Hi there, it's been a good while, hasn’t it?
For starters, I would like to start this post by apologizing for the lack of updates the project has gotten recently. Nothing bad happen to us, we are still continuing to work on it like usual.
To compensate, we are making this post to share light on the progress we have done since the last major update.
Speaking of, why don’t we take a look at it, shall we?

Burnt Freddy

One of the major highlights of this post is the full reveal of Burnt Freddy, with some new renders made for it
Some of you might be asking: "But didn’t you already show Freddy before?" and my answer to that is: ... kinda?
See, the one shown at the FN2 anniversary video was still a WIP version of the model. Most notably the endoskeleton and textures were still placeholders. During the months since that post, we gave him a new endo (modelled by: @M_Recall ), as well as give him proper textures done on substance painter.
I am honestly super glad with how he turned and proud of the work @Sealiento did on him. Can't wait to see him in action!

Taking a page out of TJOC, we experimented with adding cloth physics to the model, mainly to the wires and certain parts of the body.
Admittedly, we haven't done much in depth testings on how this will affect performance, but if worst comes to it, we can always try and tone it down or outright remove it.
Here is a gif showing the cloth simulations on Burnt Freddy.
(We also have a link for a better quality video showcasing it https://screenapp.io/app/v/1vCHapBE8F)

With Burnt Freddy done, I think this marks a major milestone on this project. The reason why he was taking so long was mostly figuring out what work and what didn't. Seriously this model went through so many changes.
With him done, we have a full understanding of what we want the rest of the Burnts to look like, so hopefully they won't take as much time to be made!

New reworked logo

We have a new logo... again! Yes, this is the third time we have redesigned the logo and hopefully the last. I like the new look for how more simplifed/clean it is, while also keeping the same vibe as the previous versions.

With the new logo, we also went ahead and updated the page's thumbnail.
I would love to post it here, but due to the need of having to fit the file size limit, the compression made it look really bad, sorry :/

Gameplay progress

So, what about gameplay? Well, for starters I will say that we don't plan on showing anything on this post. However, the progress has actually been really good as of lately. Around summer I managed to finish all of what I would consider the "base AI" of the burnt animatronics.
A bit after, @Uriyra joined the project and has been tasked with recoding my code ever since. Not only did they manage to recode most of the game's mechanics in way less time than I did, but they also optimized it a lot. I basically managed to run the game at a stable framerate with max graphics settings, which I wasn't really able to do before.
So pretty much I would say that 4/5 AI animatronics are implemented on the normal main nights sections, we currently are just still using a lot of placeholder stuff, reason why I prefer not sharing much of gameplay at this moment.

So, why the lack of updates?

It's hard for me to point out a specific reason behind this.
On one hand, I am personally opting to avoid posting a lot of stuff about the game during these early stages of development. There is still a long road up ahead for this game and a lot of stuff to be done. I am also avoiding what I did in the early days of the project, where I would post a lot of showcase videos that admittedly didn't even show much (and a lot of it is outdated by this point).
On the other hand, this last year or so, we mostly been focusing on having a lot of programming done, instead of focusing on making a bunch of assets. This results in us currently having a reasonable amount of gameplay progress that can't be shared yet, due to it lacking complete models, animations, effects, sounds, etc.
In retrospective, I am 100% at fault for this, I am still learning how to handle a project of this scale with not that many previous experience, which has been quite difficult to say the least.
On a brighter note, as of the last couple of months, we actually been picking up a good pace in regards to general development. Around the same time, we were done with Burnt Freddy, we also finished up doing this awesome render, courtesy of @Foxxy_Games , that I won't go too much in depth about :)

So, progress on the project will continue as per usual, with a bit more focus on doing more original assets to possibly show it off.
We are working the best we can and taking our time with it. Please take into consideration that all of us are working on this for free and have other important stuff to do outside of developing the game!
As the director of the project, I would like to invite you to look at the work the other developers put into their own projects.
This seriously is the best way you could support us, and we would be really thankful if you did. All of our profiles/socials are on the credits list, found just under the game's description, so please go have a look ;)

As for one last note, I would like to give a massive thank you for the support. I am genuinely shocked how even during this period of silence, a lot of people have been following up the page. This seriously helps a lot, and I am thankful for that!
I know this post was kind of a big one, with a lot of text involved. In my mind this is to compensate for the lack of updates during the past few months.
Hopefully we will see you soon and with more things to share about the game, so stay tuned and I guess I will see you another day :)