Hey Everyone! Been a lil while ey? Well there's a good reason for that, we've been hard at work getting stuff done, and there's a lot to talk about. Now unfortunately we don't have anything we're ready to show off yet, as we wish to leave that for when the Tech Demo's programming is closer to being done, but we still wanted to get to discussing this, since its been a long time. There's also some really important things we feel we should discuss that revolve around the game, so lets go ahead and talk about it.

Fair warning, this is a lengthy post, soooo...

TLDR: The game is being experimented on with Unreal Engine, and may end up switching to said engine fully depending on what happens. This would make development way easier with how versatile and powerful Unreal is, but it might cause some users to have difficulty playing the game. No decision is final, but its likely to switch over to Unreal Engine in the near future.

Game has made major progress, and the Tech Demo is currently, at least in the Unreal Branch, considered to be in Pre-Alpha. Once the next build has been completed, the game will be considered to be in Alpha, and likely by the end of the year we'll be in Beta and getting ready for launch as we finish up the game. We're currently aiming for a Q1-Q2 2025 Launch Window.

Thank you for Supporting POPGOES 2 Revival's Development.

So, lets talk about game engines, specifically Clickteam. Its an engine capable of many really cool things, and has a ton of community support!

... however, it also comes with some major downsides, and major problems.

Ever since this project's beginning (and supposedly, even when the original POPGOES 2 was being made) Pre-Reprinted's gameplay has been a pain in the ass. Clickteam would always have severe problems with the gameplay, and graphical issues and long load times were a constant problem. This is why both the original and this remake of POPGOES 2 both switched to Game Maker during development. However, when Team Arctic disbanded and ExoTitan was left to himself, he continued the project in Clickteam, since he had no clue on how to use Game Maker. And so, the problems have continued. All other aspects of the game have worked fine (though with Exo being extremely busy things have been slow on the programming end) but Pre-Reprinted has been a big big problem.

As you can imagine, this has made things very problematic, so what exactly can we do in this situation? We could just power through it all, but it would slow development and make things very tedious especially since we don't know how to solve these issues...

... or, we could switch engines. Just so happens to be that I, Foxxy Games, happen to work and program within Unreal Engine.

Okay, before we go anywhere, first off, no this doesn't mean the gameplay or visuals will change or anything. Everything will still be using prerendered graphics and nothing about the game's design will change from this. A lot of Unreal Engine FNAF Fan Games tend to follow a very similar formula, so I thought I'd get that point across first before we got into the real meat. Speaking of which...

This started as a proposal back at the end of August, where I created a simple build featuring a simple title screen, a brain minigame (made mostly as a demonstration of what I can do in Unreal), and very simple prototypes for Pre-Reprinted and Reprinted. After proposing the concept he expressed interest in it, and as a result we officially started the Unreal Branch.

So, what's been done with this branch so far?

A lot actually! Over the past month (or two months if this post is published later during the month of October) I have managed to successfully implement the following for Pre-Reprinted:

• Full Movement for both gamemodes.

• Time Progression System/6AM Screen for both gamemodes.

• Both Epitome Popgoes and Epitome Blake's AI Functionality for Pre-Reprinted

• The ability to use the in office lights, printer lures, and cameras in Pre-Reprinted

• A pause menu for both modes

• All three monitors (albeit varying in function) for Reprinted

• The ability to Scan the environment and move to different rooms in Reprinted as Buttons

So in only a month, while the game is far from complete (we're still missing the Heartlesses in Pre-Reprinted and all the Reprinted AI, the Game Over Sequence, most Sounds and Music, the Save System, Achievements, Credits, Settings, Demo Completion Screens, ect ect while also having the current features still be somewhat incomplete and buggy) we are making major strides already in just one month! (and not to mention all the while working on several other projects) There's a lot that's already been done, and more progress is being made day after day (at the time of writing, I am currently working in implementing the AI in Reprinted along with the Heartlesses in Pre-Reprinted), so it might just be that we will switch to Unreal!

However, there are some concerns with switching to Unreal...

1. We lose all the progress made on the side elements of POPGOES 2 from the Clickteam version. To be fair, this isn't much, but all the functionality for the Menus, GUI, and anything else done in the Clickteam version will all go to waste.

2. Probably the biggest element we worry about with the switch to Unreal Engine, is the potential of having some players be unable to play the game. Unreal Engine takes up more processing power then Clickteam, and is a much more complex engine. Yes, we're not really using a lot of very intense systems, and we plan to do a lot of optimization work, but we still expect to be some limitations to who might be able to play.

Both of these do make us a bit nervous on if we 100% want to stick to Unreal, but with the sheer amount of progress made over the last month (or two if this post is released later in October) has been really really fantastic. Going through Unreal would make things so much easier and allow us to get the game out sooner for you guys. Yet at the same time, will the lost progress be too damning? And while we haven't tested the second point fully just yet, we still see potential risk in having players be unable to play.

There are concerns within the potential of this new engine change, and its a lot to consider as we continue work, and we felt as though we should share our concerns.

Ultimately, while we aren't 100% certain on the engine of choice right now, we will still continue to develop the game within both engines, and depending on which engine we find to be making the most progress and would be best to use for the full game, we will choose said engine.

Well, that mostly wraps things up for now. Very lengthy post, I know, but we felt as though we should be as transparent as possible so you guys know whats going on with the project. So much progress has been made, but it is kind of a shame we didn't get to show any of that progress visually. (that's always one of the fun parts) But hey, hopefully by the next devlog we'll finally have something new to show you guys, and hey, maybe later this year we'll have something more to give you guys, who knows!

Well, I think its about time we finally end this post. We'll be continuing to work hard to get this game released for you guys by the end of the year. We're super excited to show off all the new progress we've made but we need to cook a little bit longer before we'll consider our work ready to be shown. Just give us a bit of time!