Hey everyone, welcome to the April 2024 Devlog of Hack's Custom Night!

After some (a lot of) delays, I am finally able to showcase what I have been working on for the past 30 days.

In this devlog, I'll be going over the characters that were implemented to HCN, open play-testing, and music composing! I am pretty excited to go over them, as it does set a good milestone for HCN. Especially when the gameplay is accelerating in more progress than ever.

THREE(*) NEW CHARACTERS

Regarding the four characters, you're likely wondering who's included into the night. The four characters have a slightly more unique mechanics from their UCN-counterpart to add a fresh experience to playing the nights.

CHARACTER: Emma Pond (@EmmaPond101) (again?)

If you have played Ultimate Custom Night, you may remember the three plush characters' mechanics from Nightmare Bonnie, Nightmare Mangle, and Circus Baby; their mechanic being that you need to purchase their corresponding plush when they appear at the doorway, all functioning the exact same.

In Hack's Custom Night, all three plush characters work slightly different. In Emma's case, instead of purchasing an Emma plush to prevent her attack, you need to get the plush she specifically requests out of the three when she appears at the Red Hallway!

You may be wondering why Emma's mechanic is being brought to light again, especially in this lengthy description. During testing, the bug-testers claim how her mechanic was so easy that they can purchase all of her plushies before she can attack at even 1 AM. Due to the way in-gameplay currency (Byte Credits) can be earned more consistently than randomized chances, you can collect coins more easily than before. So in addition, any plushies she'll potentially request to you are gonna be more expensive than they were originally.

To compare Emma's plushies cost from UCN, here are the differences:

Emma LV 01: 15 Coins
Emma LV 20: 40 Coins

N. Bonnie LV 01: 10 Coins
N. Bonnie LV 20: 20 Coins

As you can see, not only Emma's plushies start with a slightly more expensive cost, but it scales much bigger than UCN's. Because I've made her plushies more expensive, the stakes in choosing which plush Emma would choose is much higher than before, as blindly buying a plush would only put you at a disadvantage in having a lower amount of Byte Credits to buy more.

I am pretty proud of her mechanic for what it is, and Emma certainly loves it as well!

CHARACTER: Caddy (@CaddyArcade)

Caddy's mechanic isn't anything special compared to other characters if we're talking about the context of unique mechanics within FNaF. However, her role to fulfilling spots for more simpler functions is more than welcome.

Her mechanic works as follows:

"Caddy and alien will approach to either left or right doorway. If you see her, shut the corresponding door or her alien will disable door controls, eventually leading their attack."

To any FNaF fans, you'll likely know this is a mechanic straight from the first FNaF game. And although there isn't much to say regarding it, her character fits to the role of being a more simple quality of lifestyle than being a complex mechanic.

However, due to personal life reasons, Caddy is likely not gonna be able to contribute after the demo is released. And although I would be able to make the art for her, Caddy needs to work on something for HCN that only she is required to do. This may potentially change as I am still debating on how development will go going forward, but only time will tell.

CHARACTER: Byeol (@staruri_starz)

Byeol's one of the stranger characters in Hack's Custom Night, as she'll give a disadvantage than to end your run. Their mechanic is as follows:

While you're viewing the tablet, Byeol will occasionally appear. Switch to any other camera or close the tablet to prevent her from breaking the Cam Tools system while temporarily causing very loud noises.

To any veteran FNaF players, you may recognize this as a Phantom B.B. mechanic. Most of you may think Byeol can only appear the next time you switch to a camera, or flip up the tablet. However, this isn't exactly the case here...

If you watch the video closely, you may have noticed how I've never really switch a lot of cameras just for Byeol to spawn. Instead, Byeol can subtly appear while you're viewing the camera than spawning on camera or tablet actions.

This is intentional as to make the players focus their surroundings while viewing the cameras naturally. She passively adds onto the obstacles of simply trying to find the characters that are around the building.

Since Star can already permanently break your camera, Byeol will break your Cam Tools (cam audio, cam light, and etc.) to make the stakes of dealing with specific camera characters higher.

PLAYTESTING BUILDS (0.2)

A few days after the last devlog, I was able to submit the second major build to the bug-testers of HCN. Ever since, I was able to implement five more characters into the game successfully, and it definitely added some depth into the game without it being too challenging yet.

Needless to say, it was a much refreshing time to witness how much hard work is paid off from programming so many functions and quality of life features for the players. It gives me motivation I could not describe that just feels very good to pass up.

The testers were really good at pointing out countless bugs, issues, and balancing problems during testing sessions. During the programming process before testing, I personally felt like testers are pointless to deal with. Not because of balancing issues, but I had personal problems with how aggressive and mean-spirited the communities around me can ruin the vibe of my creations. It's annoying and can demotivate me if the project isn't properly tested in a safe manner.

That being said, having testers helped me list out every issue on-board without having to scout through every single bit and frame of the game that would take forever to release the game. It felt so relieving to see the testers become more satisfied while the builds gets more refined each release.

The best part about releasing the builds to the testers is seeing how much fun they're having aside from finding bugs. Here are some feedback from two of the testers on what they have to say from playing many progressing builds so far:

(@StarStreak7 )

(@Frogger25 )

(@1syl_Here )

(@Taizarack )

Even with dedicated bug-testers, I have decided to include users outside of the testing team to play the builds. Because while bug-testers are here to investigate bugs, it's also important to get random folks or friends to get the raw experience themselves to tweak out potential mishaps or misleads.

I was personally worried doing this, as a fraction of the play-testers never had experience in playing FNaF games. However, the feedback that came back from them surprised me.

Against all odds with how I self-consciously feel about my fangame at times, everyone seems to have enjoyed it really well even in its early beta stages. Especially seeing people's opinion about UCN-type fangames shift from being disliked to seeing its full potential. I appreciate that everyone admires the variety of accessibility that is within this game, as there isn't really a lot of fangames that offer much of a welcoming towards players or anyone outside of the FNaF-player base.

Needless to say, I am pretty happy with how this game is turning out to be. It feels like the way I am designing and directing this game's direction, I am doing a good job for a variety of audiences. Whether you've been a FNaF fan or not, it's a game for everyone to enjoy.

NIGHT MENU MUSIC

If you've watched any of the character preview videos, you may have noticed there's actual music within the Night Menu! What you've listened to is actually a music composed by @SpringYardAct3!

The track was originally intended to fit one of the tracks that play during the night, until I feel it fits much better with it playing in the Night Menu.

SpringYard did a fantastic job in composing the music track, despite it originally being intended for something different. I mean hey, at least it's not scrapped at all. Go follow their social media (Twitter) if you like listening to the Night Menu theme.

If or when the HCN demo gets released, me and SpringYard will create a soundtrack album with every music track created for the game so far. We both are very excited to witness the game be layered with music charm for you all to listen to. 💜

CONCLUSION

We've come really far this time with how much is implemented to the game. I hope the rest of the year gets more consistent progress to hopefully get a demo out. My plan for the next month is to finish a few more characters that will surely make the nights more difficult that revolves in making strategies more engaging, with the addition of other features being implemented.

Thank you all for reading through this devlog, talk to you in the next devlog in May! Hope you all have a good day/night!

— Hack 💜