This week saw me working on a few different things. Some wanted posters, some coding, some writing and some rendering. I think I landed on about 160 total renders. Scene 4 takes us back to precinct 5 and a chat with Detective Turis and Officer Johnson. And before anyone remarks on her name tag, I'm aware and have fixed it in theory, but I think I'll have to reload the shirt on her because this is after I fixed the texture. Sort of a quiet week with the exception of the Gabrielle renders.
108 renders into chapter 5, a few more to go in scene 3. So not terrible progress. I counted the weeks until Christmas and I'm still hopeful for a release then, but you know how I am with plans. I'll keep trucking along and we'll see if I can make the dream a reality:-)
I had someone reach out to help me with the code and I think that is great. I'll still do the heavy lifting when it comes to the chapter coding, but a few things that was on the list are now actively being worked on. The main menu just needs a sound effect and it is done, the gallery is being coded, and I've looked into the animation coding which should fix the broken music tracks. My to-do list somehow got larger, but it is more focused on maybe the correct items first. The map is still in progress, I would say probably 3/4 done...it's just a bit mind numbing work, so the last quarter is taking a bit. The idea being that you'll be able to hover over the different neighborhoods and see who or maybe what is there (haven't made up my mind on that). But with some coding help, I think it can be achieved fairly easily. The text box opacity will now also be able to be adjusted from the preference menu.
A lifetime ago, I promised a special render for milestone subscription numbers. Here we are, just crossing 25. I actually think the majority of the then 10 subscribers are still here, which I find heartwarming and inspiring. So, I will post a poll right away so you can vote on who gets to bare it all this time. Last time it was Amy, but I have a feeling that she won't win it all this time.
I know, this frame grab isn't quite as exciting as the last couple of renders. I do have to get on with the chapter;-) Its Ringo's car, no sudden upward movement for our beloved hero. I have finished scene 2 (really just a continuous scene, but it in two locations...exterior car and interior car)...and it makes me feel good about the progress. Turned out to be a little more to its as I had to render interior and exterior to get motion blur on background. So far, we have about 67 renders for the chapter, but in reality it's probably about 50 as the background renders are just that. I will set up scene 3 today and probably get a few renders done. In a curious turn of events, I have another couple of days to render that weren't planned (lost a full day to RL work that I didn't foresee). Anyway, my goal is the 3 months turn around which would land chapter 5 release some time around Christmas, which would be awesome. Just don't expect Pecker to wear a Santa hat.
PS. Chapter 5 will feature a date with Gabrielle (Pecker pulls out all the stops to make it romantic...with the help of Mike! Who is not clear on who the date is with.) Scenes will also feature Detective Turis, Amy, Josephine and Danielle.
I got home last night and went right to work on chapter 5 renders. Not a grand collection as of yet, 17 to be precise. I also haven't had a full day of rendering yet. The first scene is pretty simple it's kind of two parts and I am now set up to rip through the renders for the second part.
Writing has been good. Just staying one scene ahead of rendering at the moment. But filling in a lot of pieces throughout the episode.
I also re-rendered a couple of images in chapter 1 scene 1 that have been bugging me. First time I rendered the scene , I was doing it on my mac laptop and it was all but ideal. I think the new version is more representative of the rest of the images. Above you can see new render vs the replaced one. I probably won't get to the other two scenes that have some below par renders until later. It's the first bar scene and one scene in the Stone law office, each have some renders that are questionable.
This Friday will be the free release of chapter 4.
Since there will be a couple of weeks that are mostly roll out of the new chapter and posting some promo material on different sites, I thought that an actual case log would be appropriate. I hate trying to drum up interest, but it is a necessary evil (kind of like renpy). Next release will cover most of you and then there will be the usual free release a week later.
This past week I have been writing. Kind of slow going, but I have enough to start to render the new chapter. So today I will start rendering chapter 5, then I will be out of town for work until next weekend...so there might not be a Sunday update. This won't affect the drop for Bizzy tier, which will be this Friday.
If anyone of you have a recommendation on sites where I have no presence, I'd be more than happy to add in the interest of broadening the potential membership.
Hello everyone! This will officially be the last case log for chapter 4. I had a rough time coding one scene as it called for a bunch of reference to previous choices, and it was a bit of a mess. I was up until the wee hours of the morning, knowing that if I stopped before I solved the issue it would be hard to get back into it the next day. I have 6 more scenes to code, but most are straight forward. The chapter will be released to Shamus next weekend (not sure if it will be Friday, Saturday or Sunday.) I will immediately start work on Chapter 5 at that point in the interest of getting it done in a timely fashion.
Beginning to render the last scene of the chapter today. It feels good for sure. No real reason to throw out any numbers today as all renders will be done by the end of this coming week at the latest. I have started to migrate code to Visual Studio and Renpy version 8. It will be a continuous process which won't affect any updates. The updates will always come first no matter what. I hope to have finished all the code transfer by end of the episode. The reason I'm doing it is partly for code clean-up purposes and partly because VS seems at least a little more intuitive than Atom. By that time, I will also clean some things up that I'm not entirely happy with. Not a ton of work but still something that I think is necessary for the overall experience. Animations are definitely part of that, I'd also like to get away from having them as "cut scenes" which is why music doesn't play during them. Some renders, particularly early on, but no full scene replacements.
The new main menu is in, but I couldn't get the neon sign to flicker (which it does in the new Renpy version). Not a big deal, but it's detail that I like. The "about" section is still a hot mess, but it's such low priority that it will have to wait. There is some added music in this update, so should be a little less repetitive. I will add to that library as I go and find music options that work.
So I got an hour and a half to render a few images for scene 13 in chapter 4. It's quite the difference between a scene in the jungle, where every muzzle flash needs to be dragged a mile across the environment and a nice little City Hall Library scene...visually there is no comparison; I like the jungle. Time wise, I really appreciate the less time consuming, two character interaction. So I'm looking for angle to make the shots more interesting. Found one!
ps. I chuckled out loud when I looked at it in DAZ...it's slowly reveling itself in all of it's iray glory. Made my day.
Back to the customary Sunday log. Some good progress last few days. I have finished writing the chapter, but there is one scene that I'll probably do a bit of a rewrite on. Nothing major, but I felt that some of the dialogue was a little forced. I'll iron that out this week. I've mapped out almost all of chapter 5 scene by scene, so will start to write that right after polishing this chapter which is exciting. I just finished scene 12 renders, so I'm hoping to start 13 today. Probably won't get too many renders done as this is a new environment: Rackham City Hall.
I'm not happy with how long this chapter has taken to render. I do have a problem with over-rendering...I think, but I also enjoy that part of the process the most and like to not take the easy route. For chapter 5 I'm going to try something out. I'm going to set a deadline for myself and see if that helps. Originally I thought I would release a chapter every other month. What a fool I was. No chance in hell I can do that. However, I am going to try to set a 3 month deadline. 4 chapters a year would be an ideal pace, if I can manage. If I render 100 images a week that lands me at 1200, which is probably the max for any of the chapters. The scenes themselves obviously matter in terms of complexity, but that should even out. So I'll give that a proper go, and we'll see what happens.
Right now Chapter 4 stands at 1,180 renders and finished at 16,550 words...only good for comparison with previous chapters. Last chapter was less than 1,000 renders and just over 11,000 words.
So the job I did last weekend gifted me with a passenger...a little virus known as covid. Screwed up my render plans a bit. Couldn't do anything Friday, some Saturday and some today. It wasn't terrible as terrible goes, but it was still real unfun for the peak two days. I'm on the mend and I believe we are through 65% (maybe more) of scene 12. It's really just 20-25 renders left in the scene, but they are involved and have too many characters and action:-)
So there is another new character that gets introduced in this chapter: Grace, City Hall Clerk. She happens to be the twin of...Hannah, Rackham City Librarian. I was toying with the idea of having Hannah work in both places, but it felt like I was just trying to make a joke. Add a twin and I'm STILL just trying to make a joke. Anyway, the lovely, but particular, sisters are not part of the main lineup of LIs, but more backup LIs or future LIs... Alright! Fine! I don't know what the hell they are, but they fill a story purpose and they are lovely. I'm sure we will get to know them better in the future.
Render count? 1,150 but 5-6 muzzle flash spot renders in there so fair count more like 1,144. If I can just get through this current scene, I only have a 2 people scene and a 3 people scene...end scene. That's what they say in the acting classes after the scene is done: "End scene." Some idiots say: "And scene." Why would you say that at the end of a scene? Feels like this is becoming a rant, so I'm optimistic that I will be done with this scene next full render day I have. (Saturday).
I'm sorry I missed my usual Sunday Case Log, but work was grueling to say the very least. I finished scene 11 over the weekend and have now started the flashback scene for the chapter, and thought I'd share the first render. It took a bit to figure out how to go about the environment, and I didn't want to be repetitive this early on. The squad have traveled north on a mission, so what could go wrong? Well, plenty. I got a fair deal of post work done. On scene 6 at the moment, which requires work on an asset that just isn't the best. After that, the post work should be a breeze. Did not get much coding done, but that's just a lot of copying and pasting. Have added a number of Player Cards to the game. Still working on the map, and hope to have it done by release of chapter 4...but I won't delay to get that in there. Rendering today and tomorrow, so should see a fair deal of progress. Current render count: 1,104 so not a real bite out of the final number, but I'm happy to have at least finished scene 11.
Today we are a handful of renders away from finishing scene 11. Current total is 1,085. After that there are 3 more scenes. I added one scene to the total because it is part of the investigation and provides some insight that I felt was best suited in this chapter. 1 new environment in those three scenes. The writing has been pretty productive and I will finish this chapter next couple of days. 15,000 words so far, which is quite a bit more than previous chapters although there is a choice that leads to one scene or another. Outside of the writing I will focus on post image work and coding this week. Not sure how much rendering will be done as I will be working over the weekend...but we are getting close.
So I'm in the middle of scene 11. Should finish today. I'll post a proper update tomorrow. Tell me, what is wrong with this render of Camille? I almost rendered all of her shots like this.
I have 3 more scenes to render before the chapter can be released. I have fully caught up to the writing, which I find somewhat problematic as I like to take my time with this. However, it might be a proper kick to get me going. This week we reached 1010 renders, and 13,230 words (out of 45,400 total words). I put a few more player cards into the game and probably should feel pretty good about everything had my week not started with a Daz crash fest. Not sure what the problem was. I'm guessing the location was taking up too much of the graphic card capacity, but I tried everything to fix it and it was for not. The scene I'm on is pretty straight forward as is the last scene...which leaves the middle scene. I think this is 4-5 render days, which means that I should be done with rendering in about two and a half weeks. This week will all be writing, coding and image processing, so that when the final render is done it won't take long before the release.
So last week 3 new members joined us which was unexpected as most have a tendency to join around a chapter drop. And before I continue to render chapter 10 today, I thought a little membership appreciation render was in order. Here is Lily, hope you enjoy.
I'm feeling really good about the progress made in the last week. We currently are at 935 renders. Scene 10 is nearly done. 5 scenes of images are ready to be plugged in to Renpy. I have written quite a bit both punching up parts of this chapter and for future chapters in episode 1. I will go through and clean up some small portions of the code just so the choices made are easier to call back at any point. I thought I would be able to give a definitive release date at this point, but I almost rather just say: Things are going really well. I have a tendency (as all of you that have been around here for a little while know). I purchased a batch rendering program/script, and I am going to spend the time to learn at least how to render over night. I think that is the first step to speed up the process for me. This is my first AVN, the first season/case/episode will be a step by step learning experience. I appreciate everyone who are supporting that process. It also makes it possible for me to invest in the pieces that I need to produce the story the way I like it as opposed to putting the cart in front of the horse/ox. To be clear, you guys make it possible to tell the story the way I want to, not how it's convenient/inexpensive.
Today starts the continued work on Chapter 4. I will work on all aspects of this chapter through out the week, with rendering being the obvious focus. I don't think I'll preview any of scene 10 (except for the image from last log) because I'd like it to be at least a minor surprise of who shows up. So I made this image of Gabrielle yesterday, because I do think you all deserve more than just my ramblings.
Funny DAZ story? First shot of the day, I manage to crash the program...now I remember why I have an ulcer. No, I don't actually, but it is aggravating for sure. The upside I guess is that I can recreate the set up pretty quickly. Oh, I forgot to mention that I made the rookie mistake of not saving before starting the render which crashed the program? Ahh, vacation, how destructive you can be to good habits.
Next weekend I should have an excellent idea of where we stand on chapter 4, and its upcoming release date.
I'll be posting as I go on the discord pocket-diary.
Alright! I have another couple of hours to render today, but I will not make the goal that I set for myself. I'm currently at 820 renders. I was hoping to go well past the prediction, but real life happened...you know, I didn't factor in eating and sleeping. I'm still happy with the progress...and I'm excited about the journey (scene) we are about to embark upon. It should be a ton of fun. I've been watching a bit of Barry, the HBO show to get some inspiration (it has one of the best nicknames for a character ever: NOHO Hank). I'm also mid way through creating a map over Rackham. At some point I'm hoping to make it interactive, so you can pull up the player cards by location...this probably requires some help with the coding. To me it sounds like it should be simple, but coding is my nemesis and I fear that will always be the case. In the meantime, you will be able to look at the map and see where in the city the different locations are...so nothing overly fancy. I decided to "draw" it myself because most map apps are geared toward fantasy and D&D map creation and fits poorly with Pecker PI. I'll write case logs while on vacation, but I won't have any new renders to show. I think I can have all renders done by end of July. Depending on how much I get done of coding and post image work in the next few weeks, the chapter should be available shorty thereafter.
Rendering is going very well. I'm into scene 9. This chapter will likely have just 13 scenes. Will wait with the total number of renders until Sunday or Monday. It seems like an eternity since I started this chapter. I have tried to relax a little about the pace...because it is something that I would love to do something about, but the reality is that the pace is currently what it is...and I can't speed it up. I just wrote 2 paragraphs about a review on f95 that claimed that my renders are average. I decided that it's not a great look to spew anger on some shmuck that tried Pecker for free. But he can fuck off;-) I'm not going to bother with what is not average about this project...granted, animations could be better, and will be reworked at some point before episode's end.
Look into those eyes and try not to fall in love with this beautiful but innocent creature. If that doesn't do it for you, then I suggest you support someone else. Oh, this is a public Log? Damn it, I told you that I need as much information as possible before I do these things. Who am I talking to? Myself of course. I don't have an assistant and never will, but I like the thought of an assistant. Life would be so much easier, because I am an idiot. Anyway, back to reality. I am not throwing out any numbers today as I am trying to beat a little prediction that I made. By the end of this coming week I should have rendered 3/4ths of chapter 4. It's hard to gauge the real girth of the chapter while being in the middle the act of it, but by sheer word count and render count...this chapter won't be smaller than chapter 3. See I have learned not to over promise.
Alright! Back at the computer. I am embarking upon a rendering journey of proportions that have never been approached by me. I'm sure other, more experienced devs have explored these unknown waters before, but not me. Today starts the first of 10!!! render days in a row. Now, they are not all full days, but substantial enough to render scenes for the chapter. My goal is 25 renders a day. This is a modest average for me. I wanted to set a goal that I can make even if something goes wrong. That would put the total (in 10 days) at about 860. That should land us close to the 3/4 mark. So that is the good news. The other news is not bad exactly, but it also affects the project. I will be on vacation for 3 weeks starting mid June. That's another first for me. At that point I will pause all charges, because the progress at that point will be sporadic. I'll still write, code, and do half logs. By the time I get back, I am pretty sure that I will have a good estimate on release date. I'll post a public log end of this weekend.
Scene 7 is set up. Almost 30 renders in. (Grand total 628). We meet Natasha's sister Lily for the first time and find out what is going on with Natasha...that all being unplanned as I started the chapter. Then we move to the meat of the scene which will feature Mike and Gabrielle. It really should be pretty easy to knock both scene 7a and 7b out. Its 3 people sitting down talking, how difficult can I make it for myself? If I know me...
I have to say that posing in the bar is now so much better. Again, I apologize for the swap, but it was the right decision.
So, next render day is Thursday, and then we are off to the races on scene 7a & b.
So, I came to the conclusion, while working on scene 7 and a promo image of Natasha, that the model for Natasha slows my computer down to a crawl. I thought it was the environment of the bar and all my lights and characters...but it wasn't. So I will apologize to those of you who enjoyed Natasha, but until I can figure out a work around the issue, Natasha will be written out of Pecker PI. So sorry. What none of us were aware of, was the fact that Natasha has a sister (kind of like Darth Vader didn't know Luke had a sister...no, nothing like that:-) So I've spent today creating a look that I feel makes sense as a Borgstrom sibling and here she is, Lily Borgstrom.
For those of you following along on discord, I have started a new channel: "Pocket-Diary" that will be my outlet for a lot of the stuff that has to do with developing Pecker PI. It will also have thoughts on future chapters, episodes and other AVN ideas that I'm thinking about. On my render days, I spend a lot of time at the computer and it's kind of lonely. If you want to chat. I'll be around a fair bit. I love ideas, so if what I write stirs something, please let me know.
I originally released this render as an upper tier render, but since I don't really have time to make a ton of renders for promotional purposes, I decided to release this one. I try to spend my time rendering images that go into the AVN.
