Before getting into the notes of Phase 1, I want to explain some stuff for anyone who's curious about what's happening, otherwise you can skip to the next part. Biotale Interactive is run by two guys (Aaron and Drew) who decided to pick up game development in middle school. We never coded before in Unreal, but decided to give it a try. After several failed projects of being too ambitious and literally too stupid to do anything useful, we started "Things That Lurk in the Dark." This was fairly ambitious for not knowing much about Unreal still, but made for a good foundation for learning the basics. We found moderate success in a VERY short period of time, where after barely a week or so, we were gaining thousands of views a day and dozens of followers. We began to create unrealistic expectations for ourselves with an unexpected popularity rush and finding that nothing we did was good enough. We got irritated when we didn't know something because that meant it took time out of our days to learn it, so stuff got disorganized and pushed back for expected release dates. As time went on, we believed that this game was getting more and more impossible due to our ever growing expectation of a triple A title release on our end, mixed with the belief that our followers and fans would be pissed off with our lack of knowledge (which now that we're older and reflecting, we know this to be untrue). We encountered many issues along the way like internet going out preventing us to file share for several months on end, and portforwarding getting removed randomly by the internet providers. We revised almost everything many times, the main menu looked amazing in our opinion, but ended up being the 5th revision of it. Finally in mid-2021, we called it quits. We didn't see ourselves coming back, and many times there were thoughts about trying again, but the memories of our failure pushed us away. The way this development has gone so far is entirely on us. We believe this project was mishandled from the start, and we were too young and too popular to be able to relieve the pressure from ourselves. After a few months we started a new Youtube channel based on gaming, which helped us grow a lot and decide that we ultimately don't care what people think of us or our products, because the people who enjoy what we create and find fun will naturally find enjoyment out of what we do. That's not to say we want a terrible game, but people who don't like our style just aren't the people we're looking for. With that said, we decided to pick up development again, and start from scratch. Reorganized everything, stay on a somewhat consistent schedule without burning out, and have a proper work flow. We're leaving up our old posts because we want to be transparent. We personally believe that it would be shady to hide everything we did, so we left it all alone. Those who have followed this project for a long time will remember the updates, and if we were one of them, we wouldn't be so pleased to see the devs hiding their past. If there's any further questions, please feel free to ask us in the comments, DMs, or on our Instagram @biotaleinteractive . Now enough talking and let's get into the notes.

----------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE - We will NOT disclose all information on the game. Some mechanics are secrets to be discovered IN GAME to create a more tense atmosphere and a fear of the unknown. Minimal images and GIFs will be applied with descriptions being as detailed or as vague as we see fit. Thank you for your understanding.

----------------------------------------------------------------

BATTERY/FLASHLIGHT - It turns on when you press F, and turns off when you press it again. Press R to reload your battery. Watch the darkness...

• The code is roughly the same from the previous version of the game. Some stuff we recoded to work more efficiently and to PROPERLY work with our new system in place. We went through and bug tested it, but will do more bug testing before release to ensure quality.

• Models were made for this system. What models? You'll see in release.

MOVEMENT SYSTEM - This covers a whole slew of stuff. I'll cover a couple key points real fast.

• Sprinting was add. There's a stamina system built in with it too, so you can't run forever.

• The backbone of footstep sound effects was added. It was pretty basic and doesn't do much at this moment since we don't have a big map to use until Phase 2 begins. We made it modular however so we can easily copy/paste when a new material is added, or if we make/add new textures.

• We added crouching. This is also very basic.

----------------------------------------------------------------

MENUS

When we started this project over, we decided that we were 100% stupid with how we handled the menus before. We were trying to get all the menus PERFECT before going on to the next project. This would cause us to go through 3-4 revisions of the menus because we always came up with stuff along the way (like a better main menu scene). So for now, we're coding the bare minimum of the menus to make them function. The graphics won't work 100% until we have more made in the maps to actually impact the texture resolutions and lighting. The same is said for every menu we currently have.

----------------------------------------------------------------

MAIN MENU - We made a basic main menu set up and working. It doesn't look pretty, however it exists. It takes us to a one of our test maps and allows us to work with options.

OPTIONS MENU - This covers quite a bit of stuff. We count the different options menus as tasks to this objective, so this covers audio, graphics, and controls. All of which are coded very basically, but create the backbone structure needed to easily add new assets and options without the need to recode the entire program.

PAUSE MENU - I'm sure you're tired of this, but once again, it's basically made. It paused the game, you can unpause, quit, and access options. It doesn't look pretty, however it works.

ONCE AGAIN: We'll polish the menus once we see it's time to do so. Currently we don't believe in putting work into the actual design of the menus when they they aren't 100% complete. There will be notes of these menus completions in a future update.

----------------------------------------------------------------

We hope you guys enjoyed this post and find to be informational. We'll be taking a short break since we spent the last few weeks working everyday on the game before and after our full time jobs. Once we're starting development again (no longer than a week), there will be a post describing very briefly what will be in Phase 2 for those who aren't watching the trello. Thank you all for the support. See you soon!