Weekly Update

👋

Now that Chapter 3 is out for everyone, I want to start by saying thank you to everyone who has followed and supported this crazy idea I had one day to create Falling Apart. I honestly have no idea where most of you found the game because I'm completely out of the loop on where AVNs get shared these days 😅 But wherever you came from, thank you for being here 🫶 It really means a lot to me.

Okay, on to Chapter 4

Rendering hasn't started yet, but it will very soon. As you know, September has mostly been about releasing Chapter 3, and Wednesday's public release marked the end of that whole process. In the meantime, I've been working behind the scenes, creating locations and characters, working on the story, doing lighting tests, and fixing little things that have been bothering me.

One of those things was Paige's hair, which gave me a headache this week. In some test renders, it looked really bad under sunlight, with weird patches appearing in it. I dug into how the hair and its shader were set up and eventually found some glossy settings that reacted terribly to direct sunlight. Technical stuff basically. The important part is that I fixed it... it was driving me insane 🫩

Speaking of lighting, much of Chapter 4 will take place during the day, which I'm looking forward to. Lighting characters at night or indoors with lamps and ceiling lights has been a pain throughout the first three chapters. Different characters' skin can react differently to the same lighting, so I often have to adjust the lights for each person in a scene. I still have nightmares about it 💀 With more sunlight in Chapter 4, I believe that part will be easier.

As for the script... I tried to be more "professional" this time and write everything out in detail beforehand. I spent the past 2 weeks writing dialogue, reactions, all of it, in an organized document. Then I realized I wasn't feeling what I'd written at all. It was terrible. Complete trash. Dog poop. Soooo... I threw 98% of it away 😅

I work way better when I just write down a few ideas and then improvise most of the dialogue while I'm making the scenes. I need to actually see the characters there, posed and looking at each other, and feel the vibe of the scene before the dialogue starts coming to me. That's how I've made every chapter so far, so yeah, screw trying to change it now.

If you guys knew how much of Chapter 3 I made up as I went, you'd probably think I'm a terrible dev. I swear I'm not 😅 I always know where a chapter starts and how I want it to end. The middle is where I need to start making the scenes and see what feels right.

And yeah, that's pretty much all. I'm planning to officially start rendering on October 1. I mean, technically speaking, Chapter 4's development has already begun with the locations, characters, and other preparation, but I like to count the start from the first official renders. I still have a few locations to finish, some things to fix, and some 4K wallpapers to make before then.

I was gonna add something else, but I completely forgot what it was 😅 I might edit this later if I remember 😁

Hope you all have a great week!

—pixelend 🧟