Good evening players,It has already been 3 months since we released the 4th night back in April… Crazy how time flies by! It has also been a little while since we released our last community transmission, so we felt that now would be a good time to do a new one and give you an update on what we’ve been working on and share our plans for the next big update 0.4.1.
Let’s get right into it!
Current development status
Compared to May and early June, we’re currently working on the game a lot more than before. Uni is done, some of us have taken summer vacations or have worked out a less busy work schedule, so we’re able to put more hours and work into the game. Of course, some IRL stuff still happens from time to time, but generally, the development has been going smoothly.
The next big update (0.4.1)
Right after launching the 4th night, we mentioned that we wanted to do a smaller, yet very important and still a considerably big update before heading straight into the last 2 nights. This is because we really wanted to make sure that the first 4 nights are in the best shape and quality as they could be before heading into the full release. Not only can we polish a lot of aspects and elements of the game, but we also have an opportunity to implement some of the most requested features that a lot of our players have been kindly asking for.
So, what can you expect from this next 0.4.1 update?
[h2]IN THE WORKS[/h2]
These are things that we’re currently working on or are laying groundwork and are about to start to work on.[h3]Controller support[/h3]
People have different ways how they play their games, so we wanted to respect that and give the players an official controller support for the game. You can be more precise with keyboard and mouse, but if you just want to play on your couch, the controller might be better suited for that.
To add a proper, official controller support, we had to rework and replace the old Unity game input system. Doing so, has modernised our input system, which moving forward will make it easier for us to write scripts that require game inputs from the player. This new input system also lays the groundwork for adding the ability to rebind keys.
Currently, about 75% of the controls have been migrated to the new input system and you can already seamlessly switch between keyboard/mouse and controller just by using either one of them.
[h3]Controller UI[/h3]
In game, there are some info cards that share info to the player about the controls. When adding controller support, we’ll make it so that these cards adjust to whatever setup you’re using.
[h3]3D hands in night 2 & 3[/h3]
On night 4, via pressing the “Tab” key, the player can pull up a list of all the needed and already collected parts. It’s an actual 3D hand holding a paper in a 3D world space, rather than a 2D menu. This implementation is more realistic and more immersive, so we decided to adjust the previous nights as well to have proper hands and menus.
[h3]Fixing colliders[/h3]
We saw people getting stuck in a few places when playing the “Reach the end” minigame, so we’re working on fixing the collision issues in that level as well. We’ve also fixed a lot of collision issues on the watchtower and on other nights as well.
[h3]Night 4 improvements[/h3]
We went through the entire underground level and polished how the room textures connect to the main big hallway.
Additionally, we changed how the robotic, periodic announcements work. They won’t be enabled automatically anymore when restoring the power, but you’ll have the option to manually toggle them in the office that’s at the end of the water room.
[h3]Reworking cinematics in night 3[/h3]
Implemented the fancy Cinemachine camera system that was present in other nights, but not in night 3. This allows us to do cool camera transitions and pans when switching between cameras.
[h3]Copper 2.0[/h3]
On our side, this is probably the biggest thing that we really wanted to do in this big update. It actually might be the very thing that kick started this whole idea of a game polishing update.
Ever since the early beta days, admittedly for various reasons, Copper (the cyborg monster) has never been properly finished. His model has been missing a lot of details from the original concept that originally were intended to be present in the finished model. In the game’s beta, he also had a very quick and dirty texture thrown on him, which we were able to improve upon when launching the early access version of the game. But since the launch of the early access, he has never been touched or worked on - until now.
We’ve made a brand new concept of him and have taken the original sculpt of the model as a base to create the new and vastly improved version of Copper. The actual finished model will certainly look a bit different from the concept, but here is a
smol peak of what he might look like in the future..
[h3]Steam cloud saves[/h3]
Probably the easiest new feature to implement. It actually might be already working as we have tried to implement it already. If it’s already working, please let us know!
[h2]PLAN TO DO[/h2]
Things on which we haven’t started working on yet, but we still plan and will start to work on very soon.[h3]Adding more story and lore in night 1[/h3]
Because of the story narrative and the way the game is designed, the player doesn't have a chance to get to better know some of the background/supporting characters. Sure, some of the characters have diary entries in their offices that the player can read, but it’s not as interesting or immersive as actually talking to a character directly. So to add a bit more interactivity and more development to the side characters of the game, we’ve come up with a neat solution where the player will get an audio flashback upon entering a character’s office. Hopefully, this will make the game a bit more interesting and more importantly, give some development and characterization to some of the side characters.
[h3]Keybindings[/h3]
Although the groundwork for adding the key rebinding feature has been laid, the work on the feature itself hasn’t begun yet. This is mainly due to the new input system, on which we’re still working on. Once the new input system is sorted and finished, we’ll start working on key rebinding.
[h3]Additional settings for motion blur and more[/h3]
In theory, it shouldn’t be too hard to add these new settings/toggles in the already existing settings, but the first gen post-processing stack might be a potential holdback to adding these settings. Once we start looking into it, it should give us a better understanding of what we can do.
[h3]Improving the camera system and monster animations for the falling asleep segments[/h3]
The sleeping segments are the only parts of the game that don’t use the cinemachine camera system, which would allow us to do a better job with the camera handling when getting jumpscared. Once the polished/reworked monsters are ready, they could use better animations, too...
[h3]Visual retouch on some of the monsters[/h3]
While we’re reworking Copper, we thought that we could do small to moderate improvements to some of the other characters as well, mainly Murgs. More info on this will come after we’re done working on Copper.
When will the 0.4.1 update launch? In all honesty, it’s hard to say. We don’t want to rush to announce a date and then delay it further, but to at least give you a rough date estimate, we’re aiming for some time between late summer and early fall.
Thank you for reading this CT! We hope you enjoy reading these CTs as much as we enjoy writing them. Stay tuned for new info and news from us in the future!
Goodnight.
