"Try to Fall Asleep" Community Transmission #4 - February 2021
Good evening players,
It's been a while since we did a community transmission on the game’s development progress, so it’s finally time to fix that!
Being our first post this year, we hope that everyone has had a decent start of the new year and we wish that it’ll only start to get better from here on out.
So, how have we been doing? What have we been up to? WHAT’S UP WITH NIGHT 4?? We’ll try to get you all up to date with the development of night 4 as much as possible and show some really cool stuff as well.
[h2]How are we doing?[/h2]
Apart from one complication, which we’ll get back to later in the post, we’ve been getting along pretty nicely. Like we said previously, December and January were quite tough because some of us were doing uni exams and final assignments. Our 3D artist, Will, who caught the Corona virus has fully recovered and is feeling better than ever. In february, we’ve been able to focus way more on the game and do a lot of great work for the game, adding more things and polishing the overall gameplay. So overall, we’re all ok and for the most part development is going smoothly :))
We know that you’ve been waiting for this update for a while now, and adding more time to that wait is really hard for us as well. Game development is hard, and for this to be a first game for a small team like ours is no easy task and sometimes things happen which are out of our hands. While making this game, we’re also learning, growing and getting better as game developers as well. We’ve already learned so much and gained some skill at it, but there’s always still some room for improvement. Let’s take the opportunity to share some insights...
[h2]Development progress of Night 4[/h2]
Currently, most of the main game stuff has been implemented. Taking everything into consideration, excluding one element of night 4, we estimate that the Night 4 Update is around 95% done. All we need to do in terms of pure gameplay is to simply playtest, debug, polish and adjust a few values. If it wasn’t for that one element of night 4, theoretically we could release it within 1-2 weeks.
[h2]That one thing about Night 4...[/h2]
With each new night, we try to raise the bar ever so slightly higher, so we can try new things, challenge ourselves, gain new knowledge and in the result release better and better content, and become better developers as well.
This time with night 4, one of our biggest ambitions yet was to try doing full human body and facial animations. We were fully ready to tackle this challenge, but unfortunately we were influenced by forces that were out of our control, such as our 3D artist getting Covid-19 and getting occupied with university. And in the result, this later turned out to be the biggest cause for night 4 delays.
At first, we tried to do it ourselves, but after trying to self-teach advanced Blender rigging and animations, we realised that we couldn’t do it ourselves without any additional help. Luckily, after a week long search for animators, we’ve found a wonderful animator, who’ll be joining our team and helping us out to make some great animations.
Now, there’s always been debates surrounding cutscenes in games and the whole “Games are not movies" agenda. To some extent, we agree - a game is a game first, and the rest comes along. So, maybe it might seem weird for our small team to delay the game and put so much work into this part of night 4. I don’t want to delve on this too much, but I’ll try to share our simple point of view.
Basically, we planned this to be the last part of night 4 that we work on. Everything else - gameplay, story, levels, main features etc. were worked on first. So, this part of the game never stole any time and resources from any other parts/elements of night 4. In fact, due to the delays, it actually gave us some extra time to work on other smaller things.
Now that the game is at its midpoint, and we’re familiar with the game’s setting and world, we can also start to dive deeper into the story and lore. And what better way to do it than with a direct confrontation between characters! It’s also a very special scene that is quite pivotal, and will set the tone for the last 3 nights. That’s why it’s so important to us, and well, it's gonna be pretty cool :))
Earlier today we premiered a brand new footage of some gameplay from Night 4. In it, you can see some key game mechanics as well as some of the new locations in the underground.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
And that’s it for now! Thank you once again for sharing your support and enthusiasm about what we make. It really means a lot to us, and we can’t wait to finally release Night 4 into the world.
More news and info will come later this down the road ;))
Goodnight,
~Martin
It's been a while since we did a community transmission on the game’s development progress, so it’s finally time to fix that!
Being our first post this year, we hope that everyone has had a decent start of the new year and we wish that it’ll only start to get better from here on out.
So, how have we been doing? What have we been up to? WHAT’S UP WITH NIGHT 4?? We’ll try to get you all up to date with the development of night 4 as much as possible and show some really cool stuff as well.
[h2]How are we doing?[/h2]
Apart from one complication, which we’ll get back to later in the post, we’ve been getting along pretty nicely. Like we said previously, December and January were quite tough because some of us were doing uni exams and final assignments. Our 3D artist, Will, who caught the Corona virus has fully recovered and is feeling better than ever. In february, we’ve been able to focus way more on the game and do a lot of great work for the game, adding more things and polishing the overall gameplay. So overall, we’re all ok and for the most part development is going smoothly :))
NIGHT 4
We know that you’ve been waiting for this update for a while now, and adding more time to that wait is really hard for us as well. Game development is hard, and for this to be a first game for a small team like ours is no easy task and sometimes things happen which are out of our hands. While making this game, we’re also learning, growing and getting better as game developers as well. We’ve already learned so much and gained some skill at it, but there’s always still some room for improvement. Let’s take the opportunity to share some insights...
[h2]Development progress of Night 4[/h2]
Currently, most of the main game stuff has been implemented. Taking everything into consideration, excluding one element of night 4, we estimate that the Night 4 Update is around 95% done. All we need to do in terms of pure gameplay is to simply playtest, debug, polish and adjust a few values. If it wasn’t for that one element of night 4, theoretically we could release it within 1-2 weeks.
[h2]That one thing about Night 4...[/h2]
With each new night, we try to raise the bar ever so slightly higher, so we can try new things, challenge ourselves, gain new knowledge and in the result release better and better content, and become better developers as well.
This time with night 4, one of our biggest ambitions yet was to try doing full human body and facial animations. We were fully ready to tackle this challenge, but unfortunately we were influenced by forces that were out of our control, such as our 3D artist getting Covid-19 and getting occupied with university. And in the result, this later turned out to be the biggest cause for night 4 delays.
At first, we tried to do it ourselves, but after trying to self-teach advanced Blender rigging and animations, we realised that we couldn’t do it ourselves without any additional help. Luckily, after a week long search for animators, we’ve found a wonderful animator, who’ll be joining our team and helping us out to make some great animations.
Now, there’s always been debates surrounding cutscenes in games and the whole “Games are not movies" agenda. To some extent, we agree - a game is a game first, and the rest comes along. So, maybe it might seem weird for our small team to delay the game and put so much work into this part of night 4. I don’t want to delve on this too much, but I’ll try to share our simple point of view.
Basically, we planned this to be the last part of night 4 that we work on. Everything else - gameplay, story, levels, main features etc. were worked on first. So, this part of the game never stole any time and resources from any other parts/elements of night 4. In fact, due to the delays, it actually gave us some extra time to work on other smaller things.
Now that the game is at its midpoint, and we’re familiar with the game’s setting and world, we can also start to dive deeper into the story and lore. And what better way to do it than with a direct confrontation between characters! It’s also a very special scene that is quite pivotal, and will set the tone for the last 3 nights. That’s why it’s so important to us, and well, it's gonna be pretty cool :))
Night 4 gameplay preview
Earlier today we premiered a brand new footage of some gameplay from Night 4. In it, you can see some key game mechanics as well as some of the new locations in the underground.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
And that’s it for now! Thank you once again for sharing your support and enthusiasm about what we make. It really means a lot to us, and we can’t wait to finally release Night 4 into the world.
More news and info will come later this down the road ;))
Goodnight,
~Martin