What to Expect from Chapter 3 and Beyond

👋

So Chapter 2 is now released for all paid tiers.

Thanks a lot for playing it. I really, really appreciate everyone that subscribed, upgraded their tier, or followed as a free member.

I'm not very good with thank you speeches, but just know I genuinely appreciate it.

There are still a lot of people that haven't played Chapter 2 yet, especially on Itch. There are more than 520 people with Falling Apart in their collection just waiting for updates, which honestly makes me really happy.

I mention Itch because I think most people here probably came from there? I'm not totally sure. It's the only platform I'm actually "active" on (and that's a stretch) apart from here, so I guess that's where most people find the game.

Anyway. Now the only thing left is the public release on February 28 😀

What to expect from Chapter 3

If you're a paid member you've probably heard me say some of this a couple of times before, sorry if I'm boring you again 😶😅 But we've had new people join, so I want to explain things properly.

Chapter 1 had around 500 renders.

It took 8 months to create, and then another 2 months for coding and SFX/music. So 10 months total.

Chapter 2 was a big jump.

A little over 1900 renders in about 7 and a half months, plus around 1 and a half months for coding and SFX/music. So 9 months total.

It was a big improvement, but it was also a big energy drainer.

For Chapter 3, I want to keep around the same amount of renders as Chapter 2. Around 2000 renders. But I want to reduce development time. That’s my goal.

The hardware change

For Chapters 1 and 2, I was using a laptop with an RTX 3060 and 6GB of VRAM.

I can't even begin to explain how painful that was.

Chapter 1 was.. hmm okay I guess. But Chapter 2 had vegetation, extra characters, heavy scenes with a lot of models in them. The Blender viewport was very slow and laggy when posing characters. Rendering Paige specifically was... traumatic. I think that's the right word. I optimized her hair multiple times and it was still insanely dense 🫩

Now I'm using a desktop with an RTX 5060 Ti and 16GB of VRAM.

That jump is pretty big. It will allow me to create scenes that simply weren't possible before because of VRAM limitations. Rendering speed isn't insanely faster, but it's definitely better and more stable.

So technically speaking, you can expect the same amount of renders as Chapter 2, but hopefully with less development time and less suffering on my side.

Image quality consistency

Chapter 1 and the first half of Chapter 2 were rendered at 1080p.

In the second half of Chapter 2 I started rendering at 4K and then downscaling to 1080p. It looks sharper that way.

I honestly feel kind of dumb for discovering that so late in development, because it was such a simple improvement.

Chapter 3 will be fully rendered in 4K and then downscaled to 1080p. So if you have a bigger monitor, you should notice better consistency and overall sharper images from start to finish.

Story

Season 1 will have 4 chapters.

This whole first season is more of a setup season.

It's about the MC realizing the weight of the situation, the gravity of what's happening, while also dealing with and protecting two girls who constantly test his sanity.

Chapters 3 and 4 will continue developing these relationships, getting to know the girls more and introducing other characters that will start shaping the story.

Will the story lean more into a darker direction or a happier one?

Right now I have 3 endings planned that go in different directions. They're still in very early planning, but the path you eventually get will depend on the choices you make, whether you shoot someone, help someone, decide to go somewhere or not, things like that.

NSFW

For NSFW scenes, you can expect different fetishes unlocking through choices.

The only ones that will not be included are NTR, sharing, and similar dynamics. Everything else will remain choice-based.

About animations

Animations are not planned for now.

The 4 second car animation at the end of Chapter 1 took 4 hours to render on my laptop. FOUR 🙃 And that didn't even include characters. I had to redo it three times because I wasn't happy with it, so it turned into an entire day for 4 seconds of animation. 4 SECONDS. FOUR!

I'm sorry, I still have emotional damage from that one 🫩😂

Animating characters is a whole different level. Both in terms of skill and hardware. And if I start doing animations, I want them to actually look good, not robotic. I think poorly made animations break immersion.

If in the future I get a second, more powerful PC dedicated for rendering, I'll actually start learning and doing animations more seriously. But for now I'll keep them minimal. For example, if the characters are inside a car and need to drive somewhere, I'll animate things like the trees in the background to create the illusion of movement. Small stuff like that.

In March, development updates will start again.

And that's pretty much it.... I feel like I'm forgetting something 🤔 I'll probably edit the post later if I remember what it was.

Hope you all have a great week.

—pixelend 🧟