Mr Pocket Rocket

The idiocy that is this production (Case Log 3.2)

So I was hoping to cross the 50 render mark today, and might still succeed in doing that, but I'm dealing with 3 new environments. I really like them all. I think the pawn shop turned out pretty great, "Old Town" is a part of Rackham we haven't seen before. This is where both the Pawn Shop and Bellarosa's Speakeasy is located. These days the speakeasy is more of an underworld gathering place, since alcohol is legal again. The speakeasy is a bigger scene, where we will meet one new future LI and several familiar faces. So to incorporate the speakeasy exterior, which is just a wall and a door, I had to build some pretty weird looking walls around it...which is what you see to the left. Now I'm moving into the conversation Pecker will have with a not so friendly hostess.

Chapter 2 Public Release

Pecker PI, Curse of the Pearl Necklace v0.2 PC 

Pecker PI, Curse of the Pearl Necklace v0.2 Mac 

Enjoy!

The Pawn Shop 2

Spent some time setting up the awnings with the Pecker PI "world" shops. I much rather spend some time upfront to make it feel like the things in frame are not mistakes or me just settling on what already exists and that is what you get. I did decide that the fancy design wasn't too much for our sour Pawn Shop Proprietor. 

Scar from the war

I realized that I had neglected to work on the scar from the often mentioned war injury. So I started to look at what that could potentially be. This was my initial attempt. But after only a moment of me feeling good about succeeding with a pretty simple process, I decided that this scar was much too big. So I erased the lower half (around the knee), then added a smaller entrance wound on the back of his leg. I may still shrink the scar a bit. 

Pawn Shop

Today was spent cobbling together a "pawn shop" from a number of assets. I really wanted to try some atmosphere in a couple of the locations this upcoming chapter, but I think it might take too long to render. I'll do a few test renders tomorrow and make the call then. And for those of you wondering about the foto behind the Pawn Shop proprietor, it's from the AVN New Antioch. My favorite new game. The writing is superb and funny (which is what I value the most) with a great deal of world building happening, renders are great. It is a really entertaining game. You can check it out here:

https://www.patreon.com/TheRedMyst/posts 

Chapter 2 Available for All Tiers.

I'm traveling tomorrow so all tiers can now download Chapter 2, one day ahead of schedule.

Enjoy!

The Curse of the Pearl Necklace v0.2 PC

The Curse of the Pearl Necklace v0.2 MAC

Feel free to join us on Discord

Hope you enjoy!

Tomorrow, Sunday, will be the premier of chapter 2!

It's about time, right! I've been looking at some of the time consuming things that I have been doing and I have made some changes in the over all strategy that will hopefully speed up the process for next chapter. I want this to be fun for both you guys and for myself, so streamlining some of the really tedious stuff is all upside. I'm looking at the batch compression that isn't ideal in photoshop and a way to make the copy and paste formatting from Pages to Renpy faster. And It will not affect the quality. I love the writing part and the "creating the shots" parts. So all I'm looking at there is not to render too many images and not to have to re-render stuff because I wasn't paying attention. Like both models for Natasha and Gabrielle are very sensitive to too much "expression". I've trashed more renders because I realized that one of the two didn't really look all that attractive. Anyhow, I'm working on a few animations that will finish up the to do list for this chapter tonight, and that's it.

Chapter 2 Update #3

So after getting replies on my thought of pausing patreon, I have decided to let you guys adjust as necessary. I appreciate the excellent replies of support. I thought now would be a perfect time to give you an exact look at what is left until release.

DONE Chapter 16 renders

ANIMATIONS So, for the time being I will stitch together the one that I got going today and wrap everything up for chapter 2. I will work on the other 2-3 and update shortly, but I don't have time to start them in the next few days. 

Misc renders: (10) Now: 3

DONE Coding

DONE (Add Music (think this is a simple task)

In Progress: Gallery

Maybe:  in game character cards (this is coding of which I know nothing and judging from how much time it took to learn how to do the simplest things, I'm not sure that I want to do this right now when I feel like I'm already behind. To a man you guys were supportive of the time the process has to take. I think I like to fool myself into thinking that a task is so simple it won't take any time at all...but everything takes time.

That's it. Not a whole lot.

Next Chapter I am going to clock time spent on the different aspects of the process which I can use to at least have a better estimate of when things will happen.

All feedback welcome.

Thank you!

Chapter 2 Update #2

So I'm on scene 15 render-wise. At 630 renders right now. It was super slow going yesterday and incredibly frustrating because I thought scene 15 would be quick. I'll finish it today. The spot renders are so much better than what I was doing, so I thank "draw ground" (and Lachi) for that:-) I am still aiming to finish renders on Monday. Thank you all for your patience!

Two steps forward, one step back.

Today I felt the need to not postpone the inevitable. I reached down into the depths of the well of perseverance and started coding, only to realize that my attempts to add "animated" blinking (It's really just 2 frames so not much of an animation) had created some below par results. I was unaware that you have to turn "Draw Ground" off when rendering just the character in Daz, not to get what you see in the first image. I tried to fix it in post, and the result is in picture two. I think that would probably be ok for a developer that doesn't give a shit...but that will never be me. Or maybe I should say, when that day comes, I will no longer do this work. I also (for the second time) realized that Detective Turis wasn't portrayed at her finest. So I went back and created some new images of Sandra, and I think the result speaks for itself. Once I plug the new images into the scene, I will continue to code (it really is an awful part of the process).

I have 5 render days lined up in my calendar next week and I hope to finish this chapter's renders then.

I have reached out to one of my friends to work on some original music for the project. I have found some music that will work in the interim.

Lastly, I just want to thank you for deciding to support the project. There is some fun things coming up and the beauty of the females will never disappoint.

We meet Amy Lee, reporter at the Rackham Daily.

Amy will help bring attention to your deeds of extraordinary heroism, or stupidity? Regardless, she will write about you. You will gain fame or ill repute.

Officer Johnson

We meet Officer Johnson at the start of the investigation of the stolen necklace. She also will showcase a marginal amount of self restraint. Who doesn't like a woman in a uniform...(I don't know. Is that a thing?)

Chapter 2 update

Lets start with some thoughts on Chapter 1.

There was no workflow or organization of the work that needed to be done to publish a finished product. It was very much a step by step production. Pecker PI being the first AVN I have created, it was expected.

Writing

First I wrote (this is probably the way to do it:-) and finished chapter 1-2. Not really anything to condemn in that, if anything I’d probably like to be a little further ahead with that. The over all story arc isn’t changing, so there will be no surprises come chapter 9 in terms of writing. I quite enjoy this phase of the production and I spend some considerable time making it as good and interesting as I can. I don’t have any tolerance for dialogue that means nothing. Please don’t tell me that “this is how people speak in real life” because most of us can’t tolerate how the Kardashians speak. There is a real difference between writing just to add “lines of text” and caring about the reader’s enjoyment and the character’s voice. Writing sets a good AVN apart from the hack job in my book, not the render quality. Anyhow, I plan on the first Case to span 10 chapters and had a goal to have a Case span a calendar year, but that seems like wishful thinking. I know I can speed some parts of production up simply by better planing and time management. But since this isn’t my job, I will probably spend 2 months on every chapter.

Graphics/Rendering

I started on a Mac Air and every render took 24+ hours AND there were still “fireflies” in the highlights! I decided that if I wanted to try to accomplish an AVN I needed to upgrade. Still don’t have a monster rig, hard to justify spending that much money at this point. With the exception of the posing part, this is my favorite stage of the process. It is also the most frustrating, because I can’t really speed it up. I want to produce quality images with interesting framing and dramatic lighting. It’s always nice to see how much better the daz models look when lighted appropriately. Now, I didn’t test the models I used extensively before I started using them in scenes and my biggest regret is the model I used for Giovanni (mob soldier at bar, who gets taken down a peg by Pecker). No amount of lighting could help that model and I should have just swapped it out right away. The upside is that Giovanni doesn’t have to be in future chapters…maybe we find him at the bottom of the harbor? For the first chapter I rendered all the images before I even bothered to look at Renpy, which was dumb. I’m not a programmer, have no interest in becoming one, but necessary evil in the process. My guess is that it will probably be 3-4 updates until I have what I feel is necessary in terms of Renpy skill (and that will be laughable to anyone with any sort of skill). The major items that I'd like to include are a gallery and an in game “case file” with pictures of love interests, the other major players and notes on the current case.

Post and Coding

The two should not be a group for me. I can easily handle photoshop and I think I have already described my lack of coding skill, but they are both part of the last major step. I think what I learned here was that there is no reason to stop coding. As long as you have the script for the current chapter, just start plugging that in. I know some devs just write right into renpy, but that seems like a terrible idea. How do you have any overview when looking at the story with renpy formatting? Maybe that's just me?

Release

The moment we all wait for, the release. I guess it went about as well as I thought it would. 1 chapter isn’t going to draw a crowd, especially from a unknown developer. To commit as a reader, you want at least some chance of seeing the end of the story. I get it. I’m happy that 4 people decided to become patrons, and I cherish the 2 I have left for a the second month…and truth be told, I will do everything I can to make sure I publish chapter 2 before the next time they get charged. Other than that, I guess I had what I already knew confirmed…it will take some time to get the convoy moving.

What’s next that the reader will appreciate.

The second chapter. I’m happy with the writing. It’s more fun than the first chapter and a little longer. It focuses on one of my personal favorites: Det. Turis. I’m rendering, post processing images and coding at the same time now. The recap, scene 1 and 2 are done 100%, and rendering s3 and writing scene 8 (chapter 3) at the moment. I am going to make a promo video at some point soon, but the second chapter renders are priority 1 atm.

The Investigation Starts.

We get to see Detective Sandra Turis in action at the police station. 

Victoria at Sam's Gym

In chapter 3 (the one I'm writing while rendering Chapter 2) you will spend some quality time with the girl who loves to hate you.

Discord active!

There are two discord channels. One for patrons where I will post some previews of upcoming chapters and where you can ask any questions you have for me about the progress of updates or regarding story or characters that isn't directly spoilers. I'll also share some character renders of characters that have not been introduced.

Currently we are a small number of people invested in Pecker PI, so I will likely focus on the public discord to grow our numbers until we have another couple of updates. If you like to interact, I will prioritize patrons of course. And thank you for the support!

Public Discord 

Detective Turis, Rackham City PD

We caught a glimpse of her at the Berg party. This chapter we will get quite familiar with her. I started rendering yesterday, will probably be a solid month before we get close to the next release. I'm going to start a discord for people who are interested in the next few days.

Cheers!

Chapter 2 Update.

Since releasing chapter 1 I have been writing chapter 3 (would like to stay one chapter ahead if I can). I finished writing chapter 2 a month ago and I'm very happy with it. I've also taken the only asset (FG Police Station) that works as a police station and put some aging touches on it as you can see above. The big windows still bother me a bit, but I don't think I can change that and have it look decent. I've also been working on real 50's newspaper articles for when I use a newspaper, so it doesn't look like it doesn't belong in the world. There is some really crazy articles that you might be able to catch.

I'm starting renders for chapter 2 next week and simultaneously coding, which I think will speed up the process quite a bit. 

Delay

So there has been some things out of my control in the real world that has contributed to the coding coming to a grinding halt. I will do my very best to get through coding in this upcoming week. Above is the thumbnail storyboards for the chapter's last scene. Party at The Bergs.

The Party at The Berg's

The final scene of the chapter. We meet the city's Mayor, a silver screen diva, and the daughter of notorious mob boss Vincent Bellarosa.

We meet Victoria Jackson.

The second of the two sisters. Neither of them lack fire as you will experience. Today I finished scene 11 and will with any luck finish scene 12, which leaves the chapter finale and gets us a massive step closer to the release...which to be honest is well overdue. Last few days have been good though and I am pushing forward to get the first chapter out.

Introducing Valerie Jackson

The daughter of your mentor and boxing coach, Sam "Glass Jaw" Jackson.

Dahlia's Bar

The neighborhood bar and frequent hangout for our hero. Owned and operated by Natasha Borgstrom and her Dad. This is the biggest scene so far. I'm running a little behind schedule with the release of the first instalment of Pecker PI, but I'm confident that I will pick up speed as I get further into the story.

Gabrielle Stone

Mike Stone's (your best friend's) sister. She's currently helping Mike at the firm, while finishing up law school. She plays a prominent part in your life, but could it be more than that?

First Case

The beginning of the adventure starts with a routine infidelity case. The tasty stills that you manage to snap are just a bonus.

The War

Drafted and sent to southeast Asia, Pecker spends 3 years of his life fighting in the war. It will forever change Pecker and will be revisited in the story in the form of flashbacks.

Prior to being drafted to and injured in the war, Pecker was a promising young boxer.