VN Ren'Py Color of My Sound - Development Journal (Release Date Announcement!)

[Gallant Trombe]

Development Journal Entry #24
-Choosing battles-

Day 69 - 78
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Well, I'm back after skipping the last two weeks. Unfortunately, I don't really have any good news to share today. As I have said last entry, I wanted to finish all the renders before August, that didn't happen. In fact, I'm now way behind schedule. So, that's what I'm going over today.

Firstly, to say the big scene I've been working on has been difficult would be an understatement. Not only do the renders have multiple people in them, which means I need to render them separately, thus multiplying render time, most of the renders turned out terrible. First, the lighting was too dark, so I had to redo the lighting. Then for some reason, the renders are just really noisy, despite me letting it render for much longer than usual. So, I had to redo them, again. Compounding the fact that this scene has two major variations to it, yes, it took a lot longer than I would have liked. I'm still not done redoing them.

Luckily, the only problem is the time wasted, all the problems can be solved, I just needed more time.



The hair and skin I just couldn't get it to render properly despite giving it another hour. It didn't make any noticeable difference, it sure wasn't good enough regardless. The rest of the renders suffered the same problem. Initially, I thought there wasn't enough light, so I tried that, I wanted it to be brighter anyway. That didn't work. So, I render again in 4K. Below is the result.



This is better, but not without problems. The hair is still a bit jagged, but at least it's not horribly noisy anymore. The skin is good, really good actually when it was in 4K, some of the detail was lost during downscaling, I'll need to try other scaling options. The brightness is about where I want it to be. There are other little niggles I feel compelled to fix, but I've already spent too long rendering this scene, I need to move on, at least for now.

I lied, there is some good news. While I was fuming over the troubled development of this scene, I did manage to complete two more minor scenes, so that's something. One of them is the Lana scene I said I was probably going to cut. I think I was able to write some decent lines for it, but it's still not all that great, to be honest.

All of the scenes left are pretty spoiler-heavy, so this is all I have to show.





Again, there are always some things I can fix. I hate that I say it, but then knowingly still decide against doing something about it. It feels wrong. But if I plan to release updates regularly and within a reasonable amount of time, I just have to learn to choose my battles. All of these renders are saved, so redoing them wouldn't be too much work, it's just about time.

Thank you for reading. I want to say things are back of track, but it isn't, I still have 12 more renders to do for the big scene. So, I'm likely not going to do another entry until I have more I can show that's not it. Cheers!

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[Gallant Trombe]

Development Journal Entry #25
-Progress Update-

Day 79 - 85
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Time continues to be a luxury for me these last two weeks. I've not had a lot of time to pose and write, so most nights I just redo some of my worst renders so far. Still, I completed the renders for three scenes and just another three scenes from completing all scenes set for release. If I have time, I want to do some teaser previews for the second release as well.

Here are some renders I did since the last entry. They're all business as usual production-wise, and with how close the game is to release, I'm trying to restrain myself from talking about their context.




*stare......



I do have something to say about this one though - It's so frustrating working with this hair asset. If I haven't already made dozens of renders of Blanche already, I would have given her a different hair. It's fine for one-off renders, but awful for VNs where renders need to have some continuity to them. The hair's bones are tied to the figure's bones, so if I try to pose expressions, the hair moves with it. I'm sure this is great for one-off renders to help prevent clipping, but it just looks really weird seeing the hair moving when she blinks or open her mouth. Of course, I noticed this problem within the first few renders, and have tried to fix it, but it just keeps coming back one way or another. First I tried to delete some of the bones, that worked for the scene, but I would need to do that for every new scene or the hair don't conform to the head properly when loaded. That screws with overnight rendering, so no-go. Then I tried to mess with the weight map, which worked, except trying to brush something as complex as hair model lags my PC to no end with every stroke, and it is virtually impossible to modify all the maps because of this. And if I mess up somewhere, the hair would also look messed up.

For now, I'm just chipping away one map at a time, but it's definitely on the back of my mind to give her a new hair at some point in the story.


This is a bonus render I did testing her costume for the scene. I don't know what to think of it just yet. I wanted something see-through, but maybe this looks a little weird? The lack of any opaque trim might be the reason why, or maybe the fabric pattern, or maybe the seams, or all of the above I don't know. Anyway, I'm reworking the scene so the robe no longer serves a purpose. The whole point is for Mireille to show off a bit of her seductive side, there's plenty of other ways to go about it.

Thank you for reading. My work schedule is looking quite busy in the upcoming weeks, so who knows how much longer this will take until release. But I'm going to be optimistic and say the remaining scenes should not take long to produce, and then we're within days of release. Cheers!

 

[Bagley]

Development Journal Entry #25
-Progress Update-

Day 79 - 85
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...

View attachment 1351283

I do have something to say about this one though - It's so frustrating working with this hair asset. If I haven't already made dozens of renders of Blanche already, I would have given her a different hair.

Welcome back Blanche (and, of course, Gallant Trombe!) The hair bones issue does sound massively problematic, and if it makes life easier the change of hair might be a necessary evil. Maybe you could integrate the change of hairstyle in to the story somehow as part of her character arc, maybe it's linked to her backstory and there's a reason for the current style covering the right side of her face/head only?

View attachment 1351320

Woah! What a way to end a development update post!

 

[Gallant Trombe]

Welcome back Blanche (and, of course, Gallant Trombe!) The hair bones issue does sound massively problematic, and if it makes life easier the change of hair might be a necessary evil. Maybe you could integrate the change of hairstyle in to the story somehow as part of her character arc, maybe it's linked to her backstory and there's a reason for the current style covering the right side of her face/head only?



Woah! What a way to end a development update post!

Yea, that's the plan for now. It's already part of her story arc to have some kind of visual overhaul, but that's more down-the-line stuff. If I want to change the hair asap, then it's probably not going to have any story to it. It fits her character to be spontaneous, I'm not too concerned with the how and why, just the when.

 

[osanaiko]

Yea, that's the plan for now. It's already part of her story arc to have some kind of visual overhaul, but that's more down-the-line stuff. If I want to change the hair asap, then it's probably not going to have any story to it. It fits her character to be spontaneous, I'm not too concerned with the how and why, just the when.

Indeed, of all the things that identify "Blanche" when she is on screen, her specific hair style is not the first one I would remember *cough* golden metal arm *cough*.

 

[Gallant Trombe]

Development Journal Entry #26
-Progress Update-

Day 86 - 89
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I completed two scenes this week, well, almost. Both scenes are still missing maybe 10-15 renders total. I likely would have actually finished both if not for some DAZ issues I've avoided dealing with until now.


See the line between the shoulder and arm? I've had this problem before, but I never looked into what it is, I just fix it in post. It's not very noticeable when she's fully clothed. Obviously, this is a much bigger problem when she's naked, I can't imagine having to fix this over 100 times for just one scene.

Anyway, I looked it up and it apparently has to do with subsurface scattering. At first, I tried changing that and see if it fixes it. Well, below is the result.

It's fixed! But of course, things always got to be complicated. One problem goes away, another comes. Now, there are black pixels, white pixels, transparent pixels all over. Initially, I thought this is a problem with rendering without a background. I had this problem with some hair assets before, and I fixed those by changing the opacity. That really doesn't work with figures.

Long story short, I wasted my Sunday afternoon trying a bunch of different combinations of settings, not realizing there's a pretty simple fix. I just have to turn off spectral rendering.

So, with that fixed, I nearly finished the scene.




These are from the other scene I've been working on. This scene didn't give me nearly as much of a headache as the other one. I did run into the more common DAZ issues, but that's par for the course.




Oh, and of course with Blanche, the hair continues to be a problem. For now, I'm again just fixing it in post, but that has its limits. Certain poses and camera angles make it a lot harder to fix, so for those, I'll just have to pretend I didn't see them.

Thank you for reading. I have about 30 total renders left to do, then I'll start doing some rewrites, which leads to me having to redo some renders, so that's the plan for next week. Cheers!

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[Gallant Trombe]

Development Journal Entry #27
-Final Phase-

Day 90 - 97​

I'm done, I'm finally done with rendering for scenes. I am still in the progress of doing rewrites, so in the meantime, I have some older renders I want to redo for better quality, just to keep my PC busy. I was playing through the game and was shocked at how bad my earlier renders were. Although my settings and techniques haven't changed much, how I determine how long each render takes to render have. I used to use time as a benchmark, that was a bad mistake. Now, I use instances, much more consistent. But because that wasn't the case at the start, many of my earlier renders were all over the place.

Along with the rewrites, I'm also working on the Ren'py side of things. Designing UI, tweaking menus, etc. I have zero experience doing stuff like this, so it has been a slow process. I also don't have a menu background yet. Not sure what I want for a background, but probably just still images. I might take a look at how to do animated special effects, maybe a video or something, I don't know. It looks like a daunting task and outside my comfort zone, to be honest.

Lastly, I've been working on a banner and a poster for the game.






Thank you for reading, this is the final entry before release. Next time I post, the game will finally be ready for release. Until then, cheers!

 

[osanaiko]

I just want to say that it has been a pleasure helping out GT on this project so far. I've just finished proofreading the release candidate, and I was absolutely blown away. Y'all who are waiting for the release are going to be BLOWN AWAY.

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[Gallant Trombe]

Development Journal Entry #28
-Release-

Day 97 - 106​

This is it, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel... 106 days have I spent working on this game. Words cannot describe how relieved I am to know that I actually managed to finish a project of this scale. Well, finished Part A of Chapter 1, but given the effort and time it has taken me, you'll have to excuse me for feeling jubilant and drained, utterly drained.

I hope you will permit me to reminisce a bit before announcing the release date, I'm just in that kind of mood.

This project began on 15th March 2021. All I had then was a word document filled with scattered pieces of lore, character profiles, plot summaries, and a rough draft of chapter 1 that I have written over years. I had no proper education or background in creative writing, and I certainly didn't have any in 3D rendering or coding. I just played an assortment of games found on this site, and said:

"Let's just make my own, what's the worst that could happen?".

And so I did. The first two months were mostly spent on learning DAZ, trying to create concept arts and test renders of what the game might look like.

Spoiler

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This was my very first render. For those who tried DAZ, no, I didn't do the tutorial. Well, I tried, but the script bugged out or something and I couldn't progress it. I have watched it though. Anyway, this render alone was enough to tell me how far away was I from creating what I thought should be the standard of my game. From that point on I was adamant that my renders have to be much, much better. I could see how much better it could be, and I would never forgive myself for accepting anything but the best of my capabilities. If I don't put the necessary effort into my own project, it will never be any good in my eyes.

Spoiler

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A few days later, I began working on turning mundane, contemporary sets into something more "sci-fi". This one here was the first render of what would eventually become the one you can find on the very first dev entry. At this point, I knew I could not depend on DAZ alone to create the visuals I wanted for Colours. For various reasons, I just didn't think DAZ would be enough, I have to find something else that would open up more options for me. So, I started learning GIMP. Time to learn post-processing.

Fast forward weeks of working with DAZ and GIMP, I learnt that I could use image-editing software to compose my renders. Instead of rendering every pose with the same background over and over again, I could just render subjects and background separately. This saved rendering time and made it a lot easier to edit and compose the final image. Perhaps even more importantly, it allowed me to render more memory-intensive scenes without going over the limit. My GPU only has 8gb to spare.

Spoiler

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There are a few smaller pieces that I won't bother to upload. When combined and polished up...

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This is how I create all the images of the game. Needless to say, this process can take a long time. But with the right prep work, it can be streamlined to an acceptable level. Regardless, I think it is 100% worth it. This is especially beneficial when there are minor mistakes here and there, I won't need to redo the whole render, just spot render and mend the image with it.

There's plenty more I could say about the development process, but I think it's best that I only talk about something that might be useful to others who are looking to get started on their own projects. So, I'm going to stop here. Most of the other stuff I could talk about would just be me ranting about all the issues I had, all the time I've wasted redo-ing one scene over and over again for the dumbest reasons...

Enough stalling... I hope you will all look forward to playing Color of My Sound on 24th September. Since I don't have access to good file-hosting sites, I will make a request thread to post the game on that day, so keep an eye out for it .



Thank you for reading as always, and thank you to those who have followed this dev journal for the past few months. It has been a wonderfully fulfilling journey for me, I hope you will all enjoy the game as much as I enjoyed making it. Cheers!

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[JoeAngel]

So far so great I loved I just Hoped the Mc would Have Normal Body not to skinny

 

[PJWhoopie]

I just finished Color of My Sound today, and I was very entertained.

I got a lot out of your Dev thread too, as I am working on my own game...

Keep up the good work, and keep providing the tips here!

Ok... my only criticism...
Please, get the MC a clean shirt to wear... unless, he just has a suitcase full of red/black checked shirts....