Update - 6 Feb 2017 (Patreon)

This week's image

You might have seen the end of Let Me In, but you haven't seen it like this before! The reason I made this pic is so that Twyla's background will get a little recap at the beginning of LMO, so it's not really a massive spoiler to show it. It'll be right at the start.

Working on pics for EFon's Pervert Action: Origins

I've been throwing together some basic character renders for EFon's choose-your-own-adventure Twine game Pervert Action: Origins this week, as a thank you for his contributions to PAL. It's also something you guys will be able to play if you want, and I figured that adding a few pics will ultimately make the game more appealing to a lot of you.

There won't be lots of pictures because I don't have time for that, really, but what EFon's planning to do is this: I am sending him a batch of background-free, high-res png images of his characters and he's thinking of pasting in backgrounds behind them for when the characters show up. I don't know what the results will be - that approach will be a bit like what you get in a visual novel or RPG maker game, when the character is in the front of the frame, I imagine. 

It's not likely to be as nice as a shot like the one above, where characters are rendered in a proper scene, but that kind of standard is not realistic for me right now - it would take a lot of time and more resources. I should emphasise that this is EFon's project, I'm just helping out a little; plus his story has a huge range of environments and possible scenes, so it would be very taxing to illustrate it more comprehensively.

Do you have any questions about this project? I'm not sure if everyone's clear on what's going on with it.

Reaction to PAL seems good

I've generally still been kind of busy managing the release of PAL this week - a roll out involves a lot of communicating with players and such, so it's very distracting from continuing work. It's also kind of stressful.

I don't know if you will have noticed but the game got some coverage on LewdGamer.com, the article is here: https://www.lewdgamer.com/2017/01/31/bbben-releases-pervert-action-legacy/

Anyway, from what I've seen people seem happy with the game, so that's great news. I'm also particularly glad I didn't rush the release because I was getting so many people wanting to play it. :) 

Working on Let Me Out!

While I've had some free time this week I've also been getting started on working on Let Me Out. I don't know if this is sensible, I should probably take a couple of weeks off, but I've got my day job distracting me now anyway, so it wouldn't be much of a holiday.

Anyway, I've made a few pictures, plus done a bit of writing and coding. I'm hoping it's going to be much better than the first one! It's a bit less experimental now, and I'm not being quite so lazy with it. I will definitely, certainly, absolutely need you to send me transcripts of your plays of the game, though, so that I can add new commands. I cannot read your minds!

I'm thinking that I might consider working on Let Me Out post-release, too. Meaning that if I still keep getting transcripts (and commissions, maybe?) for the game then I'll keep expanding the responsiveness and range of possibilities. It's going to have a higher range of possible scenarios, so I think it will work a little better for continual expansion. I think the game will have a better design and I could see it going in all sorts of crazy directions, so who knows? Let me know what you think of that idea.

The resolutions poll

I got a great response to the poll on resolutions I put up the other day, based on the numbers I think most of you voted. I've been wanting to know whether it's worthwhile to try rendering a higher resolution for the images in future. Now, the problem with this is that my computer is not really up to making higher-res images than what I'm putting out if they're going to be made to the standard of, for example, the Pervert Action: Timelapse images I've been showing off. It just takes too much power and I don't have that, so it would require me to get a more powerful (probably much more powerful) machine and that's not a cheap investment.

To give you an idea, to really future proof my rendering, increase resolution and speed up production I'm thinking I'll need to get a PC with dual-channel GTX1080ti cards (the cards have to be nVidia for the Iray software and the GTX series reportedly gives the best value for money with Iray). That probably means a minimum US$2500 on the graphics cards alone. (Although more tech-savvy people than me might be able to correct me on whether I'm insane, here.) Maybe that's excessive but I don't think so - if I'm going to be rendering in high-res I'm going to need to be getting very taxing, high quality 3D assets that currently grind my computer to a halt, and I could also really use something that performs faster than it is right now, even if I'm upgrading the resolution.

Therefore, I need to know whether people are actually even going to be able to appreciate it. If your resolution is 1080p then you won't really get any benefit out of me making the pics any bigger than I'm making them now. Some years ago it seemed obvious that resolutions would just keep climbing higher and higher, but then people started moving in the opposite direction as they shifted more to laptops and mobile devices. Now, maybe, things are climbing upward again as the technology of those screens gets more powerful. From the poll results I got it seems like I pitched the resolution correctly for the majority resolution size as it stands right now. I don't know how fast that's going to change, however, or how long it will take to make PAT.

So I'm still thinking about this and I've not made any conclusions. Buying a new rig and migrating over to it is a time-consuming, expensive and distracting process, so I'm not going to do it right away no matter what I decide.

A lot to chew on this week, right? Leave a comment if any of this sparked a response in your mind!