Hey everyone! Welcome to the February 2023 Devlog of Hack's Custom Night!

For this month, we don't have a lot to go over in terms of major progress, because I've been spending almost the entirety of game development refining everything best as I could. It does sound ridiculous as it's another way of me saying "I've spent almost five years figuring out the map.", which is true as embarrassing as it may sound.

However, what I do like to go over are the technical features that are already implemented or being experimented with. And man, I am pretty excited to go over one of them...

1000 Followers on the GameJolt Page!!

First, I just wanted to say, thank you for 1000 followers on this game page! I usually don't have any expectations or ideas about any amount of followers, but it means a lot to me to see how many people are looking forward to this game.

Unfortunately, I do not have anything special for 1000 followers as I rather not push myself to publish works that aren't finalized yet. However, if I am able to get something ready by the end of this month, then it'll likely be posted by then. No promises though!

Quality of Life Features

While the base of the game is still being developed, I am creating minor to minuscule features that may help the player a slight bit while getting through the nights. Here are some examples of what I have created for the past month:

• Hover CAM Indicator: Don't know which camera is a specific room? Have no fear! With this QOL feature, by simply hovering other cameras, you'll be able to see its camera name!

  

• Cursor Tool Menu: Don't feel like using the tool keybindings to quickly switch your current tool while viewing the office? No problem! By right-clicking anywhere on-screen, you get a drop-down menu to select any tool you wish to select!~

  

Interior Progress

(old)

(new)

I've made some slight adjustments to the interior map design ever since the BMC Gameplay showcase video. A lot of rooms were changed to have balanced proportions and proper placements, the most notable being the Kitchen and the Arcade Area. I felt those changes are needed to not only make the building look more appealing, but to make sure the layout fits well for every character who may approach the office traditionally.

I've always struggled to create a map layout for this game, because I have to take into account so many characters while also making the building authentic as possible. (Which is incredibly ironic, because of how FNaF maps do not have much logic.)

Vent System

We now have a proper vent system of the building! As you can see, there are three pathways that lead to the office from three different rooms. Here's how I plan for the vent system to work:

• Each end from the top will have a vent crawler start moving from its designated position.

• For any intersection they encounter, they will choose a random pathway available, meaning if a crawler is already at a pathway, they'll either pause or go to an open one.

• You have two options to see the crawlers' position. You can either check each vent camera to see the characters' general position, or use the slow radar button to see the characters' exact position, whatever works better for you.

• Each crawler will have a slightly different mechanic, so the difficulty to deal with them can variate.

Utilizing JSON (programming rambling)

This is where I start rambling about absolute programming non-sense. If you feel like you would get confused reading about this sort of stuff, you may skip to the Conclusion section.

So the other day, I was roaming around GameJolt to see if there is anything interesting going on. Upon looking at the following section, I saw a friend of mine, @Rhadamus , showcasing his own system on how he programs subtitles on Clickteam Fusion 2.5.

Now, Clickteam Fusion 2.5 as a base product is pretty limited. It's not a bad software for those who want to get into the field of programming, but at times it can be very difficult to understand specific areas of Clickteam in order for your vision product to be made, especially if you want to make functions more technical or flexible. Subtitles/Captions are a great example of how difficult it is to make the system flexible from the base software.

The only thing you can do is create hard-programmed functions to get your presentation out. For those of you that don't know, "hard-program" or "hard-coding" is a method to 100% function exactly what you tell the game to do without any additions. It may sound good on paper if you just want to get your product out, but it is important to know how difficult in the long it'll be to have to change the entire work in order to adjust what you want later. Just think of it like a domino effect if you want to change one simple thing. That is essentially what you have to deal with in Clickteam as it does not have a lot of flexible functionality in the base function.

However, thanks to @Rhadamus and some other help around, I have recreated a function that is one of the most crucial parts of the game, that is... the Configuration menu.

It is no surprise to many people that I love creating various settings for video games, especially Hack's Custom Night. However, the problem with how I programmed menus before is how somewhat hard-coded they are. Each setting option, they are stored in a fixed value index in Clickteam, something you cannot modify under Clickteam's software. Due to the size of the configuration menu, I have to program each option in order for the menu to be visually communicated and work well.

In this image, while I can reorder the values, the index number at the left will NOT change unless you rename every single value, in which would be extremely tedious and time consuming.

However, thanks to the JSON object, I am able to assign different configuration options however I want with a simple file change! If you look below, you can see the order in which the options are set up. Anything I add, change, or remove, the menu will automatically change in order! And the best part? The programming for all settings went from 1000+ lines of programming to less than 100 lines!

You are probably thinking, what does this mean for Hack's Custom Night?

The idea of being able to flexibly adjust menus or functions in this manner will make adjustments MUCH easier for ANY instances that would require an excessive amount of work. I won't have to reprogram my functions for five minutes just to add one simple function, option, or detail. This can easily speed up the development cycle for how Hack's Custom Night will function and potential needed updates in the future. (If it ever comes out. :P)

This whole system is needed to help implement smaller features like the keyboard/gamepad and scrolling function to work well.

Conclusion

Although there isn't much work done in the past month, I feel the technical work and the reworked Building Map was needed in the long run. I hope to create a lot more menus with my new programming setup for not only Hack’s Custom Night, but for other projects I am helping program.

If you have any feedback or questions, let me know in the comments here!

Hope you all liked what you see. I will see you in the next devlog with more updates hopefully!~