So by your logic, considering I think all of Carbidis' work looks like piles of steaming shit, I'm objectively right and that undermines your next argument, right?
In regards to DPC, I'd argue his work has gotten progressively worse. It's universally agreed that Maya's model specifically has gotten worse. And the inconsistency is inarguable at this point. Go back and look at Acting Lessons and those models remained consistent throughout. Some characters models could be passed off as different characters just within the same update.
Granted, but there are levels of what is acceptable and what's not. That's why companies have quotas and how they can calculate bonuses. If you have one person doing half the work of everyone else, they don't get a pass bc they have marginally better quality. That said, 80 per week isn't "bad," it's just definitely not good. There should be days where you're able to pump out that many renders on rare occasions. It shouldn't be something that consistent either. Some times you're going to have 500 renders in an update from one specific location and if you have another 500 renders from 25 different locations, that latter 500 is going to take significantly longer to stage. That's one consistent reason I can see dev times on VN's bloating so much - it's not abnormal for the writing/scripting to come second when that should be done before you even start. Allowing you to do all of the renders in one specific framing of a location at a time.
As to reusing assets, we're at the point where we shouldn't be seeing many new locations that aren't just generic. It's really hard to reuse assets when you're setting a game up, but once it's established devs like DPC just start doing that shit to justify taking longer between updates. Does altering the frame of reference by 15 degrees really justify a month or more of delayed development? No, but people blindly lap that shit up as justification.
As to assets other devs have used, store bought or commissioned, several of the early locations are reused locations. Again though, this is one reason why I stress devs spend the time to establish their VN's BEFORE going to market. Much like a producer scouting locations before you begin shooting a movie. You don't want to be DPC, wasting months to add generic locations or slightly shift the field of view of one of your existing ones. The last thing you want are long, arbitrary delays bc you're going to a different location once and never reusing that location again like DPC did w/ the bbq.
My issue is more with how inconsistent people are on this website. SH SHOULD be held to it's own standard bc, unlike most games, this is a two person team. They'll rage about one dev taking 11 months while cradling the balls and deepthroating a dev whose taken 15 months.
This idea that upgrading hardware doesn't and shouldn't improve dev times are ridiculous when you see devs like Ocean parsing his improvements and showing us the data. The truth is, most of these guys aren't upgrading their hardware for developing their games... they're doing it for gaming, themselves. That's why these guys are upgrading every new iteration and not just going to the A6000. When you're paying $8000 for a pair of 5090s instead of $5500 for an A6000, that's a statement as to your priority. Even going from the 3090 to the 5090 isn't much of an improvement when you exclude the RTX specific workloads like Daz3d does. Now, if you're doing AI stuff as well... well, the A6000 is still the better option. If they were smart, instead of upgrading to 4090s, they should have built an additional rig w/ used 3090s. Then, upgraded one of those machines to an A6000. At that point, go crazy, get your 5090. Any additional rigs from there, I'd probably say just get 3090s.
We should hold all devs accountable, period. One thread shouldn't be a dumpster fire bitching about when the next update will be when the next has been in development for twice as long and is expected to be half the size. These devs should be wanting to get better, put out updates faster. There is no marketing industry pushing these games, so you need to make an immediate impression and do everything you can to stay on the tip of everyone's tongues to continue to grow your games reach.
