dev blog #24 - the bottleneck is real!

with the public release of techDemo 0.5 right around the corner I'm already working hard on the next update.

Aside from the bigger coding parts I scheduled for the next release there will also be many new CGI and two new scenes to go along with the new NPCs that get added too. You can check out the new "Characters" page I just created where you can find all the NPCs.

So the biggest new features for techDemo 0.6 will be:

• "Moneymaker" update
  first part of the economy system is the "Moneymaker" update that allows you to earn money in various ways to spend later on other things
   
• new area "The Rear End" (Stripclub)
  as part of the "Moneymaker" update this area will allow you to earn money by doing different jobs after school or on weekends
   
• "Friendship" system
  in order to form any sort of relationship with others you need to increase your friendship status with them. this update handles the gain and loss of friendship status points for NPCs you already unlocked in your "Journal" (e.g. angering Ms. Adams by "improving" your art skills on the class's chalkboard has an effect now)
  
   
• 2 new scenes
  yes you heard right, there will be TWO new scenes in this update!
  one scene is related to the stripclub and the other one to Mom & Dad
   
• Navigation 2.0
  improvements/changes to the keyboard/mouse navigation and interaction with things.
  interactable objects/NPC are now only accessible from designated sides (e.g. you can't open the fridge from the side anymore, only from the front). This allows "obstructable" containers like the teachers desk where you only get access to if Ms. Adams is not "blocking" it. The "activation" of things not directly in front of you is also possible now
  
   

this list only covers the big main features and there are many more small and minor tweaks and changes to come.

and while working on parts of the new scenes I hit the GPU bottleneck once again :/

what you can see in this screenshot:
my CPU (4 cores @ 4GHz) is at 100% load while both GTX970 sit idle with their combined 3220 CUDA cores that are made for rendering jobs. this is due to the large size of the high-res textures used for the rendering process and the "small" 3.5GB VRAM of the GTX970... it simply doesn't fit into their VRAM so they won't help out with rendering at all.

this really starts to slow down my workflow so I had to do something about it. The original plan was to save up enough money (via Patreon) to be able to buy a new Nvidia Titan X that has a whopping 12GB of VRAM which should be enough for a long time until I would hit that bottleneck again.

BUT! since I can't even render that 2 character scene in a reasonable quality and time already I had to improvise with a short term solution. This short term solution is a new GTX1070 with 8GB of VRAM to keep me on track for a little longer so I don't have to sacrifice quality in order to push out new CGI! It should arrive in the next few days (according to tracking) so I can keep working on the new scenes :)