Dev Log #7

Older post - this is from 16th of July

Sup everyone!

Hope you all are doing great on this fine day and ready to dive into a potentially lengthy Dev Log. First the progress, then I will talk about some personal stuff about my new job and how things are going. 

But before that, let me address posting here on itch: this is my first Dev Log which I'm posting here, if you'd like to see all the previous ones you can do that from the list below. 
Dev Log #1
Dev Log #2
Dev Log #3
Dev Log #4
Dev Log #5
Dev Log #6

From now on, I will post Dev Logs here as I release them, so you can keep up to date without needing to go to my Patreon.

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Now the latest progress:

• We're up to 259 renders total for the Prologue so far. Based on how many renders I have already for the amount of words covered, I'm expecting a decent render count for the Prologue... probably 1500+. But I'll see how different scenes will have different requirements.
• I designed and coded a large chunk of the UI and menus of the game. From a coding perspective, all the foundational logic is done and it all works as intended. From a design standpoint, I still need to finish the gallery, the main girls' character screen and the Book of Lore (my codex functionality).

I spent a long time on the menus and I have a bunch of functionality that I hope people will appreciate. If there are any that you think is still really important to have, feel free to let me know here or on Patreon, Discord, anywhere you'd like. I'll list some of the main things which I've already implemented:

• Already mentioned, but: Gallery, main girls' screen, Book of Lore (codex)
• Optional save-naming
• Tooltips toggle (new words/concepts will have a brief explanation upon hovering over them in the text box with your cursor, this can be toggled off if you wish)
• Separate music, SFX, voice and UI audio channels. Also, audio during lewd scenes received separate audio channels - SFX and voice are included here. Separate audio channels allow you to change the volume for each of these categories however you want.
• Dialogue settings tab with a preview window of a sample dialogue screen and settings for customizable text size, text outline, text box opacity, text box width and height.

Want a random, super boring screenshot of a menu? Here:

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Update on my new job and how development will be affected

This week I started at my new job. It's been about a month since I mentioned it, and yes, it took this long because HR was... doing HR things... I guess? Anyways, to give people a bit more information while keeping some things private:

I was hired into this company via being recommended by someone who works there, and based on my knowledge and profession, they knew they wanted to hire me, but they didn't have any openings in my area of expertise. Because of this, they looked at alternatives within the company. I had talks with one of the department leads who's overseeing way more stuff than what their official responsibilities are, and for some reason he started seeing a lot of potential in having me join the team.

Sound crazy so far? Yeah, I know... it's an odd bunch and there's not as much heavy corporate pressure from above in a sense.

There are multiple reasons why this is a particularly tough challenge for me, but I obviously can't mention internal affairs of what is happening inside the company, but I'll say that things are looking real rough - I was basically brought in, into a position where I'm supposed to put out the fires. Additionally, the company operates in a unique, sort of niche industry which requires an immense amount of technical knowledge and expertise within this field; something that I don't have because I know fuck-all about this industry. So, that means a crapton of studying something that I already tried studying before in school for a year and I actively disliked it, so much so that I dropped it after a year.

So, how does all this affect development?

My goal is to get all of my work done on Aether (or at least most) before I head to my job in the morning (near 2 hour commute, yay). So far it actually worked, even though I was pretty sleep deprived in all cases. I believe my plan is working and I can only improve the situation from here. This means that while I do see some slowing down, especially now in the beginning as I'm starting out and my brain is actual poached eggs after I finish work (could keep happening even after I get used to stuff), I believe I can still work at a decent pace.

What else may change?

I've been pretty active on Discord since I started, my previous job was really comfortable so it was something I could allow myself, and I really enjoy talking to people about Aether itself, development or AVNs in general. Unfortunately, my activity in Discord will have to drop as less time means I'll prioritize more on development itself. That doesn't mean you can't reach out to me, talk to me, DM me etc. Tag me in our server, DM all you want, I just may not see your message that quickly sometimes, but I'll still respond!

I also thought about moving dev logs over to a monthly schedule, just to ease some of the stress or expectation a report like this creates, but I haven't made an executive decision yet. I'll see how things are in 2 weeks and how much progress I achieved and then decide how to go about it.

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Thanks a lot for reading! Work's not stopping at all, in fact with my new job and salary I'll be able to buy an SSD so I can speed up work inside studio - that will be a game-changer for me.

Now go drink some water after reading this yap session!

-Khronarch