Hello everybody!
I hope you're all doing well and keeping safe!
I've got a few pieces of news just to share with you all.
My GPU died (but it isn't all bad news!):
Firstly, unfortunately about three hours after posting v.09.1.1, my GPU died mid-render. My 1080TI had worked tirelessly producing most of Shadows and all of Defending Lydia Collier and sadly gave up on me and despite going back to the manufacturer, couldn't be repaired.
This meant that for about a ten days, I had absolutely no means of rendering anything, and this hurt the development of v.10 slightly as I was averaging 15-20 renders a day, which has put me slightly behind.
Now given the current global shortage of GPUs, I wasn't able to replace it by buying another GPU, but given the huge growth my support has seen, I have replaced it with a completely new RTX 30 series Desktop just to work on the games with.
This has now all been delivered and I'm back to producing renders, so there is nothing to worry about, I'm hoping the increased render speed will help me quickly patch up the backlog and that's what I'm working on right now.
This also means in the future I'm going to be looking at adding animations, but this is going to be a learning curve. The three animations I've made so far are all "load and go" jobs, whereas to make anything more unique is going to take me a lot of time to learn and perfect even though I've now got the hardware to do it, so please bear with me but I'm hoping to make some cool stuff in the future.
Defending Lydia Collier v.10 Progress:
So far I've made about 500 renders, and I'd say I'm about 60% through the day.
I'm aiming to have this completed by the end of the month/early May time, but I'll post a date nearer the time.
This update will have new scenes for Steph, Ellie & Vanessa along with progressing the story.
The month of May (and then beyond):
May is going to be a tricky month for me as it is when all of my final exams for university take place.
These exams are the last exams I'll take and they are a major factor in what grade I'll get for my degree overall; because of this for the majority of the month I'm going to be still be rendering, but I'm going to offline in most places, so you might wait significantly longer for replies etc. I also WILL NOT be doing any custom renders during this time period, I'll still make it of course, but it will be made after my exams.
Beyond this I'm undecided on doing a Master's Degree, but for June/July/August at least I'll be working full time on the games, so with the hardware improvements I'm going to be aiming to be releasing big updates (aiming for 1000 renders) each month.
I'm also now beginning to learn to work with non-Daz assets and programs such as Blender, so I'm hoping to be creating completely custom environments in the future so you'll never get the "I've been to this store in five different VNs" experience.
Thanks for all your continued support and to the new people who have joined!
Look out for the release date for v.10 when I'm about 90% done on it.
WP
I love your storytelling dude, first VN I ever played and it was so engaging, had me really thinking about what my next move should be, how to not get killed or mess up the investigation etc. And the love life part is super balanced, it's not like a bloated fantasy where every 3 minutes you got some sexual encounter, but rather the characters are deep, well written, like real life people, and the dialogue is really interesting. E.g. the rugby locker room part, you really nailed that scene when it comes to the dialogue and the vibe, it just feels like a real life situation. The game overall feels really real, like your actions have weight and consequences, not…