Hello everyone, welcome to the May devlog of Hack's Custom Night!

Every month, on the 20th, I'll go over what I have been doing over the past month/30(ish) days! With that said, let's get right into it!

Mechanic Redesigns

First, lets talk some aspects of HCN's gameplay design! During my programming hiatus, I've decided to reevaluate the whole gameplay to make it a smooth experience.

For one, I have altered how the duct system will work, I felt that the system is more luck-based to deal with the characters regardless if their chances of moving to the lured audio position is low or high. With the new changes, the system will be more engaging and more focus oriented.

Another thing is tweaking aspects of what was overlooked, one part being the "Silent Ventilation" from Ultimate Custom Night. In case you do not know what it does in the original game, basically it's a noise-free tool with the ability to reduce the temperature's increase rate. While interesting in concept, I felt that the tool in particular is less reliable over what the other tools had the offer.

With the examples I have provided, it is aspects like those I am willing to revise on to make the gameplay more interesting. I have already planned out on how they'll perform differently, but I won't reveal the details how they work until development continues forward.

Lastly, I have planned more Night Modes for Hack's Custom Night that may interest all of you. For a "Custom Night" game, I do think it fits to the entire gameplay very well.

3D Base Renders

Over the days, I have been finalizing the building map layout for the renders to fit in well. With a lack of experience in modeling and knowing its standards, it had pushed me back over the years. However, thanks to the feedback group, deciding on the layout and renders have never been easier in consideration.

If you don't know the process on how the backgrounds are drawn, here's how it works:

• First, the base model is created about the room, with certain props and details identifying it.

• Second, it gets rendered into an image file, retracted and referenced within a 2D Art Software.

• Third, draw out the coloring and final details.

During the past years of HCN's development, it had so much trouble finding any reference modelers as drawing in a 3D space is very difficult. However, after so long, @StarStreak7 is now volunteering to model prop references for the renders! So far, in terms of the base renders, we have more than a half amount done for the time being. Here are some "totally radical behind the scenes" around the renders so far:

Now to clarify, I said "base renders" and not "fully made rooms" or something like that, and that is because for the time being, Hack's Custom Night does not have a clear direction on what the building design is. I want the building to have more of its own personality than having nearly similar design than the original FNaF games, as I want the game to be a bit more unique on its own than relying on FNaF's main design. (However, at the time I am typing this, I may have to resort to that as a prototype for the time being, otherwise it may stick to FNaF's main design.)

So why did I mention base renders? Well because of the renders made for this game, that means the characters can FINALLY be drawn into the building space, meaning progress is now getting somewhere besides the programming space! Speaking of which...

Programming Break is Over!

After a month of not touching the MFA (not sure why it says 22 instead of 20,) I am finally able to get back into working on the technical aspects of Hack's Custom Night. I will admit, I was suffering over the course of me having to avoid touching the MFA file itself, as I have many impulses to add or change something in the MFA. I mean, what can I say? I really like to mess around with it, along with experimenting several features.

But why did I do this in the first place? For one, I wanted to focus on other projects. Second, I wanted to maintain a healthy connection with the project by distancing myself from the source file itself. Although the past month still has activity on HCN getting progress, the source file is what I get hyped about mostly. But hey! I was able to work on different aspects of the game during the break, so nothing is really lost here.

Conclusion

For the next 30 days by the time of this post being published, I want to increase the activity and progress by a long shot due to a somewhat special anniversary. What's that you may ask? Well, at June 28, 2023, it'll be Hack's Custom Night's 5th year since its start of development! Which is personally insane to me! Time flies by so fast... I cannot wait to show you all what work will be done during the month of the small anniversary.

Until then, see you in the next devlog!~