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!