go.
I was going to rant against DAZ glass assets, but I realized that it's incredibly boring (I got bored while writing the rant), so I will spare you that. I'm getting excited to be done with this chapter as it has dragged on for some time now. To-do: coding, animations, and post work on final 5 scenes. Hope to take a bite out of coding and post work next couple of days.
Welcome to all the new supporters! Had an influx of support this week due to a very positive review from DogCat Studios. He's been incredibly supportive of this project and deserves a proper shout out from this cat. I will post some renders from his AVN, "The Power of Truth" once I get my own shit together.
Today was a bit of two steps forward one step back situation as I realized that my favorite software: DAZ3D had decided to swap my render settings and about 30 renders were produced at 1119x626 resolution. For all of you that have no interest in technicalities, it's less than any format you have seen on tv...ever. So, I had to re-rendered all of them. Upside is that I am much better with saving set-ups than I used to be. 5 hours later, they are all replaced. Not ideal, but I felt it necessary as to not have renders that will appear soft or jagged if you are playing on a larger screen.
Now to the positives. I will finish scene 14 tonight or early tomorrow. Scene 15 should be done maybe tomorrow or later this week. We are getting super close to release. The things that are still on the docket are animations, coding and music. I'm hoping for a couple of weeks and that will be it for chapter 5.
Work on scene 14 is progressing nicely. Halfway mark approximately. Have been doing some writing and more post work on images to be ready to plug into the game. I am not going to post any more previews from scene 14 (I don't want to spoil the game experience), so instead I rendered this promo of Gabrielle. Unfortunately I didn't see what was going on with her hand until after the render was done and didn't have time to fix it right away. I'll replace this image when I sit down to render again on Wednesday. I feel pretty confident that I'll be done with scene 14 inside the next couple of render days (Wednesday & Thursday). So we are scary close to the finish line.
I didn't post a Pocket Diary simply because I didn't sit at the computer much...and that's really where the magic happens:-)
My guess is that it will be about a weeks worth of work once all renders are done.
Another developer reached out to me, DogCat Studios (The Power of Truth), and he has been very kind and generous in sharing his gallery code. I haven't plugged it in yet, knowing me I'll find a way to get clobbered by error messages, but I am optimistic that I can cross fixing the gallery off the to-do list without spending any more hours watching youtube videos. So Thank you DogCat Studios and you can check out his game here: Patreon
When I went to check on the progress this week, I was guessing that I had a decent week, but nothing special. To my surprise, I managed just over 100 renders. Landing us at a current total of 1,414. Despite having unruly clothing articles that require daz dforce simulations every time I change the character's pose. I don't know if it will be worth it yet, but I certainly hope so. Scene 14 is progressing nicely. Kind of 5 parts to it, done with 2 of them. I'm making no predictions today...my track record is somewhat blemished. As soon as I'm done with the renders (scene 15 is simple, but 3 parts to it...which really shouldn't slow anything down), I will announce a release date.
So the image is the first of scene 14. I actually played with the idea of making a Western while I initially loaded up with assets, so I got horses and boy do they suck to pose with. Not the horses themselves but the humans and their feet. As you can see the poses for riding look a little awkward. I've ridden a few times myself and figured out what was wrong with the pose, so it gets better.
Anyway, the date is in progress and will be romantic as Pecker pulls out all the stops to impress.
Ever had a moment that confirmed that you are not as smart as you think? I think, if you answer no to that question you are either incredibly humble in realizing who you are, or a greater idiot than any human being should be. But this post isn't about you. It is my diary after all. So, I spent the last day with setting up scene 14. It became a struggle with clothing especially as the asset I am using was not being very cooperative. I went to the daz store to find some morph asset that would help. Found "Fit Control" and thought: hmm, I think I own this asset. Sure enough, I have never used an incredibly good set of morphs...and it fixed the problem with the shirt. I am not as smart as I would like to think, in fact, I may be an idiot. It is a disturbing though, but I'm warming up to it. This hasn't been confirmed by any reliable metric other than my family and friends, but who can trust them?
ps. I can turn off your email notifications so that you don't get clobbered with emails for this. Let me know what you think. I will probably try to publish these mid-week fairly consistently.
And it looks like the Nude Collection has been restored. Must have been my charming disposition.
Alright! This week I have decided to write the log a little earlier in the day, as to not just state the facts, but also expand on the current state of the project. Sounds like a daunting task? I live for daunting tasks...well, maybe not daunting exactly. More like, fun tasks. I live for those.
So today I will finish scene 13. I smile when I write that, knowing my history of optimism. Let's just say, this time I'm certain (or at least fairly certain) that I will pull it off. We are 1,311 renders into chapter 5. There is probably another 20 left of scene 13. How hard can that be? I'm very happy with the look of this scene. It's not exactly a hard space to light, and I tend to do quite a bit of lighting and sometimes that becomes a liability rather than an asset. Not feeling that this time.
You might wonder what the hell Pecker is wearing, well these are newly borrowed threads in anticipation of the date with Gabrielle. See, he can be grownup-ish. Oh, you were looking at the gun. That, I'm afraid, will remain a mystery until the chapter release.
On to some poll business. Looks like the majority of you actually like the ramblings of a mad developer. I would have bet money on the opposite. As not to post too many nonsensical-no-render posts here, I will limit myself to one a week. These Pocket Diary posts will be public (mostly because the discord posts are just that), and if I'm very active I will distil the content a bit.
Second poll was also a bit of a surprise. I have one idea that I was kicking around, but maybe you fine people would like to have a say in the story that will be the interstitial episode. Once I have a few thoughts on what this short crime can be, I'll poll it here and you can pick which idea you like the most. It will likely be one extended chapter long and maybe serve as a prologue to case number 2. This poll likely won't be up until much closer to chapter 10.
Now I will get back to rendering so I can prove that once in a while I actually gauge these things correctly.
Cheers!
ps. It would seem that Patreon has hidden the nude collection. I have a ticket in but haven't heard anything from the fine people at Patreon. If this continues, I will simply make another collection called "Special Renders". Certainly some automated b.s. that got triggered.
I tend to write a bit of stream of thought stuff on discord in the pocket diary. I always felt that it would be too much posting here to do something similar. I don't want to spam your email accounts with often conflicting ideas, that may or may not be a real plan...although that is probably not super far from what you get here:-) So the question in this poll is: would you like to see the discord pocket diary posted here as well, or would you prefer to check it out on discord at your own pace?
This will be a short one. Scene 12 is done. I realized that I couldn't rush through it and still do it justice. The dog tags turned out to be a little bit of a posing nightmare, but not to the point of regret. About 80 renders for the week. Tomorrow is another full day of rendering. 3 more scenes to the chapter. I rewrote the ending of the chapter a little, and I think it's pretty good...I could, of course, change my mind tomorrow.
