Hello everyone!

It’s been a while again since I put out an official update on Episode 2.

The short of it is, we’re still not there. It is certainly taking far longer than I anticipated.

Below are the steps I am taking to try and speed up the delivery and get a better idea for a release date.

1. I have increased my privileges on the rented render farm – As it’s a shared farm, I would often have my jobs stuck behind others (who I think are new with DAZ and set single images to render for an hour each (using the power of 4x3090’s!).) I’m now paying more so I can have a higher priority on the farm, meaning I can render my shots out quicker without getting stuck in a queue.

2. I have completed all the script (content) for the entire episode. I still need to transcribe a few scenes (plan what images will be used for each line of text), but this should give me an idea of how many images I have left to render.

3. I’ve come to an agreement with the render farm owner for him to render all my animations for a flat fee. This means that I can just get all the animations rendered in one go when the base game is complete. The animations would have taken around 2-3 weeks to render if I was to do them locally. Episode 2 has more animations than the first episode with a wider variety of characters as the relationships have had a little more time to develop at this stage of the game.

4. I’ve got myself an 'employee' who will be testing the content, checking for continuity errors, and also ensuring that I'm following up in Episode 2 on variables that were triggered in Episode 1. Not only that, I’ve built some really nice relationships in the discord, so will be hoping that some of those members will assist me with the testing too, when the base for episode 2 is done.

Realistically, we’re not looking at a release THIS YEAR. I do sincerely apologize for anticipating it would be ready before year end, but there is no way I am going to just ‘rush’ out an episode to try and get it to everyone faster. I do not want to deliver a sub-par product and essentially ruin a game/brand that I have worked hard on for almost 2 years now.

What I can assure you is that I am almost constantly working on Jury: Episode 2 (when I am not doing my 9-5-day job). I may not be on the steam comments section all the time, but I’m generally in the discord every day in the evenings (UK time) and happy to talk to players, take suggestions, and receive feedback (both good and bad).

I’m doing everything I can to get the next episode to you, in the best state it can be, and not compromise quality. It takes time, and I was probably a little ambitious to say Q4 of this year.

To give you an idea, in the first episode, the average scene had about 30 or so renders. Episode 2, we're up to more like 70-100.

I hope you can all understand my position on this, and I know it will come as a disappointment to some.

Here are a few images from the new episode:









Thank you for your continued support.

Nickle3DArt