I had a few hiccups the last couple days. There was something wrong with a certain asset I've been using for the scene I'm working on right now. I always batch render during the night and when I'm at work, so I'll get to see the finished renders once I'm back home. Which led to this problem. 3/4 of all the renders were pitch black. First I had no idea why. The camera was positioned correctly and not in a wall or something, the lighting worked since it worked in the other 1/4 of the renders. After hours of looking what possibly could be the issue, I've found that the asset uses a hidden lightorb which illuminates the room. And when your camera sits within that orb, it turns your whole scene black. I know of other assets who use the same orb and there you can easily remove or deactivate it. In this case, it was nowhere to be found at first since it was integrated into the ceiling. The only option was to remove the whole ceiling in that asset. Which led to the next problem. That of course changed the whole lighting in the room and it doesn't match with the other renders which didn't turn black. Now I had to create my own ceiling, with new lighting and redo all of the renders. I've lost a few days doing that. Not fun!
Last time I asked about a certain choice and if I'd put it into the game or not. I've decided to put it in there for now. That way, you can actually see what I was talking about and decide then if it will be worth it or not. If not, I can always remove it. And maybe I come up with a solution in the meantime which won't create a double workload. Make sure you create a savefile before the choice or it will break saves in the future. I will talk more about this once it has a final decision though.
About naming background characters who are within a scene (Not talking about totally random characters, but more like friends from other characters). For example, people from school, Ethan's posse,... Would you rather have a ??? if you don't know their names, use Guy/Girl/Student/Client/Elder lady..." or give them a name?
I'll take a few days off between Christmas and Newyears and I won't be working on the game then. So this will be the last progress update until after the new year. The first week of January, I'll have a week off from my normal job and I'll spend some more time that week working on the story to make up for the lost days.
I wish you all Happy Holidays and a joyful New Year!!!
See you soon,
Val
