Episode 6 - Progress Report #11 (Patreon)
Content
Hey everyone
This week I spent a lot of time going through the whole script again. I rewrote some stuff, polished some stuff, and scrapped some stuff 🙂. The last two days I spent creating models for the new characters and prepared some of the environments. I also made some calculations on render estimate counts.
Here are the scary numbers:
Writing: 100%
Coding: 90%
Environments: 20%
New Characters: 3/7
Background Characters: 0/40
Renders: 0%
Part 1 (9:00pm): 0/720
Part 2 (10:00pm): 0/360
Part 3 (11:00pm): 0/550
Part 4 (12:30am): 0/750
Part 5 (2:00am): 0/500
Part 6 (3:00am): 0/600
Music/Sound: 0%
Testing/Polish: 0%
📆 Release date estimate: June/July 2025
I expect some of you are probably quite taken aback by these numbers, particularly the release date estimate. As I've been hinting at for the last couple weeks, this episode is gonna be massive. Not only that, the scenario at a big house party brings some technical challenges with it.
I debated for a long time, if I should:
scrap big parts of this episode and basically go against what I had in mind for this party. I sketched out some ideas on how to keep the most important parts of the story and get rid of the rest, reducing the size drastically. But I just felt that this wouldn't do the scenes and characters justice.
or: split the episode in two. This also just left a bad taste in my mouth. I would have to arbitrarily cut it in half at a random spot, and deliver a first episode that would certainly feel unfinished. The party was always meant to be one big event, and splitting it up just for the sake of impatience didn't feel right.
So in the end I decided against both these things, and instead biting the bullet and create this one huge episode.
I hope y'all are patient enough to endure this long time with me. I know that personally, the development time for this episode is beyond the limits I initially set for myself. What I can guarantee you, is that Ep. 7 and after will be again a lot shorter than this one, more streamlined, and closer to the ~4 month development time per update I strive for 🙂.
You can look at Episode 6 as somewhat of a season finale. You'll have a ton of different options on how this party plays out, there are a lot of things that culminate and resolve here, some new beginnings will open up, and of course... it all ends with a bang 😋.
I am currently still working on character models. First I'll finish creating all or most of the important new additions and update existing characters with new outfits for the occasion. Afterwards I'll take some time to create people to fill out empty spaces in the background. While the important new characters will take some time each (~2-4 hours per character), the background characters will be done in a "rapid fire" way (10-15 minutes per character). I'll also need to finish most of the environment before I can start with actual renders.
I can't wait to finally start doing renders again. Usually the writing is the most fun part for me, but with this episode it eventually started to get pretty exhausting. I'm happy to be back at mindlessly posing sexy girls in DAZ Studio 😅. I'll also be a bit more around in Discord to chat if you're interested to join (https://discord.gg/aaAN6VrjnR).
❤️ I wish you all a nice weekend! Thanks for the support! ❤️