it's time again for a public release!
techDemo 0.6.3 is here and you can get it from the download section.
I fixed some bugs regarding the job minigame so it is now possible to work more than once per day (but not at evening or night)
to trigger the new scene with Candice and Lena (30 CGI) you first need to pay Candice for a show (at the left pole) and then offer Mercedes your help so you get access to the backroom area where you need to talk to Candice to start the scene!
and now onto some news on techDemo 0.7:
I feel like repeating this over and over but development for 0.7 is progressing well and steady.
If nothing major happens to slow me down I think I can finish the transition finally at the end of this month.
Some of the "visible" updates can be seen in these preview videos while other things like game engine and backbone changes of the game are not visible to the users eye and more of changes to the code.
now besides the progress of Twin Star I also launched a new side project called:
Project Gemini:
what's that one might ask. Project Gemini is the upgrade project for my render PC.
As I already announced on Patreon, I plan to upgrade the current render PC with some new hardware, including the new powerhouse GTX 1080 Ti and other hardware.
The upgrade process will be divided into several phases containing different steps of hardware additions. This is mainly due to the current Patreon support level where I have to save up some months before I can make the hardware purchases.
Phase I:
originally I intended to buy one GTX1080Ti in this phase but I figured since I already have a GTX1070 it would be better to swap phases and leave the GTX 1080Ti for later.
Instead it's time to upgrade the backbone of the render PC:
The motherboard will be a server grade dual socket motherboard from a HP Z800 Workstation housing two hexa-core Xeon X5650 processors (6x 2.66 GHz at 3.06GHz boost) giving me a total of 12 cores and 24 threads to work with!
For the start each CPU gets 12GB of ECC server RAM which will be upgraded later to 24GB for each CPU (48GB in total)
The Z800 motherboard was the optimal choice in terms of dual socket motherboards that also provide 2 slots for graphics cards which doesn't cost a small fortune.
A more modern LGA2011-3 dual socket motherboard would cost 2x or 3x the price of the Z800 and one Xeon would cost more than this whole Phase in total. That's why LGA1366.
With an additional 1000W 80+ Gold powersupply this hardware cost around 700$ which is less than the original price of one X5650 when they were released in 2010.
But why this old hardware? Because it is still good and incredible cheap to get!
So what next?
Well first off I need to wait for the parts to arrive over the next weeks and when everything is assembled and functional I can start to render on Gemini instead :)
and then?
depends on how well Gemini works with the installed hardware.
It might be necessary to optimize the CPU cooling first which will result in both CPUs getting watercooled (because those 6-core Xeons get HOT).
Additional 24GB of ECC server RAM are also planned so each CPU has 4GB per core available.
And not to forget the planned dual GTX 1080 Ti that will get watercooled too at some point in the whole upgrade phase.
The watercooling is an essential part of the whole project because both CPU and GPU have clock boost when sufficiently cooled.
The Xeon will boost from 2.66GHz to 3.06GHz without manual overclocking and same goes for the 1080 Ti's as they will also auto-boost.
Watercooling is also way more quiet than pure air cooling with fans as you need less fans to cool the water down as if you would need to "blow" the air on heatsinks on the components directly.
And quiet is what i need! I don't have the room space to put Gemini anywhere else than the room where I work and that's why I will optimize it for beeing as quiet as possible too.
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