Some More v0.10 Previews (Patreon)

Hello all, 

I meant to share these earlier, but had to stress out for a bit today (this has a happy ending so don't worry) when I learnt that Reality (the plugin I use to interface Daz Studio with LuxRender) was shutting down the servers that handled it's built in DRM which would cause it to stop functioning on the 1st of March. This would mean I'd need to drop everything, learn a new render pipeline and then reconfigure all of the materials and lighting for every character, object & scene all over again. Probably putting at least a 2-3 months pause in production while I update all of my horribly outdated software and learn some new tricks. Which is the absolute last thing I want to be doing in 2022 after a massive year of self inflicted production halts while I overhauled the game. 

After a brief existential crisis, I read more into what was actually happening in the forums and since the announcement (which I never knew of) back in November someone has stepped up to purchase the domain and keep those servers up for a while longer until the DRM rubbish is removed from the software. So in the event that something does go wrong, It won't be as soon as March 1st.

Then, after some more digging, I realized that the build of Reality that I'm using is so damn old (Like 2012 old...) that I'm 99% sure it doesn't even have the "connect to the sever to verify" DRM stuff built into it. That was only for newer versions of the software that I never liked the results in so have been resisting upgrading for close to a decade now. (which makes sense since I'm 99% sure I've done heaps of renders while being totally offline) I think it may only need the servers to verify initial plugin activation when doing a clean install. If that's the case, and I'm assuming it is, that means I should at least have until both of my current machines die before I'll need to worry about changing render engines. Which is not likely to happen any time soon. 

So in the end, I'm fairly confident now that I won't have any immediate cause for concern and I freaked out for nothing. But this whole ordeal has brought to the forefront the very real possibility that I won't get to choose when I need to upgrade all of my software and learn a new engine. That's the problem with running old, outdated versions of everything that could stop working at some point when something accidentally updates or drops support for a vital component of my pipeline.

I haven't updated to a newer render engine for 2 reasons, time and consistency. I already covered time, it'd take me about 2-3 months of just learning how to set up renders again and a lot of frustrating trial and error I imagine. As far as consistency goes, changing the render engine will certainly change the look of my renders, which above all else, is not really something I want to do mid-game/project. It's totally possible that I could replicate the look of my renders with enough trial and error, and in many areas make improvements (liquid, cloth & vfx sim + decreased render times) but it's not something I would do any time soon unless forced since I have a lot of progress I want to make on the game at the bare minimum before taking another extended break from producing core content. So I'll continue to hold off as long as possible and let all of this return to being a problem for Future Jim. :') 

Anyway, crisis averted. For now...

So, what about actual news!? 

Well, not too much to share this fist week. As planned, I've spent most of it taking care of all the renders that I needed to get done for the new comic pages that I promised the SF tier. (totally unrelated, but remember to join the discord...) I finished the last of those 2 days ago and got back into rendering and writing for the ALPHA scenes. It'll take me about another day or so to finish up with the editing/lettering for the comic pages, then I can shift my full focus onto rendering and implementing the new game scenes. 

Next week, I should have some spicier previews to share as well. Since this Debra scene in the barn has a number of "setup" images needed before the sex scene properly starts (as you can see from these previews). I should probably also mention here that these 2 scenes are both tit-fuck scenes. Jebadiah's already got his hands full with his "jack of all trades" farm to manage, but since he's found some extra helping hands, now seems as good a time as any for him to pursue his passion for film making. ;) 

Got a lot of fun and wacky plans for Jeb's amateur productions in future versions (including plans for Tiffany to be able to purchase DVDs of the films to view scenes she wasn't starring in). This scene acts as a setup for both that future side-feature and Debra's relationship with Barney with more to come in future versions of course. :)

That's all for now. By next week's post I'll have the scenes planned out to the point where I can provide completion percentages on each scene I'm working on. Just to clarify, my plan is still to release the ALPHA this month regardless of my render progress. Whatever gets finished makes it in, the rest will wait for the BETA/Full Release.

Thank you all for your continued patience and support. I'll also put up an extra sneak peek for Special Forces after this.

~ Jim