An Announcement, Blender Stuff, and a Poll (Patreon)

Greetings! I'm very sorry for the delay in posting. I have an announcement related to that, but this post will also share some art stuff and there’s a question about save locations I’d like your input on as well. So let’s get to it!

Announcement: Starting a New Job

I have an announcement, and the short version of it is this: I’ve started a new job that provides me less free time. As a result of this, you can expect development to be a bit slower and for posts to be more infrequent. I expect this situation to last for about six months or so, after which I should again have more time. The game is not being abandoned, I’ll just be developing it at a slower pace for a bit.

I’ll be posting less and will probably take longer to respond to messages and such. My plan is to post monthly, unless I have something special to share. (Game releases will be posted when they’re complete, of course.) While the posts will be less frequent, I do hope to make them more substantive and interesting.

I apologize for this, but unfortunately it’s something I have to do for my own financial security. I thought I ought to let you know about this so you can adjust your expectations (and pledges) accordingly.

Blender

Because of the new job, I often find myself working on the game with my laptop unplugged. I can tell you from extensive experience that most laptops capable of doing serious 3D work absolutely suck away from a power outlet. This led me to consider one of the new MacBook Pros, which have great battery life, perform exactly the same whether plugged in or not, and (for the M1 Max at least) have a pretty capable GPU.

There’s only one problem - Daz, the 3D software I mostly use, uses a rendering engine provided by Nvidia, which only renders quickly on systems with an Nvidia GPU. I expected Daz to render slow on the Mac, and it certainly does. I thought this would be good motivation to finally move the project over to Blender, which works pretty well on M1 Macs these days. I’ve spent a fair bit of time over the past week working on that, and concluded that I’ll be getting another Windows laptop for 3D work in a few months and sticking with Daz for now.

Blender works very well on the Mac, and it’s actually pretty incredible to be able to do 3D work for several hours (including rendering) on battery. The problem is more that figuring out a new workflow takes a lot of experimentation, which takes a lot of time, and now that my time is more limited I’d rather spend it on quests, writing, and y’know, developing the game.

Anyway, I’ll probably put the Blender project back on hold for now, but I did make some progress that I want to share.

Emily was the first model I worked on, both because her hair looked the worst in Daz and because I figured her hair would be the easiest to make in Blender. The big thing I didn’t like about her Blender model from the last time was her skin. It just didn’t have the pleasing radiance of the Daz model. When I got back to work, that was the first order of business, and I think it turned out pretty well. Here are some examples:

There's still this cool mirror-sheen on Emily's lips in Daz that I can't quite recreate, but I'm working on it. And I need to make her more of a strawberry blonde.

Here is the “Butter” image I did a while back, first with the old textures, then with the new:

Now, the old image actually looks better, but that’s because there’s more of a contrast between the subject (Emily) and the background. As far as the skin itself goes, I think the new one definitely looks better.

The other big thing to figure out was how to equip models with clothing. I‘ve made progress on that one, but it’s not quite there yet. I’d hoped to have something to show on that front before posting, but I didn’t want to delay this post any further.

10.3 Progress

I’m done mapping the outside of the Commercial District, and have now moved on to mapping building interiors. This is going slow for a couple of reasons: first there are a lot of them. Like, 21. Second, I’m taking the time to plan out more or less what’s going on inside as part of the mapping process, which makes this part slow but should speed things up when I finally begin writing. I’m also starting with the largest buildings first, which take the longest. I have a couple of days off coming up in which I hope to get a lot done on this front.

Poll Question: Save Locations

One of the most common laments I hear from players is that they lost their saves. For some games this might not be a big deal, but The Proteus Effect is very long at this point, and the prospect of spending 30 or so hours getting back up to speed can be pretty daunting even if you really like the game.

I don’t have much data on it, but I suspect the reason people seem to lose saves a lot is that on Windows they’re stored in the same folder as the game itself. So if you delete the release when you’re done with it, or if you delete the old one as soon as you get the new release... you just lost your saves.

Saves don’t have to be handled this way. Many games store save files in hidden folders in your user account, usually referred to as “app data.” When saves are handled this way, the only way you’ll lose them is either if your computer dies, or if you switch to a new computer and forget to transfer them. And when you download a new version of the game, you don’t have to transfer anything, you just open it up and play.

This is actually the way saves are handled on the Mac version of TPE. I originally did this as a workaround because an old version of the engine couldn’t create the save folder where it was supposed to, but I kinda liked the way it worked out. I think Mac users are only a small part of the playerbase, but I never hear about them losing saves.

If you play RPG Maker games a lot, having saves in the game folder probably seems pretty natural, and you’re probably used to managing them by hand. If you don’t play RPG Maker games much, having saves in the game folder probably seems strange and unintuitive. This is probably also responsible for one of the top questions I still get: “How do I transfer my saves?”

I asked whether I should switch the Windows version to storing saves in App Data a long time ago and the answer was a resounding “no.” I think it’s probably worth asking again now that the game is a lot longer and the consequences of losing your saves are much greater.

Poll question: should I change the Windows version to store saves in App Data?

Conclusion

Please let me know what you think about the save question. And if you have any questions about the other stuff, please let me know that too. I probably won’t be posting again until next month, but I’ll be around in the comments. Thank you for your support!