- Jun 18, 2017
- 3,845
- 6,955
- Dec 17, 2017
- 7,425
- 9,681
Yeah, they're milking their 47 patrons.
You may not realize this, but they did pay for their rig. Then it blew up. Now they need a new one. So they're scrambling to buy it, but not being super rich, they can't just go buy one. They've got to budget for it, and getting money from donors helps get them up and running again.
- Feb 17, 2018
- 3,574
- 10,093
A little late with the update, but here's the newest scoop on this visually stalled, but entertaining game:
Good evening everyone,
So there has been a lot going on over and here and in the sweep of everything happening, we kind of lost track of time. Without any additional delay, let’s dive in.
The new machine is nearly complete. We’ve acquired everything but the graphics card. The parts in hand have been assembled and using the on-board GPU we’ve fired up the machine and began migrating assets. The migration process itself turned out to be a much larger project than expected. It turned out that during our short run in producing this game, we’ve acquired over 400 Daz Studio packages (about 50 gigs of characters, clothing, environments, props, etc). I am happy to report that as of noon today we have completed the tasks of downloading and cataloguing the assets.
So what are we currently capable of? With the onboard GPU we can begin staging some low-density scenes and preparing them for rendering once the card is in. The end of this dark tunnel is finally within sight. Soon we’ll be attacking this project with a lot more fire power. And believe me, we are ready to light this fuse.
In the downtime during the system failure, we’ve manage to complete Act I for all characters. Writing and coding are complete, now it is just a matter of staging, rendering and integrating. We are incredibly excited about that.
And if all of that weren’t enough, we have been undergoing some redesign of our Patreon page. Not to fret, nothing material is changing. Reward tiers are the same, though we are enhancing the rewards themselves. We just needed to update the verbiage. We are also simplifying the download structure to speed up distribution. Semantic versioning each tier has turned into a huge bottleneck that slows distribution of each build. We’ve streamlined this so that once the next distribution is complete, we can have it uploaded and ready for download in less than an hour.
We are on the verge and terribly excited to begin releasing updates again. While this period has been very productive we have been missing a very important part of our creative process, your feedback. Sure, we’ve been writing our asses off, but without your input we have no way to be certain that what we’ve written is worth a damn. Believe me when I say we are very anxious to get our product back into your hands. And we will, very soon.
The only part we’ve left to acquire is the graphics card needed to produce the renders. The remainder of the system is built. There were some last-minute changes to the specs to improve speed and redundancy, but we paid for that out of pocket. We have no interest in delaying this project because of financing. So here it is, hopefully the last time I’ll post this parts list. But since you helped pay for a portion of it, we feel you are entitled to see where your money is going.
Parts in Hand:
· Intel Core i7 8700K – $328.28 (Paid for by Patrons)
· Vortex Plus CPU Cooler – $27.89 (Paid for by Patrons)
· 16GB Ballistix RAM Module – $168.99 (Courtesy of Sjoher)
· 3TB HDD – $59.89 (Courtesy of Sjoher)
· Phanteks Full Tower Chassies – $99.99
· EVGA SuperNOVA 850 – $119.99
· 4 x Artic F14 Case Fans for a total of 6 case fans – $31.96
· Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX Z370 – $180
· 960 EVO M.2 SDD (To hold OS and Daz and increase overall system speed) - $217.99
· 3TB HDD (To mirror the first and provide system redundancy) - $59.89
· NXT Sentry 3 Fan Controller (To optimize negative case pressure) - $32.99
· 16GB Ballistix RAM Module (Total of 32GB of RAM for building larger and more complex scenes) - $168.99
· Windows 10 - $92.99
Parts to Purchase:
· GTX 1070 – $550.00
So here it is, the last hurdle. My contract work that I took up on the side to help pay for this hardware was completed last Wednesday. Deducting for parts already purchased, we have about $160 left in the till to put towards the card. So, there is still a small gap to clear but with your help, I have no doubt we’ll get there soon.
I want to thank everyone again for their patience during this black-out. You sticking with us has meant a great deal. It shows you have as much faith in this project as we do and that you are as excited about seeing it come to fruition as we are.
Salute to you my friends! We will speak again very soon.
Good evening everyone,
So there has been a lot going on over and here and in the sweep of everything happening, we kind of lost track of time. Without any additional delay, let’s dive in.
The new machine is nearly complete. We’ve acquired everything but the graphics card. The parts in hand have been assembled and using the on-board GPU we’ve fired up the machine and began migrating assets. The migration process itself turned out to be a much larger project than expected. It turned out that during our short run in producing this game, we’ve acquired over 400 Daz Studio packages (about 50 gigs of characters, clothing, environments, props, etc). I am happy to report that as of noon today we have completed the tasks of downloading and cataloguing the assets.
So what are we currently capable of? With the onboard GPU we can begin staging some low-density scenes and preparing them for rendering once the card is in. The end of this dark tunnel is finally within sight. Soon we’ll be attacking this project with a lot more fire power. And believe me, we are ready to light this fuse.
In the downtime during the system failure, we’ve manage to complete Act I for all characters. Writing and coding are complete, now it is just a matter of staging, rendering and integrating. We are incredibly excited about that.
And if all of that weren’t enough, we have been undergoing some redesign of our Patreon page. Not to fret, nothing material is changing. Reward tiers are the same, though we are enhancing the rewards themselves. We just needed to update the verbiage. We are also simplifying the download structure to speed up distribution. Semantic versioning each tier has turned into a huge bottleneck that slows distribution of each build. We’ve streamlined this so that once the next distribution is complete, we can have it uploaded and ready for download in less than an hour.
We are on the verge and terribly excited to begin releasing updates again. While this period has been very productive we have been missing a very important part of our creative process, your feedback. Sure, we’ve been writing our asses off, but without your input we have no way to be certain that what we’ve written is worth a damn. Believe me when I say we are very anxious to get our product back into your hands. And we will, very soon.
The only part we’ve left to acquire is the graphics card needed to produce the renders. The remainder of the system is built. There were some last-minute changes to the specs to improve speed and redundancy, but we paid for that out of pocket. We have no interest in delaying this project because of financing. So here it is, hopefully the last time I’ll post this parts list. But since you helped pay for a portion of it, we feel you are entitled to see where your money is going.
Parts in Hand:
· Intel Core i7 8700K – $328.28 (Paid for by Patrons)
· Vortex Plus CPU Cooler – $27.89 (Paid for by Patrons)
· 16GB Ballistix RAM Module – $168.99 (Courtesy of Sjoher)
· 3TB HDD – $59.89 (Courtesy of Sjoher)
· Phanteks Full Tower Chassies – $99.99
· EVGA SuperNOVA 850 – $119.99
· 4 x Artic F14 Case Fans for a total of 6 case fans – $31.96
· Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX Z370 – $180
· 960 EVO M.2 SDD (To hold OS and Daz and increase overall system speed) - $217.99
· 3TB HDD (To mirror the first and provide system redundancy) - $59.89
· NXT Sentry 3 Fan Controller (To optimize negative case pressure) - $32.99
· 16GB Ballistix RAM Module (Total of 32GB of RAM for building larger and more complex scenes) - $168.99
· Windows 10 - $92.99
Parts to Purchase:
· GTX 1070 – $550.00
So here it is, the last hurdle. My contract work that I took up on the side to help pay for this hardware was completed last Wednesday. Deducting for parts already purchased, we have about $160 left in the till to put towards the card. So, there is still a small gap to clear but with your help, I have no doubt we’ll get there soon.
I want to thank everyone again for their patience during this black-out. You sticking with us has meant a great deal. It shows you have as much faith in this project as we do and that you are as excited about seeing it come to fruition as we are.
Salute to you my friends! We will speak again very soon.
- Jun 23, 2017
- 911
- 1,400
Like I said it's between them and their patrons but I've been around enough and heard all the stories with kickstarter and patron. Maybe, these guys are good dudes or maybe they walk away shortly after getting their patrons to build them a new rig.
Regardless maybe it's time to unfollow this thread tired of the thread updates on building a new rig.
I think it's a matter of perspective. You view Patreon as a store front for purchasing content, we view it as a place where people with disposable income can invest in projects that interest them.
We don't view our Patron's contributions as donations. We view them as investments. And as investors, we feel our patrons have the right to know how their money is being spent. By giving our patrons fairly consistent updates regarding our operational status, we feel we are keeping them informed of where we are in the project, and demonstrating that despite the lack of releases in the short term, there is forward momentum in the project.
From day one we have been about clear and continuous communication. We respond to all questions, and reply to pretty much every post in this forum.
Our updates are to reassure our patrons that we are not sitting idle waiting for our patron count or patreon income to get us over this hump. It demonstrates our commitment to the project and how much of our own resources we are willing to pour into this project to see it to completion.
And for what it was worth, we notified our patrons of this hiccup well in advance of the billing cycle so that those that feel as you do, that patronage is all about content, had ample opportunity to get out.
Fortunately I don't need to convince anyone of our intentions. Time will do that for us.
Cheers!
- May 31, 2017
- 150
- 161
These two parts are gonna make it go so much faster, I'm glad you were able to get them.
As for all the comments about milking ... Fuck em. People say what they want without trying to put the situation into perspective. It'd be neat if you kept a running tally of the cost of all the objects, scenes, etc. you have to purchase to continue the story. Might actually make a few people think twice before commenting about milking.
And as far as comments about milking goes ... we're talking on a website that exists to snatch content from Visual Novel artists/devs and give them freely to anyone. Virtual pirates complaining about other people "milking" their willing Patreons. XD
@letsdothisthing
Well if a person is smart they would be searching for sites to download many assets for free. There are many sites out there that have many DAZ assets that a person can download for free and some of them also have a request spot where you can make a request for something in the hopes that someone will have the file or will buy it just to upload it there.
Well if a person is smart they would be searching for sites to download many assets for free. There are many sites out there that have many DAZ assets that a person can download for free and some of them also have a request spot where you can make a request for something in the hopes that someone will have the file or will buy it just to upload it there.
- Dec 17, 2017
- 7,425
- 9,681
And if a person does this, and uses those assets to make something that they sell (or post on Patreon), they're just begging to get smacked around for copyright violation. If you're doing commercial work you really need to legally own all the assets you use.
- May 5, 2017
- 265
- 725
I feel a bit confused. If someone would take a moment to explain it I'd appreciate it.
So, Patreon is a site that hosts people who would accept free money. Many of those people are artists, performers, and the lot, so they do produce a product. But Patreon is merely an avenue through which they recieve that money freely - product or no. So, it's technically not a market at all, correct? It's just people being funded for whatever reason.
What confuses me is that, legally, aren't the aforementioned products free? Or is this some sort of bloody gray area? Thank you in advance again, cheers!
- Dec 17, 2017
- 7,425
- 9,681
This is kind of off-topic, but...
If I make a work that uses your assets without permissions, and it can be shown that I'm making money off of that work or the promise of that work, then I can be sued for copyright violation. Which is bad news.
- Aug 8, 2017
- 153
- 235
So many people here are so concerned about devs milking their Patrons. This dev has been upfront and honest about what is going on with the project and where the money is going and why it's been a while for the updates. I'd hardly say this guy is milking anything. His computer shit the bed and now he's relying on his patrons to help him out. No one is forcing his patrons to stay with him.
- Feb 17, 2018
- 3,574
- 10,093
And, once more unto the breach. I post without commentary, the latest update:
Weekly Update 2018-06-02
I know I’ve been late with these updates and for that I apologize. Working two jobs sucks and raising a family on top of it is a lot to do in a week. Fortunately, my days of dual employment have come to a close and it looks as though we shall soon be back on track.
With the exception of the video card, the new system is online and we are back up and running. During the down time I think we’ve watched almost every tutorial we could find regarding Daz and Iray renders and we are ready to put it to use. Using the onboard GPU we’ve already begun experimenting with some of the new techniques that we’ve learned and I have to say, I’m very pleased with the results.
You can see a sample of some of the new renders in the Patreon reward images on our page. This is the level of quality we had always envisioned for our narrative graphics. While we know you’ve been waiting in the queue for a long time, I think when we finally release this next distribution you will be surprised at the exponential increase in visual quality.
Using what we’ve learned about morphing, shaders and material settings, we’ve been able to correct a lot of the things that were annoying us with our previous renders. Most notably is Cassie’s skin. It’s not gray anymore. =D All of these leaps in quality have lead us to a big decision.
Even though we haven’t had anything to show for our effort, we have been working hard behind the scenes nailing down a lot of the previously ambiguous details of the project. These details include the story arc, the characters and most notably the coding structure. We’ve made serious improvements over our previous process and any changes going forward will be incremental improvements rather than huge leaps in production quality. That said, we believe it’s time to discard the remainder of the alpha and move directly into beta.
So as of now we are officially in beta. Our goal is to release a complete character act per distribution, with each character having three acts. Each release will essentially be 1/3 of a character’s story. We believe this to be an achievable pace. If we can hit some of our Patreon benchmarks, such as the ability to hire a dedicated coder, then things of course will happen much faster. We are incredibly excited by this move and hope you are too.
In other news, we’ve starting to experiment with animation. Animations are something we love to see in adult visual novels and something we’ve always clearly wanted to include in ours. Now currently, without a graphics card in place, we haven’t been able to produce anything of substantial quality. BUT! We have managed to do a test animation using Monica and Daz’s Open GL renderer. It’s only a sample, but for our first pass at animation using a premade aniblock from
Now the long term plan is to create custom animations of our own that will better conform to our characters. But for now it’s a place to start and study.
Which finally brings us to what is probably the question on everyone’s mind, when is the next distribution? As you know, the billing cycle has just finished on Patreon. That covers $150.00 (after Patreon takes their vig) towards the $536.00 purchase of a new card. The last check from the second job is only a fraction of a week’s work, so that trickle amounts to an additional $70. So currently we are approximately $316 short of the mark. Once we clear that final hurdle, we’re going to blow the doors off this place.
We’ll keep dropping our own dollars on it in the meantime from whatever we have left after the bills and keep everyone current on the running total. Friends, we’re close to getting this ship back in the water and we’re very excited about it. She’s going to be more beautiful than ever. Stay tuned!
Salute Friends!
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Weekly Update 2018-06-02
I know I’ve been late with these updates and for that I apologize. Working two jobs sucks and raising a family on top of it is a lot to do in a week. Fortunately, my days of dual employment have come to a close and it looks as though we shall soon be back on track.
With the exception of the video card, the new system is online and we are back up and running. During the down time I think we’ve watched almost every tutorial we could find regarding Daz and Iray renders and we are ready to put it to use. Using the onboard GPU we’ve already begun experimenting with some of the new techniques that we’ve learned and I have to say, I’m very pleased with the results.
You can see a sample of some of the new renders in the Patreon reward images on our page. This is the level of quality we had always envisioned for our narrative graphics. While we know you’ve been waiting in the queue for a long time, I think when we finally release this next distribution you will be surprised at the exponential increase in visual quality.
Using what we’ve learned about morphing, shaders and material settings, we’ve been able to correct a lot of the things that were annoying us with our previous renders. Most notably is Cassie’s skin. It’s not gray anymore. =D All of these leaps in quality have lead us to a big decision.
Even though we haven’t had anything to show for our effort, we have been working hard behind the scenes nailing down a lot of the previously ambiguous details of the project. These details include the story arc, the characters and most notably the coding structure. We’ve made serious improvements over our previous process and any changes going forward will be incremental improvements rather than huge leaps in production quality. That said, we believe it’s time to discard the remainder of the alpha and move directly into beta.
So as of now we are officially in beta. Our goal is to release a complete character act per distribution, with each character having three acts. Each release will essentially be 1/3 of a character’s story. We believe this to be an achievable pace. If we can hit some of our Patreon benchmarks, such as the ability to hire a dedicated coder, then things of course will happen much faster. We are incredibly excited by this move and hope you are too.
In other news, we’ve starting to experiment with animation. Animations are something we love to see in adult visual novels and something we’ve always clearly wanted to include in ours. Now currently, without a graphics card in place, we haven’t been able to produce anything of substantial quality. BUT! We have managed to do a test animation using Monica and Daz’s Open GL renderer. It’s only a sample, but for our first pass at animation using a premade aniblock from
You must be registered to see the links
on Renderotica, it works quite well. (To see the sample, become a patron or visit us on our website
You must be registered to see the links
)Now the long term plan is to create custom animations of our own that will better conform to our characters. But for now it’s a place to start and study.
Which finally brings us to what is probably the question on everyone’s mind, when is the next distribution? As you know, the billing cycle has just finished on Patreon. That covers $150.00 (after Patreon takes their vig) towards the $536.00 purchase of a new card. The last check from the second job is only a fraction of a week’s work, so that trickle amounts to an additional $70. So currently we are approximately $316 short of the mark. Once we clear that final hurdle, we’re going to blow the doors off this place.
We’ll keep dropping our own dollars on it in the meantime from whatever we have left after the bills and keep everyone current on the running total. Friends, we’re close to getting this ship back in the water and we’re very excited about it. She’s going to be more beautiful than ever. Stay tuned!
Salute Friends!
The system speed has definitely been a boon. Assets load up three times as fast as they did before and even the onboard GPU has done a good job of keeping up with the on screen manipulations. It just takes forever to do a high quality Iray render. We updated the images on a Patreon page rewards section and each one of those took many many hours to complete. So the card will definitely seal the deal on speeding up production.
I don't blame people for thinking what they do. I'm sure there are more than few Patreon creators that did some milking and jumped shipped. But behind the scenes we laugh because the amount of work we've done for a few hundred dollars makes the whole idea ridiculous. We of course have no way of proving that to people, but in time, when this thing is going strong again, it will change some people's minds.
As for a running total, I can't say what it will cost going forward because we purchase assets as we go along. And since we have 2/3 of the entire story left to write, it's hard to say what all we will need. And of course we make excellent use of Daz's sales, coupons and Premium Club to cut costs as much as we can.
But I can say I've tallied up the invoices from Daz, Renderotica and Renderosity and to date we've spent $2,335.08 on digital assets. This total includes things beyond clothing and characters. It also includes morph plug-ins and other utilities that we use to get the best possible image that includes textures and physics that are believable to the eye.
This is true. But we'd never knock F95Zone. The community and staff here have been very good to us. We enjoy coming on here and talking about our project with everyone. Patrons and non-patrons alike.
Thanks for the response mate, Cheers!
At the moment no, but we are investigating Android builds for future releases. We'd like to put this on as many devices as possible. We'll keep everyone posted on the progress in this area.
There are too many potential copyright problems with this approach unfortunately. When we pay for an asset we acquire the license to use that asset. It not only helps us sleep better at night but ensures that we won't have to go back and change portions of the game upon the receipt of a cease and desist letter, or worse.
I should have kept reading before replying to that comment. Thanks for making the point before we could! =D
- Feb 17, 2018
- 3,574
- 10,093
I would only point out that, despite some self-righteous comments (not these devs, mind you) about f95, there is no denying the fact that many people find their first exposure to these games right here and more than a few of them go on to support the game with real live money.
Yes, there are plenty of complainers and name callers, but that's everywhere on the internet.
Yes, there are plenty of complainers and name callers, but that's everywhere on the internet.
It's a misconception that you have to make money to be in violation of a copyright. A copyright is just that, a right to copy, regardless of intent. Any duplication, for profit or not, can be seen as a violation of a creator's copyright. For that reason alone we prefer to pay for any assets, software or materials we're using in our project.
Would we go to jail or get sued if we did violate someone's copyright, probably not. We just don't make enough for it to be worth it. But it does help us avoid having go back and changes portions of the game in response to a cease and desist.
As long as the version prefix is the same. So for example, any distribution that starts with v0.x.x is compatible with any other v0 distribution.
However, we did announce today that we are moving our project into beta, so we'll be switching to v1.x.x and these distributions will not be compatible with previous versions.
Just want to say thanks for the vote of confidence! We don't have much to show for it, but I promise, we haven't stopped busting ass during the black out.
Salute mate!
Thanks for helping us cover all the bases and keeping us honest!
Cheers friend!
And this is why we don't criticize anyone on the forums or elsewhere. Today's player could be tomorrow's payer. And even if they don't, they still might provide valuable feedback that can be used to make a better product. With the right attitude it's all a win-win.
- Dec 17, 2017
- 7,425
- 9,681
You don't have to make money to be in violation of copyright, but to be liable for damages you either have to make money or keep the copyright holder (or a licensee) from reasonably making money. If I pirate a game (say, DAST) I'm in violation of copyright. But if I don't distribute it, I'm only liable for triple damages, or $15 (assuming I'm grabbing the $5 patreon version). It's not worth it to go after little guys like that. Plus RomanHume would need to find out who I am
.Copyright violation is a civil, not criminal, offense. Unless you're willfully doing it for financial gain. Proving the "willfully" part is hard.
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IANAL.
(I am not a lawyer. But the other thing too
)When you release the version that isn't compatible with old saves can you please include a save that brings players up to the point in time that the last version ended? Constantly having to start from scratch is often demotivating, certainly a reason I've personally stopped playing a number of games. I appreciate that there may be more than one path. So, assuming that each path is tested, there would logically be a point to save along each path during that test phase?