📖 Dev Diary #April 2024 📖 (Patreon)

Hello crew, and welcome to April!

As usual, I realise. I’ve left it far too long since my last dev diary - I’m usually too busy doing the work to talk about it! 😅

I currently have a bit of time on my hands, though - unfortunately my graphics card has given up the ghost after 5 years of abuse. It developed a horrible grinding sound that turned out to be a broken motor in the fan, causing very high temperatures. 🔥

I’m not surprised the poor thing finally broke, since it’s now churned out over 25000 images and 15 sizeable animations for SpaceCorps. That often means running all day and night to beat the monthly schedule, which takes its toll. Thankfully, I was able to get the v2.6.2 update out in the last 24 hours of its lifespan! 😃

That means I have to wait until Monday until I can make any more images - and fork out £2000 for a new graphics card. 😭

If that sounds like a lot of money, it is! 😅 I’m upgrading to an RTX 4090 - which promises to be 4x the speed of my old card, but comes with the price tag to match. I even need to get a bigger case and go from a 750W to a 1000W power supply just to run the monster! 💪🏼

On the plus side, this should mean that I can render my images much faster, and won’t have to leave it running as much as the last one. Might even let me make a few more animations! 🎬

Naturally, I need to thank you all for this - since it’s entirely your support that allows me to afford this kind of stuff. All Hail the Patrons! 🫡

💾 SPACECORPS v2.6.3:

While I wait for the upgrade, I’ve got plenty of stuff to be getting on with on v2.6.3 - writing the next scenes, planning future updates - anything that can be done on an ancient old workstation with no dedicated graphics card 🦽

That means the broken GPU won’t delay this month’s v2.6.3 update - although I may have to cut one of the planned scenes due to lost time. The update will be available for Lieutenants+ at the end of this month! 😀

💾 SPACECORPS v2.6.2:

v2.6.2 is currently out for Majors, Captains & Lieutenants (get it here). It’ll be released to Sergeants on Friday & Ensigns on Saturday, and the 🤖Android version should be available on Monday - so stay tuned! 📺

🤡 AMUSING NOTE:

I don’t have a car, but my PC Repair shop is only a 10 minute walk. Thinking I’m reasonably fit, I decided to lug my desktop there in my arms. I do not recommend this. My arms still hurt a day later 😂