Hello!
It's time for another all members dev log. I've a fair bit to say this week (about this dev cycle as a whole), some positive, some negative.
Firstly, though, the numbers. We're at 21/27 scenes complete with 2965 renders. I've definitely underperformed these past few weeks since the last dev log, this is the lowest increase to the overall render count between all members dev logs so far. Which is a little frustrating given it feels like I'm so close to a release, however I have no other distractions for the next month+ so I'm able to really focus and get the remaining work done now as efficiently as I can.
This week saw us pass the six month mark for the development of The Party. I'll admit, I'm quite disappointed in myself that it's taking me over six months, and will take another month still. Perhaps I set my personal expectations too high for myself, but I really hoped that both ch4 and ch5 would be six month cycles. We'll see for ch5. The solace I take is that (as mentioned before) had ch4 been the size I expected, it would be out by now, however that doesn't change the fact I'm a little frustrated with where I'm at. I always wanted ch4 to come out in the summer at some point, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been targeting earlier summer, rather than, as is most likely now, mid-to-late August. I hope that when I do get it finished you will all be able to see that the time has been well spent, and that you'll love the update as much as I've enjoyed making it (when I've not been having tech issues, at least!)
There will likely be another all members dev log out before the end of the dev cycle, hopefully at that stage I will be able to confidently suggest a release date. My targets have been either the 14th or 21st, but upon reflection this week on how much is left still to do it seems more likely to end up being the 21st or 28th now. Again, I apologize for seemingly constantly shifting my guesses back slightly, one day I'll learn to accurately estimate how much work I've got left. Still, it'll never be as back as when I 'confidently' guessed the ch2 update would be out in June, and it ended up being released in August. That was an interesting guess, in hindsight.
I won't keep updating and changing the estimate with every dev log in the next few weeks because I don't think that's really helpful for anyone, honestly. The next time I mention a potential release date will be once I'm actually working on the last (or maybe penultimate) scene. Just because I don't want to keep changing expectations week-to-week; I'll still update on what's left to do, but I think constantly guessing at a potential release isn't really conducive to productive work, really, if that makes sense. It's self-inflicted, of course, but I do sometimes feel like I put a little more pressure on myself than necessary by trying to guess a release date - it's just when it feels this close to being finished I get excited. At the end of the day it'll be ready when it's ready, right?
Anyway, I believe the current scene I'm working on will take at least through next week, possibly the majority of the week after to finish. After that, there's 5 scenes left (plus the ending section). I'm going to really push myself when I get to these scenes to try and complete (the posing at least) of them in 2 weeks. All 5 scenes will likely be similar in length so I'll know quickly enough after making the first 1 or 2 how long to expect it all to take.
Thank you all for your patience as always! It's interesting, upon reflection, that I'm somehow frustrated with producing near enough 3000 renders in 6 months, when that's much faster than any other update has been produced so far for NGB. Really I should be quite happy, and once the update is in fact finished I'm sure I will be. But right now it's back to focusing on getting these renders posed!