Hi everyone!
Today it’s finally time for the post you’ve all been waiting for - the announcement of the new Episode 5.2 release date!
But before we get to that, I want to give you a quick summary of the work, say a few words (again) about why everything is taking so long, and explain what our next steps are.
Everything 'around' the update is already finished. Right now, we’re working on the final scene, and I think we’re somewhere around the halfway point. We still have around 200 renders to make, plus the final animations. I think we should be able to finish this in the next 2–3 weeks and then carefully check if there’s anything else left to do.
After that, we move to the final translations, music, sounds, SFX/VA for the animations, some missing UI elements (which we can’t finish yet because we also need the final scene for them), and finally testing, fixing and removing bugs.
To be honest, I’m really tired of this update. We decided to work on many things around the update instead of focusing only on the scenes. We added new features, improved old ones, and generally tried to make everything better. I’ll talk more about all of that when we get closer to the release.
Still, all of this took a lot of time and work, especially because there are also a lot of new renders.
After this episode, we plan to make 4 more episodes, which will probably contain around 12–15k renders and tons of animations. I really want to finish all of them by the end of next year, and I’ll do everything I can to make that happen, but only time will tell.
And why does everything take so long?
Now I’m going to talk about something I’ve already written countless times before. Nothing has really changed, so if you’ve been following the project for a long time, feel free to skip the next paragraph.
A lot of people complain that the time between updates has become longer, that we should release them faster, and so on - and honestly, you’re right. This is probably the longest gap between updates we’ve ever had. I’m not going to talk about my personal life here, because at this point it doesn’t really matter. It also doesn’t matter that I’ve spent almost every free moment I’ve had working on this game for the last three years. That’s not really the point.
Instead, I want to point out a few things - and maybe you can actually help me make the project faster.
First, yes, the time between updates has increased a lot. But so has the quality, as well as the amount of renders and animations. This update will have around 3,000 of them. The first updates, which I was releasing every 3-4 weeks, had around 400-500 renders.
The second thing is quality. If I made renders with the same quality as the ones in the early scenes, I could probably finish updates in around 30% of the time. But I don’t want to do that. I really like the quality we have now, and I’m not going to lower it just to release the game faster. It would probably be a good marketing and business decision, but I would rather earn less money and be proud of what I created.
And finally, there are the artists.
We’ve had an active recruitment process for more than two years. We check people, talk to them and test their work, but we simply haven’t been able to find someone who is a good fit and actually wants to work with us. And it’s not really about the payment. It’s about the quality of the work. Daz3D is a very specific and relatively small niche. If someone is really good at making renders, there’s a good chance they are already working on their own game - and that’s basically it. Even increased sales or unlimited Patreon support unfortunately can’t solve this problem.
And this is where you can actually help.
Maybe you know some artists. Maybe you have some time to look through different forums, communities and websites and find people who would be interested in working with us and who have the right skills. I will pay whatever is necessary. I really care about this project, and I honestly want to release updates faster. But the more time I spend looking for artists, the less time I have to actually create the renders myself.
So that’s it.
If you want faster updates, instead of complaining about them, find me an artist! 😄
End of my little rant. Now let’s move on to the dates!
Episode 5.2 will be released on:
September 18 — Devoted+ on Patreon
September 20 — Steam + Inquisitive+ tiers on Patreon
September 27 — Attentive+ tiers on Patreon
That’s all for now!
As we get closer to the release, I’ll start revealing some little secrets and showing you what you can expect, because there will be quite a few interesting things in this update.
