Development Update #4 - Chapter 4

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This devlog is pretty similar to the last one. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a normal week of rendering.

Chapter 4 is becoming my favorite chapter to render so far. It has a more serious, eerie tone, which I'm really enjoying. The whole "first section" that I'm currently rendering is a bit more lighthearted, but once I finish it, things will start getting eerier, and I'm really looking forward to that.

But Chapter 4 has also been more demanding from a technical standpoint. Having more characters in a scene, along with the fact that the group is constantly together, is really pushing my PC to its limits. Renders are taking longer, and I've started running out of VRAM in some scenes, which sucks. It really sucks, actually🫤

Developing Chapter 2 was one of my worst experiences when it came to rendering, because I was running out of VRAM 24/7. Back then, I was developing it on an old laptop, so it was a constant struggle. For Chapters 3 and 4, I upgraded to a much better PC (RTX 5060 Ti 16GB), and Chapter 3 didn't give me any major issues. But now Chapter 4 is bringing back some very unpleasant memories 🙃

Outdoor scenes with lots of vegetation, characters constantly appearing together in the same scenes, extra models, and rendering everything in 4K are making my PC cry.

And the worst part is that I'm still working on what I've been calling the "first section" of the chapter. It's a "calmer" part of the story, with characters you already know, and I'm already running out of VRAM. So when I think about some of the scenes I have planned for later... yeah, I get a bit of a headache 😀🫩

But, like I always say, I'll make it work. I'll figure out how to optimize things and get those scenes rendered somehow. 🤞

Anyway, enough crying about my PC lmao. There's not much else to add this week. Just a normal week of rendering.

WAIT. Yeah, there's actually one more thing!

For Chapter 4, I'm adding some "collectibles". Basically, when you're exploring and looking around, like POV shots of a kitchen, a room, inside a shelf, and stuff like that, there will be options where, if you look closely, you might spot a card.

If you click on it, you'll unlock a special vertical collectible render that'll be available in a section I'm gonna add to the main menu.

These cards will only appear in very specific renders, so I think they'll be hard to find, but also kinda obvious where they may appear. Just something I wanna add. It's more of an experimental thing since I still need to figure out how to make them work and how to code something like that in Ren'Py.

It's more of an idea than something that's 100% confirmed, but I think I'll make it happen! It'll only be in Chapter 4, so no collectibles in the previous chapters. And who knows, maybe I'll bring them back in Season 2 too. Idk, we'll see!

And that's it for this devlog.

Hope you all have a great week!

—pixelend 🧟