Progress Report - Tuesday, January 24, 2023 (Patreon)

Ehh. I missed Monday. But just a day off isn't too bad, right? Better than a full week, anyways.

Decided to make this progress report open to all Patrons, because why not. It's been a while.

Bulk of the past week has been spent working on the binary viewer tool I mentioned last week. I actually finished it up today, and, uhh...

I'll just let these tweets summarize how that's going:

So yeah. Long story short, I spent 2 weeks writing a tool I didn't need to write. Once I made the realization there, it took me all of 4 minutes to fix the problem that led to this whole journey in the first place.

Which I suppose leads to the next point of discussion:

The asset auto-releaser!

Last week, I briefly mentioned needing to parse Source model files for a tool, but never really went into detail. Well, the detail is that it's for an asset auto-releaser.

I do a lot of model-work. And I show off a lot of models on Twitter. What I show off is only a small fraction of what all I make.

And everything I make, I want to share with people. The problem is that releasing models properly is a whole ritual. I have to collect all of the associated files - the model files, the material files, the texture files, the related script files. I have to reconstruct the file structure for releasing them. I have to package them all together. I have to upload them. I have to take picture of them. I have to write a description for them. I have to add them to the assets database. I have to write a Tweet for them.

And if there's a tiny 1-line problem that I have to fix? Tough shit. Do it all again. ALL of it.

This rigmarole is just a chore, and I can't stand it. It's why I stopped uploading to SFMLab, and just started dumping things onto my Assets page. With SFMLab I had to jump through all kinds of hoops to idiot-proof the release, lest it be scorched by the clowns in the comments section. So I wrote my own page, with no comments system, so I wouldn't have to deal with that.

But now, even just the Assets page is too much incantation for me. I have literally dozens of models I've intended to release, but just plain forgot to, at this point. Every week I get someone mentioning me with "hey did you release this thing you said you would release 3 months ago" to which the answer is always the same: "I forgot to."

So, I am writing a tool to automate all of that. Most all of the steps involved in this release process, I have already written into other tools. It's just a matter of bringing it all together into a single utility, and writing a system to make it painless to use.

The core of this functionality is the method to collect all of the associated model, material, and texture files for a given model. I have technically already written this once, with the DMX Packager tool released back in 2016 (which is what I use for that step of the releases still). But that tool was very shoddily written, and it breaks half the time. So I wanted to rewrite it from scratch, and write it correctly this time.

For that, I needed to parse the MDL files. My first attempt returned gibberish. After that... well, read the tweets screenshotted above.

The end goal for the auto-release is, on my end, it will simply scan my entire SFM installation, and compare it to a bunch of release metadata on my hard-drive. This metadata will tell me what models have been released, what I named that release as, what version number the release is at, and - most importantly - whether or not the files on my SFM install are newer than the files that were released, EG if the release is out of date.

With this tool, I will be able to quickly say "package all of these models together and release them" as a new release. For existing releases, I can quickly hit an "update" button that will reupload the same files as last time, now up to date, under a new version number. Or, I can add and remove files (such as, for example, new outfits) to that existing release package, and upload it as a new version.

All of the uploading is done automatically by the tool, which will generate a new download link automatically on a new Assets page. These auto-generated releases will have a copy of the metadata, telling end-users when it was uploaded, what version it is, and what all files are contained within. It will also link to any auto-generated releases that the release depends on - for example, downloading an outfit pack for Elizabeth will link to Elizabeth as well, and downloading Elizabeth will link to the IK rig as a separate download.

Notably, the auto-generated releases will not have a custom description, nor will they have pictures. These just take too much time to build, and I can't easily auto-generate them. The description can be brusquely put together, as just as a list of the files included. The images are a lost cause, I don't have a way to automatically generate images of models, let alone more abstract things like scripts.

On the user's end, the goal is to provide a quick and easy, no-frills-attached way to keep up to date with releases. All of the releases downloaded will have a metadata file they come with, which users can use to easily see if the version they downloaded is out of date. I will probably even put together and offer a download manager tool, which will parse that metadata for you and tell you whenever I've released a newer version of a model you've downloaded. And if I wanted to get super fancy, I'd figure out a way to get the website itself to do that, too - probably have a "link downloads" option on the page which will prompt you to choose directories where you have your downloads installed, and then it will locally scan the metadata files that you pointed it to and tell you what new versions are available.

Basically, the goal is to take out the rigmarole and the guess-work on both ends here. For me, I upload and forget. For you, you just download what you want or need. That's it. No song and dance. No ritual. No catering at our wedding. Just get in, get your shit, and get out.

I've been having these unreleased assets hanging over my head as a Sword of Damocles for months now. Frankly, I am tired of living under its shadow.

So I expect the majority of the next week, and possibly the week after, will be focused on that.

Other stuff

Real quick, other stuff. This week's poster GIF is clickbait, I apologize. I quickly started storyboarding an idea I've had for a long time with DVa and Zarya. It is post-Overbreed narratively. That means it's in a weird situation in terms of a release schedule - either I wait until Overbreed's 6-part miniseries is over before making this idea (which is the chronologically correct solution, and will probably take literal decades let's be honest here), or I make it earlier and have it be released ahead of when it starts chronologically.

I don't like either solution. I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on it below.

The first 4 minutes of the storyboard have been attached to the bottom of this post. Yes. I say first 4 minutes. I have a lot more planned for it. The whole idea would probably be a mini-series in its own right, split into several smaller videos. It could be an on-stream project.

Primordium is coming along well. Milly has finally scared COVID off from her house, and she and her family are all healthily humming along again. She's gotten her Triss audio recorded and sent in, and I've gotten it processed and all ready to install this next Saturday. Similarly, Ivan's audio is ready to be installed as well.

Innie's over her illnesses as well, though she's been busy with the Lunar New Year which wrapped up this past Sunday. She is hoping to get her Yennefer audio recorded and sent in to me before Saturday.

If Innie doesn't manage to get it in time, then we're going to delay working on Primordium another week, and work on the Frozen project some more. And if Innie does get the audio to me in time, then we're going to spend next Saturday installing the Primordium audio, getting all the timing trimmed up, and have it ready to send off to my sound designer to start working.

At that point, I will be leaving it up to a public poll on Twitter to figure out what to do with streams: work through the rigmarole on Primordium to get it done and released, or start another on-stream project and push Primordium onto the off-stream queue.

I am NOT going to push Primordium ahead of Claire/Jill on the off-stream pipe. If it goes into the off-stream queue, then it will go in between Claire/Jill and Overbreed. It's a short video, only 8 minutes, it shouldn't take long to polish. Not like Claire/Jill's 22-minute behemoth and Overbreed's probably-over-30-minutes-yes-its-not-even-done-being-animated-yet-and-its-already-over-12-minutes.

Primordium Episode 4's storyboard has started, but it's too early to share. I need to rewrite what I have, it runs longer than I'd like, and I haven't started the lewds yet. I've been too focused on this binary viewer to work on it much.

I have also been doing a bit more model work, focusing on Rebecca Chambers and the DOAFantasy Prototype 4 project. Similarly, minor writing work on Corsair and Sherbecca has been accomplished. Not much to share there.

I am hoping, once Primordium gets rolling full-steam ahead again, and the auto-release tool is done and online, to get back to working on Claire/Jill. It's become another Sword of Damocles, but I just can't motivate myself to work on it. I am hoping that by finishing the auto-release tool, I'll have nothing to procrastinate to, and so I can finally just force myself to get it done.

If you're disappointed that Claire/Jill still isn't done, don't worry. You're not even close to as disappointed as I am by that fact. I fucking hate myself for it. But it is what it is, and I've learned a long time ago that beating myself up over my ADHD stealing focus away accomplishes nothing but deteriorating mental health.

I've been there, I don't want to go back. And so I am trying to stay positive and utilize that ADHD procrastination energy in productive ways, while gently trying to nudge it back to where I want it to go.

That's all for now. Until next week everyone.