Baldi's Basics Plus News

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to share that Baldi's Basics Plus has just gotten a brand new gameplay trailer! You can check it out on the store page or on YouTube here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

To coincide with this new trailer, the game will be on sale at 25% off for a limited time! If you've been thinking about getting the game, now is a great time!

Hello everyone!

Today I'm releasing a small patch to Baldi's Basics Plus that address the recently discovered security vulnerability that exists in applications built with versions 2017.1 and later of the Unity engine (Not including the now patched versions). This includes Baldi's Basics Plus, which was made with Unity 2020.3.38f.

Don't worry, there's no need to panic! There's currently no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited, and safeguards against this vulnerability have already been implemented by certain parties, such as Microsoft via Windows Defender. As always, please be sure you keep all software, including your operating system, up-to-date with the latest security updates and exercise caution when downloading files online.

As for the applications themselves, such as Baldi's Basics Plus, Unity has rolled out fixes for the security vulnerability which developers can now apply to their titles. The version 0.12.2 update applies the fix to Baldi's Basics Plus. Previous versions of the game will, of course, remain vulnerable, so please take caution if you want to downgrade it to a previous version!

I will also be updating the following titles with a fix for the vulnerability in the near future:

• Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered
  
• Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning (Baldi's Basics Classic)
  
• Baldi's Basics Birthday Bash
  
• Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.12 Pre-release
  

Please be sure to update these games as updates roll out.

Aside from addressing the security vulnerability, this update has no notable changes (Some technical changes were made but they should not affect game behavior in any way). I have been busy working on the Baldi's Basics Plus 1.0 horizontal slice and have not addressed any issues since the release of version 0.12.1. However, fixing this security vulnerability required me to update the Unity Editor I use from version 2020.3.38f to 2020.3.49f. I remained on 2020.3.38f for many years due to concerns about a potential performance issue in later versions of Unity 2020.3. It is possible that, due to upgrading the editor version, there may be unintentional performance or behavior changes. My testing does not immediately show any changes, but If anyone notices any demonstrable changes in performance in Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.12.2 compared to version 0.12.1, please let me know. Please keep in mind shaders may need to recompile, in which case you may notice some initial dips in performance which will resolve after playing for a bit, so keep that in mind. Of course, please report any new bugs that may crop up as well!

That's all for now. I hope you all enjoy playing Baldi's Basics Plus knowing this vulnerability has been fixed!


[h2]Technical[/h2]

• Updated the Unity Editor to version 2020.3.49f.
  
  • This fixes a security vulnerability that existed in previous versions of Unity.
    

[p]Hello everyone![/p][p][/p][p]Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.12.1 has just released! This update brings a few small changes alongside some bug fixes. The full changelog can be viewed below.[/p][p][/p][p]But first, just another reminder that the 2.0 Edition Angry Baldi plushie from Makeship is still available for a few more days! You can check it out here. If you want one, be sure to order before it's gone![/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Changes[/h2]

• [p]All entity animators now have their speed multiplied by the relative time scale. For example, Dr. Reflex's animations will slow down or speed up depending on how The Test has affected time.[/p]
• [p]Propagated audio sources can now have priority values assigned. This is used to ensure certain sounds are always audible over other sounds.[/p]
• [p]BSODA, nana peel and grappling hook entities now copy the player's status when spawned. This means they will be flipped or squished if the player is either of those when used.[/p]
• [p]BSODA spray, Beans' gum and grappling hook collision with entities is now independent of orientation since there is no easy way to determine whether or not they are upside down. This resolves an oversight in the previous version that made BSODAs ineffective against upside down entities.[/p]
• [p]When gum sticks to an entity, it now matches that entity's orientation.[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• [p]Fixed a bug that caused the file select screen to become unresponsive after deleting a file.[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue that would cause file select buttons to not function properly if the number of actual save files somehow became inconsistent with the saved total value of save files.[/p]
• [p]Fixed crumbled balders moving on their own when influenced by outside conditions, such as when using the tape.[/p]
• [p]Fixed Baldi's slapping sound sometimes getting overridden and not being audible when there is a large number of competing audio sources (Like during Student Shuffle).[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug that could cause Balloon Busters in endless mode to not reset properly after leaving a bonus question unanswered, resulting in balloons that would be ignored by the device.[/p]
• [p]Fixed mis-placed item spawn points in Room_Class_BalloonBuster_2.[/p]
• [p]Fixed issues with how entity orientation and height changes were handled. These fixes have resulted in a less smooth player flipping animation while squished unfortunately. Notably, this fixes[/p]
  • [p]Rotating to see out of bounds if flipped while inside a vent.[/p]
  • [p]The camera being pushed forward, potentially clipping beyond colliders, when being flipped while squished.[/p]

[p][/p]

[p]Hello everyone![/p][p]
Today marks the release of Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.12! This isn't a huge update, but it adds some cool new content! Two new activities, Balloon Buster and the Match Machine, have been added. You'll need to complete these alongside Math Machines to get notebooks. Two new random events, Student Shuffle and Balder Dash, have also been added! These events will add a bit more chaos to the game, so stay prepared![/p][p][/p][p]Alongside these additions there are also a handful of QOL improvements and bug fixes, which will be detailed in the changelog below.[/p][p][/p][p]Just a reminder that this update is relatively small due to the fact that I've begun focusing much of my development time on future development, which is stuff that won't really be seen until version 1.0 is released. I still intend to finish a "horizontal slice" version of the game by the end of the year, which is what I'm now calling the build that will represent the structure of the finished game, which I've referred to in previous status updates. Again, this is going to be for internal use only, but it will be a big milestone and really help my team get an understanding for what will be needed to wrap up the project.[/p][p][/p][p]With that in mind 0.13 is likely to be very small as well, as I want to put extra focus on future development to ensure the horizontal slice is completed before the end of the year. I am very excited to get the horizontal slice completed. There's a lot of cool stuff I've had planned for a long time that I can't wait to implement, even if it will still be a while before everyone gets to see it all![/p][p][/p][p]In other news, Makeship and I have teamed up yet again to do another run of the Angry Baldi plushie![/p][p][/p][p]This is nearly identical to the first run (although it has a 2nd edition badge on the bottom) and will be available to purchase until the morning of September 27, so if you want one be sure to get it soon! You can check it out here![/p][p][/p][p]Changes marked with (Pre-release 2) primarily pertain to changes made between pre-release 2 and the public release.[/p][h2]Additions[/h2]

• [p]Added two new activities[/p]
  • [p]Added Balloon Buster. This activity requires players to pop the balloons in the room until only the amount displayed on the device remains. Once this is done, the player must pull the pulley to submit their answer. The remaining balloons will be popped and counted and if the total matches the solution, the player will successfully complete the activity. If there are too many balloons when submitting an answer, or too many balloons are popped, the activity will be failed.[/p]
  • [p]Added the Match Machine. This activity requires the player to match pairs of object balloons. The balloons all start as question mark balloons. When clicked, they will be revealed as a specific object. When two balloons are revealed and they don't match, this pair will revert to exclamation point balloons after a moment. If a revealed pair of balloons matches, they remain revealed and the player earns some stamina and YTPs and Baldi will pause to praise the player. Once all four pairs are matches, the activity will be completed successfully. If a revealed pair does not match, and at least one of the balloons had already become an exclamation point, the activity will be failed.[/p]
  • [p]Each new activity comes with its own set of classrooms.[/p]
  • [p]Added chalk boards to classrooms that explain how to solve its activity.[/p]
  • [p](Pre-release 2) Added textures, animations and missing sounds for new activities. The Balloon Buster device now has a hologram sprite on it which turns off when not powered and which turns red when the activity is failed.[/p]
• [p]Added two new random events.[/p]
  • [p]Added Balder Dash. This event causes several "balders" to spawn at the elevators. These randomly roll around the level and crush any entities they collide with for a few seconds. They can also break through windows and open locked doors. When two balders collide, one of them will crumble. After enough time has passed, all balders will crumble.[/p]
  • [p]Added Student Shuffle. This event causes several crowds of students to spawn from the elevators. These students randomly rush through the levels and push around any entities they collide with. If groups get separated, the separated group will become independent. If two separate groups collider, one will begin following the other. After a certain amount of time has passed, all groups will exit the level through the elevator.[/p]
• [p]Added an animated popping effect for when balloons pop.[/p]
• [p](Pre-release 2) Added captions for new sound effects.[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Changes[/h2]

• [p]Pressing the pause button while the level results animation plays will skip the animation to show the results immediately. Pressing pause again after the results are fully displayed will skip the remaining time and the TV screen will immediately retract.[/p]
• [p]Updated the Bully's poster text.[/p]
• [p]Updated the name of a Kickstarter backer in the credits at their request.[/p]
• [p]Dr. Reflex's hammer check now checks for collision validity between his entity and the targeted entity to determine if he can actually squish the other one. This prevents him from squishing entities with opposite orientation, for example.[/p]
• [p]Mrs. Pomp can no longer drag players when she is squished, in an opposite orientation, or any other collision invalidating scenario.[/p]
• [p]Principal of the Thing will now attempt to send the player to detention when colliding with the player, even if the collision is invalid. If the collision is invalid, he will be teleported to the principal's office and the player will receive the detention status effect, but the player will not be teleported.[/p]
• [p]Playtime now becomes sad if she has an invalid collision with the player while chasing them.[/p]
• [p]Mrs. Pomp can now invite the player to her class regardless of if the collision is valid or not.[/p]
• [p]Dr. Reflex will wander away if he has an invalid collision with the player after chasing them.[/p]
• [p]Arts and Crafters now disappears if colliding with a player with invalid collision while chasing them.[/p]
• [p]Beans gum will copy any of Beans' status effects when he spits it out.[/p]
• [p]Balloons now slightly bob up and down.[/p]
• [p]In endless mode, bonus questions now only become available for the previously completed activity when collecting a notebook.[/p]
• [p]Game lock collision now goes away immediately after unlocking them instead of after the animation is completed.[/p]
• [p]If the doors in the room are locked, solving its activity will unlock the doors.[/p]
• [p]When making activity progress (Such as popping a balloon in Balloon Buster), Chalkles will lose some charge. Chalkles will reset entirely when completing an activity, and will not respawn until the player enters another room with a Chalkles chalk board.[/p]
• [p]Notebooks no longer reward a stamina boost. Instead, a stamina boost is earned when successfully completing activities.[/p]
• [p](Pre-release 2) Updated sprites for regular balloons, now with new colors![/p]
• [p](Pre-release 2) Updated sprites for matching balloons.[/p]
• [p](Pre-release 2) Updated new event intro voicelines with finalized versions.[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Technical[/h2]

• [p]Changed the way Unity scenes are managed to better handle loading multiple scenes at once.[/p]
• [p]Changed collision between entities so that, instead of not calling collision functions when entities are in states that should prevent collision (Squished, of the opposite orientation, etc.), the functions are called with a boolean passed into them representing whether or not the collision is valid. This enables for alternate behaviors when collisions fail, which is used to fix many issues and annoying behaviors from before.[/p]
• [p]Entities can now copy the status effects of other entities.[/p]
• [p]Optimized entity collisions by utilizing a layer mask system before trying to find an entity with GetComponent.[/p]
• [p]Added renderer culling to some entities to improve performance.[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• [p]Fixed Dr. Reflex continuing to say "thiii..." when colliding with the player with invalid collision.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to occasionally not use a detour to flip themselves into the player's orientation when targeting them.[/p]
• [p]Fixed entities continuing to move even when set inactive.[/p]
• [p]Fixed Gotta Sweep and First Prize not adjusting their push speeds based on the NPC time scale.[/p]
• [p](Pre-release 2) Fixed bug that caused notebooks to not disappear in endless small.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where Mrs. Pomp would encounter an error when seeing the player while their faculty nametag expires.[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• [p]Arts and Crafters can get stuck with pushing forces from Student Shuffle (And possibly other entity collisions, such as BSODA).[/p]
• [p]BSODAs may phase through entities under certain circumstances.[/p]
• [p]There is a Balloon Buster classroom with misplaced item spawn points.[/p]
• [p]Bonus Question signs for new activities are not placed properly.[/p]
• [p]Baldi's audio source is not higher priority than others, which can cause his sounds to be overridden when there is a high amount of active audio sources, such as during Student Shuffle.[/p]
• [p]Crumbled balders can still move around on their own in certain circumstances, such as when the tape is played.[/p]

[p][/p][p]That's all for now, I hope you all enjoy Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.12![/p]

[p]Hello everyone![/p][p][/p][p]I hope you all have been enjoying the improvements I brought to endless mode in version 0.11. Today I'd like to bring you all a status update with a sneak peak at version 0.12, but first I've got some very big news to share![/p][p][/p][p]As I've mentioned in previous status updates, I'd begun searching for a producer/project manager. Primarily to help me get a publisher for Baldi's Basics Plus, but also to help keep things on track and wrap up the project within a reasonable amount of time. Well I'm happy to announce that Nayan Ramachandran has been brought onto the project to fill that role![/p][p][/p][p]Nayan has had several years of experience within the video game industry, specifically working with independent game developers. With his experience I believe he will be a huge help in getting Baldi's Basics Plus a good publisher and, ultimately, finished![/p][p]We've been working together about a month now and are starting to really get into the swing of things. So far this has been great as we've begun working on our pitch and getting more organized with Baldi's Basics Plus' development cycle! In the future I will likely bring a few more team members onto the project, at which point Nayan's management skills will become invaluable. All that is to say, I'm incredibly thankful to have his help moving forward![/p][p]A lot of my dev time since 0.11's release has been for 1.0 stuff, but I have also created some new content for version 0.12! Here's a couple sneak peaks:[/p][p][/p][p]These screenshots are of some of the new surprises you can expect in version 0.12. Any guesses as to what they are?[/p][p]In more technical news, I have made some big improvements to the way collisions between entities are handled. You know how in the current version of Baldi's Basics Plus, characters who are chasing you, such as Playtime and Principal of the Thing, will hover on top of you while they're squished until they finally regain their normal height? Well I've now set up a system where entities can detect invalid collisions as well as valid collisions and react accordingly. On top of that I've extended this system to other scenarios that affect the ability of entities to interact, such as Gravity Chaos. This ensure consistency between entity interactions so they'll always behave how you expect.[/p][p]So now if a squished Playtime reaches you she'll become sad and wander away instead. If Principal of the Thing is chasing you, but you're upside down and he's not, he'll try and fail to send you to detention, which results in him teleporting there but not you. And good ol' Dr. Reflex can no longer squish entities if he's in a scenario that should prevent interactions![/p][p]This change not only fixes several longstanding issues, but also makes it easy to ensure future collision affecting mechanics I may introduce in the future will be consistent with the existing ones.[/p][p]Something I've been thinking about for a while now is the future of challenge maps. As I've focused more and more on the core of Baldi's Basics Plus I've started wondering if challenge maps might be outside the scope of the project, at least in their current form. Before making any drastic decisions though I wanted to get feedback from all of you![/p][h2]Legacy challenge maps[/h2][p]As I'm sure you all know, the game currently has three challenge maps which I've labeled as "legacy" content since they've become pretty outdated relative to the rest of the game. I've tried to make sure they remain playable as I update the game, but they do have a handful of issues due to changes breaking certain behaviors in the challenge maps. With that said, I'm wondering how you all would feel if they ended up getting removed at some point during the early access.[/p][p]Now this isn't something I plan on doing, but if at some point I make a change that breaks the legacy challenge maps, I would prefer to be able to just cut them instead of spend time trying to fix them. Since I don't plan on making any new challenge maps until version 1.0 releases I wouldn't be able to replace them quickly like when I temporarily removed the old field trips to make way for the current one.[/p][p]I don't like removing content that I've already released, because I know there may be players out there who still enjoys it, but that's why I'm asking now. How many of you still enjoy the legacy challenge maps and would be disappointed to see them disappear in future early access versions? Your current feelings will help me make the decision should I ever need to make it. I'll also add that if I were to remove the challenge maps, I'd let you all know beforehand to give anyone who cares the chance to back up the current version. Of course, the current challenge maps will end up getting scrapped in 1.0 anyways, so no matter what they won't last forever![/p][h2]The future of challenge maps[/h2][p]Speaking of 1.0 though, that brings me to the other point I'd like to discuss, and that's whether or not challenge maps will make the cut into the final game at all. As I've continued developing Baldi's Basics Plus I've become less excited about the idea of challenge maps, and have also started questioning how well they fit into the overall design of the game. In terms of development, designing several levels by hand is very different from everything else I've been doing. In fact, not even the legacy challenge levels were designed by hand, they were procedurally generated levels that I converted into premade map data![/p][p]What I'm getting at is, designing levels, like really good levels, would require a skill that I've never practiced before. Whenever it would be time to start designing challenge maps, I can't help but feel like that would put a weird damper on development as we'd probably be nearly finished with everything else. I'd very likely need to bring an experienced level designer onto the team, which of course would require a higher budget than without. If I did the level designs myself, that would take me away from working on other, more important things, and probably result in levels that are just okay. In either case it would probably extend development time.[/p][p]Of course, I don't want to scrap a feature that I've been saying would be added to the game in the future. Even with my disclaimer of "everything is subject to change" it's not something I take lightly when it's an entire game mode at stake. At the same time, I'm trying to consider what's overall best for the game. So currently, I see three options:[/p]

• [p]A) I keep challenge maps as originally planned.[/p]
• [p]B) I scrap challenge maps entirely.[/p]
• [p]C) I compromise and make challenge maps procedurally generated levels, focusing entirely on interesting gameplay scenarios instead of unique level designs.[/p]

[p]Currently, I feel like option C is the one I'd like to take, but what do you all think? Making the challenge levels mostly procedural would be relatively simple, as I'd mainly only need to worry about programming the conditions that make them unique. On the other hand, the unique potential of hand-made levels would be lost. Originally, one of my main goals for challenge maps was for them to function as subtle tutorials, where they'd be designed in such a way that they'd help players learn game mechanics without outright explaining them to them (Similar to, for example, how the beginning of Super Mario Bros. level 1-1 almost forces players to learn that goombas are bad and mushrooms are good). While I would like to maintain that aspect of the challenge maps, I do wonder if it's really necessary or if experience in Hide & Seek is enough for players to learn how everything works. Maybe there's another way entirely I could allow players to more easily experiment with individual game elements. There's a lot to think about![/p][p]I will not be making a final decision on this matter for a while, and will continue considering other approaches I could take that could work better than the original idea, but I'd love to hear feedback from you all to help me navigate this issue and make the best decision possible![/p][p]I hope you all will look forward to version 0.12! I plan on releasing the pre-release on August 25, followed by the public release on September 1. As with version 0.11, this will be relatively small update, but I think there will be a lot of fun to be had with the new content![/p][p]I think that covers pretty much everything for this status update. Thank you all for the support, and I look forward to reading everyone's comments about the challenge map stuff![/p]