Hey guys and girls!

Time for the public report. Few things to talk about (as always) so lets jump straight in ^^

The last 2 weeks since last report were really busy, but for the most part, it a good way! With that uni stuff behind, besides some natural IRL difficulties and living with parents, the rest was actually spent working on this properly. And it felt... Great.
It's really night and day being able to actually focus multiple days in a row on the game, and not having to jump back and forth to homework and so on.

The progress wasn't the fastest, but that's partially due to me trying to make some good quality stuff. Although I didn't plan, I made another 2 new and quite big new maps. Sad part, one of them will see literally 1 render in Ep4 😥
But(t) it appears as a background with someone's butt, so that's a hint when you play! (Or maybe not a good hint with how many butt renders I make 😂)

Jokes aside, yea, lots of new maps in general for Ep4, some more unique clothes etc. Even in previous updates I already tried making here and there my own maps, as seeing each and every map in other hs2 games can feel a bit unoriginal after some time. Naturally, I'll still use a ton of premade maps as the benefits from making your own stuff often don't correspond with the time invested in making them yourself. But I do try to at least give them a small change to at least differentiate a tiny bit from the base look if I see it fitting.

And speaking of, it was much easier to work due to having the new PC parts! Yup, they arrived like 10 days ago, and the performance gains are... Quite good! Hs2 is a stupid unoptimized mess unfortunately, and in 15 tests I made (before and after new gpu), the fps gains ranged from 8% (yup, eight) all the way to 350% (lol). Wild as those ranges are, the real conclusive part was that all the big jumps were present in the heaviest and crappiest to work scenes before, the ones with 10+ npcs on screen/background, such as Hotel scenes from Ep3, University wide-screen scenes or the clubbing in Ep1. Having 2-5 fps or having 20-25 fps is a huge difference and makes it much less frustrating to navigate.

Besides that, I managed to do all the custom renders + monthly wallpapers already to get it out of the way and have freedom till end of month. The "World Setup" % would have moved much more considering how much I spent on those beforementioned 2 maps, but I initially didn't plan to make them, as alas, who knew our house maps were quite limited and not what I needed. Renders got a healthy move again, as we just passed 1 400 total renders (+220 from previous). There is also the first (2nd if you count main menu) animation done, and I'll be slowly getting more into animations bit by bit. I know it's my weakpoint, I really suck (even tho some said my Serena anims were decent). Naturally I'll still use some quick renders for stuff like quick nodding instead of animation, but for some cool stuff, maybe a repeating nod, etc. I'll try to implement more and more animations (not just for Ep4, but for future too).

That's it for today, thanks for joining in!
The plans mentioned at the end of the last Patreon-only progress report still more or less stay. Sneak peeks will be in this month (probably closer to the end of it) and I still plan at least Beta (highest tiers) release of Episode 4 at the end of August.

Love you all,
Kat <3