SummersGone
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Summer's Gone - Season 2 - Chapter 1 - Dev Log #28
🕑 Added 2025-03-27 04:16:18 +0000 UTCHello,
The log is a few hours later than usual because of what always happens during release-weeks. (Not SG’s release.)
My sleep schedule keeps rotating during these times.
I had to take a step back earlier this week to reset my stress levels.
I can manage to work 14 hours a day for many, many months, but as soon as I get into a release window, I start to struggle with sleep. It becomes “a more pressuring matter” when I start losing weight.
At least I get shredded.
If I only do one or two things, I can work all day, but during release times, there’s so much more to take care of and it slurps me out harder than Vic slurps a juice box.
Add Steam and GOG preparations to this and we have bingo.
I think it’s worse this time due to the pressure I put on myself on getting the updates out.
However, I’m smart enough to recognize when I step over a red line, and I need to take it a little easier. I don’t want to fall back into what happened in 2020/2021 and get depressed/bibi-burnout.
In the past 14 days I focused primarily on animations, but later stopped, and instead did still renders for SG while also juggling postwork.
In the last few days, though, I focused entirely on postwork. I can do around 500 renders a day without losing my mind. It heavily depends on how many renders I find that I need to redo.
I’ve talked about what postwork does to me before.
I find it extremely mundane and it’s a drag… But I have special “requirements” that need “my eye” and manual work.
I decided not to create the big cinematic for Chapter 1, because it’s more of a trailer than an intro. It also requires work in Blender.
Instead, I’ll make a smaller one that I had in my head as an alternative. I have a great song for it.
I’ll make and release the trailer with S2 CH3. The song for it is a 10/Sasha.
Let me make a list of what’s left for Season 2 – Chapter 1 (There might be more)
- ~2000-2500 still images
- Probably about 25 animations for characters.
- ~ 12 animations for the intro cinematic
- Implement and code the new UI. (Main menu, gallery, etc.)
- Implement the Aurora App (I will give this to the freelance coder I previously hired for the chat app. Provided it’s not too expensive. Otherwise, I’ll try it myself.)
- Edit Ambient sounds and SFX in Abelton.
- Postwork for a total of 7000+ images
- Testing the game, especially the save porting. We have an awesome design for this that I’ll preview below.
- Add 5 default Starts for Season 2. Season 2 being its own game, it needs to be able to be played without a safe from Season 1. Not recommended at all. But I’ll provide a “Bella, Nami, Vic, Mila, and alone.” starting point. However, there are probably over 300 variables in Season 1 that will affect the game eventually.
- Optional collectibles. I’ll only do this if my mind is in the green by the end. Otherwise I'll add them with Chapter 2.
Save porting & continue screen:
I'm not sure if this is the latest version of the design. I'm writing this dev log at an ungodly hour and my designer is asleep.
The past three days I really felt like writing. As most of you know, SG is completely written. But I will still make changes, and it was calming to just write for a few days. I had noted down some things I wanted to change and… well, did so.
The PC still renders every day, but it’s been exclusively animations. I have around 135 renders for SG in the queue, but I won’t render them until the animations for another project are done.
Render count stays at ~5100 rendered images.
To keep myself sane, I’ll now focus on one thing until it’s done, and that’s postwork.
I created a Chapter cover for S2 Chapter 1.
I wanted to do something in Blender for it but I have an issue with Blender, to be more precise, ported characters on the new PC that I have to figure out first.
I just don’t have the nerve and time for it right now.
I licensed four great new songs. I think I have about 25 licensed songs for Season 2 now.
I have one song licensed that speaks to me on a level so deep, that I wouldn’t give up the license for five million dollars.
It’s for a Sasha cinematic later in Season 2, and when this one arrives, it will be my masterpiece.
It can only be done in Blender… But we’ll talk about Blender when I can think straight again and for that I need to get the updates out.
My old Workstation refused to start the other day. Turns out another SSD died. Less than a year ago I had one die on me before. Thankfully, this time it wasn’t a very important drive.
I didn’t have a backup for it, which makes me think it was an old drive from an older PC that I installed, but I was too lazy to take it out again.
No real damage done. But whenever stuff like this happens, I feel like MC when he touches a girl and gets close to a panic attack.
Preview
Here’s another NSFW preview. You’ll get another in the next log. (4K of all images attached.
This time Kate.
Boring personal Germany stuff from here on. You can stop reading here if you only care about game news.
There are other things that worry me, I don’t like what’s happening in Germany right now. A lot of talk about tax increases. (Income tax from 42% to 47%) Capital gain tax from 25% to 30%.
And this is without the social taxes on top. Which also increase every year.
But the biggest worry is a topic that I've been eying for a few years.
The government’s plan to include self-employed people under 30/35 into the state pension. This is a black hole of death. What my generation puts in there, is GONE.
That system will collapse.
And soon they’re probably going to force me in it. Best case is 18.6% of my monthly pre-tax income on top of everything else.
I think it’s a cumulation of all these little things that worry me.
I’ve been thinking about a certain "move" for a while, and two weeks ago, I canceled the lease for my apartment, and I’ll temporarily move back to my parent’s house in order to plan ahead for the next Chapters, and to eventually leave the country in the next 9-16 months... But that's a big IF because of the exit tax.
Afterwards, even if I get forced to pay the pension for a few months, I should still be able to buy licenses, etc.
The move in 3 months will take a day and development continues as usual. It won't be noticeable.
Back to Bellchen.
Ocean
Comments
Bray
Your doing fantastic work on an amazing game. If BaD is the king of Avn’s this is its queen, and she is worth the wait and support. Keep it up but make sure you’re taking care of yourself! 🖤
Lucas Santos
Thanks for the update Ocean keep up the good work and don t stress yourself out take good care of you man , and have a nice weekend 💪💪💪💪
