I wish I had a bigger update to share today, but most of my development time recently has been going into very large renders (~2-5 hours to complete, compared to my usual 5 to 15 minutes).
The good news is that I'm all but done with the large renders. And being entirely done with that environment is just a matter of whether or not I feel like touching up a few things I started in that environment a while ago.
The OTHER good news is that I figured out a good workaround for the world center shadow bug in DAZ. Using this will save me a lot of time clone stamping in Photoshop (for the instances where I've encountered the bug, particularly in large environments).
You can see a good example of where I've put this to use in the animated image above - originally I had to crop Chrissy because she had some just awful black marks on her face and it wasn't feasible for me to touch up 30 frames (I have tried doing this before, the touch-ups become far, far more noticeable in animations since you see the touch-up smudges moving - it's just not a good idea!), so I'm rather pleased that I have a good working method to handle this in DAZ now!
I'm currently working on rendering the sequences on the interior of Abernathy, which shouldn't take me TOO much longer. Up next will be some of the scenes with Chrissy immediately after being in Abernathy. Those scenes will be followed by the branching scenes at the end of the day (probably three or four paths, with some additional options).
Depending on my mood, I'm also considering a few other development opportunities (that aren't focused on the main plot), including:
- Building the Kunnilingus Kombat scene
- 33 images, already rendered, just need to add the text
- Would be on Erisa's PC before leaving the apartment, also later when you'd be able to not have Chrissy looking over your shoulder
- Finishing the Victoria Vixxen Versus the Autofuck 5000 scene
- Already have 1 animation (currently in-game) and 5 still scenes (some with multiple angles) rendered, just need to add to it and add text
- Adding an interface tracking relationships
- I've pondered putting this in phone (which currently does nothing)
- Basically, I've already done a little JS to make a simpler (in my mind) way of coding the "Check Objective" skill (because RMMV 'if' statements are awful, contain no elseifs or switch cases, and don't offer string variables) and am considering doing some more advanced coding/light UX development to make a "check how you're progressing with girl x" screen.
- I feel like these are pretty standard, but it's something I've yet to build myself, and I like doing new things
Anyway, the next release is still a ways away (no ETA), but I'm happy to have a little more traction on the interwebs and some positive feedback (some negative too, but all I can do is learn and improve, right?) It's really kind of amazing how one post on one website results in so many uploads by other parties on other sites (are they paid upload links? probably).
As a reminder, there are no current plans to monetize this game. No Patreon, no bullshit. I'll continue uploading the latest version here and on https://f95zone.com/threads/erisas-summer-v0-0e98-im6.11135/ - which is probably also the best place for discussion at this point.
