Failures of artificial intelligence, in addition to my own (Patreon)

Hi everyone, I hope you are all doing well. I need to start by apologizing for this long time without news here in this space. I believe that there is no need for me to keep repeating my reasons, but I want to remind you that I will always be willing to answer any questions you have about the project, whether in the comments, in the chat, or on other networks.

It's been four days since I've been able to focus exclusively on S4H and I must confess that my decision on how to spend this time wasn't the best. I wish I could give you some content right now, even if it's just some static images. I already had the plan to incorporate prerendered images into the game, which would be a way to always have something to show you even while the real-time game is in development, but I didn't count on the difficulty and time needed to generate attractive renders. All my respect to the Ren'Py developers. 

But all the while, AI-generated images happened, so I decided to spend the last four days installing an AI on my system and trying to train it to generate images of Penny (yes, I know a lot of you don't like Penny, but you are simply wrong, Penny is awesome).

I can't say it wasn't fun, especially being able to see the same character in different styles. However, trying to control the result is very frustrating and consumes time that I am not able to spend. Maybe in the future, I will get better results, but for now, my attempt was in vain.

And I won't dare show you the results that went really wrong. If any of you ever have serious problems with pornography and decide to stop, try to generate pornographic images by AI. I'm still going to avoid seeing naked people for a few days. (I'm just kidding, but be careful with the imagery you put in your mind.)

When I stopped the project I was working on the scenarios and there were some changes that were necessary, one is that until then, the game is all loaded in one huge scene with the interior of the houses being spawned when necessary. When the scenario became an entire city, it proved to be a huge mistake for the game's performance.

Also working with a well-defined city, which I believed would help me with the creative logic to expand the game, ended up having the opposite effect. For instance, in the movie scene, if you decide to end the night with Penny, it was originally for Brendon to take her to the city park, where there was going to be an outdoor night scene. I cut this part out to not prolong the development, then Brendon takes the girl to his house, which doesn't make much sense. I want to redo this scene the way it should have been, in a park, but here's the problem, my previously defined city doesn't have a park. 😐

It's weird that I tried to explain the importance of having a well-defined city by saying that Blowhard is our Springfield because I had forgotten that Springfield was never very well defined in the Simpsons show, with entire areas being added and removed as needed.

So I've been preparing a move towards modular scenarios, not just houses built with assemblable parts, which will make it easier to create other houses, but separate areas, suburbs, downtown, the campus, everything separated and distant, to be loaded only when needed.

So this will be the next step, creating these areas of the scenarios. There are other changes needed, but I only intend to comment with you when this next step has been taken.

I'll be back here to tell you about my progress and to explain the other steps. I won't call it a "report" and I won't stipulate a day of the week, because making it an obligation causes me a lot of anxiety and ends up getting in the way. It will just be me telling interested people how development is going, maybe more than one time in the same week.

And it will always be long texts like this, because I always have a lot to say, while the game only looks good to be shown in the last stages of development, and showing my graphic work before it's ready has never been easy for me.

And if you want to read and comment this will stop being a monologue and becomes a conversation, and I'll be happy. But if you prefer to skip all the texts that's fine, at least you'll know I'm fine and working. Just the fact that you're still here after so long, makes me sure that I'm not alone in this project.

Many thanks to all of you and see you soon!