Development Journal 4 March (Patreon)

I wrote a bit last time about the threat plugin I was planning to make, but I've since found out that someone already wrote something pretty close to what I was looking for. I haven't tested it out yet, but it looks like it will fit the bill pretty well, so that's one less big task for me to do! I then decided to work on the other big task - developing a male human/elf look - and I've made a lot of progress. I'm working on fixing a couple of little things with it now, but I expect I'll have a demo render out a bit later this week. I want to let you guys see what I'm doing with it and get some feedback.

I've been doing a lot of other stuff as well; I'm still working a few things out, but I know most of what I want to do with the update plot/story/character-wise, and I've started writing H-scenes. I’ve also worked out the concept for the boss battle, including a fallback plan in case the one I want to implement is too difficult to create.

This coming week I’ll finish work on the male model, try to get the boss battle finished (except for difficulty tuning), and begin mapping and writing dialogue.

Another small project I’ll be working on this week is rebuilding my PC. It has pretty good components, but I had the poor judgement to build it in a mini-ITX case. For those of you who don’t know what that means, mini-ITX is one of the smallest form factors in which you can build a ‘real’ PC. This seemed like a good idea at the time, since it was mostly intended for occasional gaming sessions and maybe, I thought, some random number crunching. A small form factor meant that it wouldn’t be in my way as much, and if it didn’t have quite the number of expansion slots or whatever as a larger one, that was a trade I was willing to make.

Unfortunately, these smaller builds just aren’t as good at dissipating heat as the larger ones, and this becomes a problem when you’re rendering, say, for 10 days straight (as I did for 0.4’s picture pack). Rendering pretty much maxes out both your CPU and GPU. The higher temps mean shorter component life and lower performance (since some components thermally throttle). It’s also kinda loud!

I figured since I’m using this thing basically as a workstation now, I should build it like one. I ordered the venerable Silverstone FT-02 (silver) case - it’s ancient, it’s huge, it’s heavy, and it’s still one of the best air cooling cases you can get. (Bonus points for not looking like a disco ball.) I had one many moons ago, and I thought it was great, but I got rid of that system when I started primarily using MacBooks. I didn’t like the size, but since this thing is sorta used for work now, I’m willing to put up with its size for reliability, performance, and silence.

I decided to switch motherboards when I changed form factors, so I’ll be building it with an Asus TUF Z270 Mark 1 (the line formerly known as Sabretooth). I hear these boards are supposed to be super stable and reliable; hopefully this is accurate! Anyway, the case should be here tomorrow, so I may do the build then. After that I'll break it in with some test renders! :D

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