Tuesday 11 August 2020

Diminishment Compatiblity test (Windows)

Hey,

I figured I could post this here as well:

  • This only includes the Main Menu and Player setup, trying to go further will cause the game to hang in a loading screen, so that's normal.  
  • This also has the full res and less compressed video, so you can see how well the "best" version of the game runs for you. 
  • You should see a video playing in the background of the Main Menu, if nothing is playing, something is wrong! It can some times take a couple seconds for the video to appear, depending on your PC, though.

Updated compatibility test

Make sure to try the different run option found in the game's folder if the video is running slow or not showing up. Vulkan will run better on some PCs than others, while DX11 runs better on others, etc.


This is built with Unity 2020. Since some people had issues when I tried to update to 2019, you can check in advance to see if the next update works for you, and if not, possibly fix the issue. Please read the attached read me file first to see if any of those solutions work for you, before asking for help!


Let me know in the comments if you have any issues, especially if the previous version worked fine for you. 

Saturday 1 August 2020

About release estimates & the upcoming game part

Hey,

As you have no doubt noticed, Chapter 2 Part 1 of Diminishment has been taking quite a bit longer than my initial estimates were predicting! 

I've been expecting to get it done as early as at the end of May, I might have even thought I could get it done by April at some point, if I'm not remembering wrong. Those were all dates that I thought I could match, but that turned out to be a fools errand. 

I realize that I've never promised anything, and I've tried my best to make it clear, that my estimates are always on the optimistic side, and usually the first possible date of release I believe possible. But I do still get the occasional complaint of being dishonest, although granted, not from the paying customers. I think I've seen only one complaint from a patron so far, and if anyone's asked, I've yet to refuse a refund. Although I'm not entirely sure if that is possible on subscribestar. 

I'd hate for people to think I'm intentionally lying to get more people to subscribe, so from now on, I'll refrain from giving any kind of estimates on any final releases, until I believe I'm at most a week away from it, to avoid misunderstandings between a release estimate and a release date. The only release estimates I'll be giving, are to subscribers about WIP materials, which are more frequent and usually don't fluctuate more than a week.

Why has this part taken so much longer than the previous one?

First, it's longer and more complex, at least animation footage wise, compared to the previous chapters. I'm trying a lot of new things this time, like new render techniques, fluid simulations, and some cloth simulations. The new hair system that you've seen in the more recent videos also takes quite a bit more work with the looping nature of the game's video clips. It's much harder to guess the amount of work required, when you're doing something you really haven't done before.

Second, it's not taken that much longer than the previous part, considering nearly half of the time was spent on the 3 mini-animations that came out before I started working on this properly. I think Ch1Pt3 took roughly 6 months, while this one has now taken about 7 months. I only started properly animating this after Bootyful Incident was done, which came out early January.

What's left to do before release:
  • A couple workdays worth of render prep still left for the intro part
  • Writing dialogue
  • Constructing the actual Unity scene
  • Audio 
  • Post-processing
  • Portraits
  • Possibly some background renders for the non event parts, if required, although I might use place holder stock photos
I am working as fast as I can, and I've basically taken no breaks since the start of June. I want this out as much as you do, so I can finally take some proper time off, ideally, while there's still some summer left to enjoy.

Any questions regarding any potential release dates will be ignored from now on. My guess is often as good as yours. 

Thank you for reading, I hope you have a nice day!