The Month In AI (June 23’)
“Haha, time for FUN!”
Domo domo, Author-kun des.
This month I spent most of my time preparing /Heroine Defeat General/ for Demo Day 51! A lot of devving, not enough art making! Correction is needed!
Thoughts on DD51 Release
This month's Month in AI came out a lot later than I thought, mostly because I was working on fixing /HDG/ for Demo Day. Between looking up tutorials, learning about pokemon systems and painting maps, there was very little time left for doing other things!
Going forward, I'll still continue work on /HDG/, but posting lewd art will come first.
/Heroine Defeat General/ Game Page
https://madison-delaroux.itch.io/heroine-defeat-general
Demo Day 51 Submission Page
https://itch.io/jam/agdg-demo-day-50/entries
Reasoning
While the Style Guide came out quite smoothly, the road to VIRIDIAN was rocky and full of bumps. "How do I paint this? How do I code this? Let's see how Red does it..." While each problem was eventually quashed like a hapless adventurer facing a rat vermin, there are always new problems to solve. Author-kun is good at planning and writing, coding and map making much less so.
In the end, it was a simple overestimation of Author-kun's ability to make game that did me in. Considering that the first part of VIRIDIAN is done now, it will take another two months and two weeks to finish the next part of VIRIDIAN, which would not make it for Demo Day.
In the end, Author-kun barely made it, but with only 4 hours left before the deadline and a lot of small little details not done for VIRIDIAN yet. Lesson re-learnt is that deadlines are scary, Author-kun was working even while Demo Day was ongoing, so that's not the greatest sign.
CORRECTION: Work towards a finish line that happens days BEFORE DD52.
And before I forget, testing is another major time sink I didn’t account for; I did not expect to keep looping back to every small part in VIRIDIAN to make sure the code came out right, so I will have to factor that in any future deadlines.
Thoughts on AI Art
While I was busy making game, the world of AI changed AGAIN. I went back to Stable Diffusion and was blown away at how accurate the new ControlNet was working, so much that it can easily capture COM3D2 poses without an Openpose rig now. Theoretically, I can just pose in COM3D2/ any other 3D poses, take a screenshot, and use that as a base for CGs.
I am quite excited to use SD again now that a part of VIRIDIAN has come out and will devote a large part of this month to tinkering with it! (even though a third of the month is over)
I'll get GM@Iand start posting stuff on the House Delaroux PIXIV again, so look forward to it!
To Do: Just Make Lewd Art.
Reasoning
Even stepping away from SD for a short month, it feels like I've become rusty and outdated on a lot of new things that have happened in the world of AI, I would like to keep doing AI art because it's fun. Also, some of the stuff will probably make it into /HDG/, since there might be a pivot of the game's focus from unique characters to non-uniques so that I can do the stuff that I like, which is make AI art.
This probably also applies to a lot of fun things that I stopped doing after devving; I barely touched Master Duel, anime or other stuff so I can make game, since a lot of fun stuff are coming out in the coming months (i.e Kafka and Fontaine), I'll dip my toes there, just for a little.
Plan
Although July is a third gone, I have a plan for July;
1) Do lewd art from now until the 23rd. Catching up with all the new things in SD will take some time, it will also naturally dovetail with me making more lewds for /HDG/, so I’ll have to ask GM@lland about that. The goal is to figure out if I can use 3D posers to simplify work being done for /HDG/ before the 23rd!
2) Finish all of /HDG/’s small problems by the 30th! SFX, BGM, little details for Burlay village, uniques, bugfixing, oh my, these are not small problems at all! Taken together, no, but individually I can spend some time each day to iron out each little kink. Will VIRIDIAN be finished by the end of this month? Will Yudina appear? Maybe, I am not sure.
Last Word/ Criticism
The month of June was a pyrrhic victory at best, it's time to touch tall grass with the things I like! As a certain successful gamedev says "just b yourself". Progress might be slow, but we always keep moving forward. (unlike Eren, that cuck!)
Arthur Delaroux
HouseDelaroux.com
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