Another busy couple of weeks, especially trying to make up for taking a few days off for Thanksgiving. I give thanks for all of my supporters! I hope everyone had a great time with family and friends, and that you haven’t had to FAFO anybody. 😊

I finished scene 16, and am currently in scene 17 about 1/4 of the way in. Scene 17 will end up being the longest scene in the game by a large measure. Lots and lots (and lots!) of new environments and character models, so it’s taking some time to fully realize.

I spent a lot of time on new UI features and an update to the Jukebox which was long overdue. The final version will feature a true jukebox, with full playback controls and features like repeating and pausing. I’ve additionally added a flag that lets you pause music when the game window isn’t in front. I’d love to say that it was for my adoring fans, but in reality I just got tired of listening to the same old background music hour after hour while I’m developing the game. I’ve improved the UI for load/save screens and gallery playback, and even went back to re-render some older animations and inconsistent screens (that have been bugging me for months). Busy week!

I finally did some testing on the speed of the new render server, and it turned out to be about what I thought it would be. The RTX 4090 is a tad faster by itself than my old rig that had two RTX-3090s. The new case doesn’t have room for a second 4090, but I did repurpose a 3070 I had laying around, and while it doesn’t make rendering any faster, it does relieve the 4090 from having to handle the UI and apps that I’m running in parallel. Speaking of which, I finally got Iray Server working again, which has dramatically increased my throughput speed. I can start a job and immediately get back to editing the next image. This is a big deal, because when there were issues with renders in the past, it took time to re-edit the model and re-render it. Meaning that it took me 4 times as long to render an image with issues. Now, I can just reupload the fixed model to the server queue and get right back to work.

December’s custom 4K renders were of Zoey. With the new tools that I have at hand, as well as my new render rig, I think they are the best renders I’ve produced yet.

Following up from last week, since I’ve finished the custom renders for 2024, I’m going to offer individual sets of renders as well as sets that encompass an entire year, for both calendar years 2023 and 2024. They should be up before the end of the year over on Patreon. You won’t even need to be a paid subscriber to purchase them, just a free member.

As always, I am delighted to greet all the new supporters who have recently joined our community! Your support is invaluable and inspires me to move ahead. If you haven’t already, please join me on my Discord and participate! There, you can find everything from lewd images, discussions about LGBTQ+ rights, reports on our daily progress, to programming tips for budding Ren’Py developers.

Step forth and be amazed! Two images, born of our sweat and dedication over the past two weeks!