Hey everyone,
ACTUALLY got some cool stuff to show off today. Genuinely quite a bit of progress all-round. Rejoice.
Fanart Showcase:
by Rogerdodger - (Source)
by TacuachiTV - (Source)
by Dentra - (Source)
by klunsgod - (Source)
Top Supporters (last 30 days):
@Slitherjump 
- 45 charged stickers
@Ketchup_Boi 
- 44 charged stickers
@HF_Games 
- 43 charged stickers
Thank you everyone for placing charged stickers on these posts!
If Game Jolt ever adds a way to see who has submitted the most stickers in the past week, I'll use that. For now, I'll be sharing the top supporters of the past 30 days, even if these are weekly!
POPGOES Evergreen:
A few people have completed tasks this week. Firstly, I gave Ellie/StupidButterfly the task of designing a print for the front of the trading card PACK. The packaging itself. Because the plan for the cards in Evergreen is that you'll be able to buy packs using an in-game currency to receive random cards. This process should be illustrated/animated, so yeah.
On top of this, Emil has actually worked on a model for these packs, and when we've finalised a design, he'll animate the pack being torn open, etc.
The packaging artwork is not finished just yet, so I'll let you guys check out this WIP:
No we won't use Impact...
I will be working on the rest of this this weekend. Colours, gradients, fonts, whatnot. I want it to feel as authentic as possible, familiar to fans of the Pokémon TCG for example. Ellie has finished the character artwork at this point so it shouldn't be too hard. Maybe next week we'll have it applied to a model, and even animated? Not sure yet.
Second thing - Odium struggled a fair bit with the middle-stage of False Mangle as a lot of the torso changed COMPLETELY between the original Mangle and False model. Which makes a seamless transitional stage quite difficult obviously. We spoke to Alexis who was happy to make some adjustments with the False Mangle model to make the transitions easier, and so middle-stage Mangle is ALMOST finished. Enjoy this preview of Mangle's original, middle, and False torso:
As you can see from just the torso, False Mangle is pretty huge.
Speaking of Alexis, THE ENDOSKELETON IS FINISHED! And it is amazing. Even though we had an endoskeleton modelled already, Alexis remodelled it from scratch, and not only is it extremely optimised (from over 1.1m polygons to less than 200k...), it is more importantly ACTUALLY compatible with the animatronic shells. Meaning the endoskeleton actually fits inside the animatronic (or at least Blake's) body:
This does not mean that we will be rendering each animatronic with this new endoskeleton built into their model. It's not noticeable enough in the camera renders, so it'd mostly just tank render performance. But maybe eventually we can use it for promotional images! It certainly looks cool.
I won't show off the entire endoskeleton yet as I think it'd be nice to save it as a surprise for when the Parts & Service room is revealed. Plus, there is STILL a cool part of the endo that we are "censoring", just because it's fun to keep it secret.
However, I will show you some comparisons between the old and new model. I admit it's quite difficult to tell a difference since they use the same materials and are based on the same concept art. But you should be able to see how it has been simplified, and how it better fits the shape of the animatronics:
You can of course ignore the colour differences, that's just because the original endo had Popgoes' accent colours (green) and the new one is built to fit Blake (yellow).
Take this as well, a new full render of (maskless?) Blake with the endoskeleton built into his model, including an "x-ray" of his head that shows how perfectly the endo now fits:
Man that's satisfying.
Some of you may be asking WHY we even bothered with this when the original endoskeleton looked great, and we don't really plan on showing the animatronics in a disassembled state. And it's honestly for a few reasons, but mostly:
I wanted Alexis to have some practice with robotic modelling before getting to work on Simon.
I like to "future-proof" things. Meaning, if we EVER decide to make a sequel or any kind of follow-up in which we need to see the internals of the animatronics, it'd be easier with their endoskeletons actually making sense.
Due to some personal reasons I'm trying to minimise the amount of work left in Evergreen that was made by the original modeller of the endoskeleton.
Regardless, I think it's worth it. It didn't take too long. And now Alexis gets to work on Simon! You excited? Well, you won't be able to see him until the game releases, but still. Nice to get it done.
Last thing for Evergreen - I'm now working with Jayfer on some new merchandise pitches, mostly for Youtooz. No idea if any will come to fruition, but they loved our pins, so who knows!
POPGOES Arcade:
A fair bit of progress with the Arcade mobile ports. The game is not functional on mobile yet but it CAN open on Android, kind of. It looks like this at the moment:
If you look carefully you can see some subtle ghosting of the screen. That's the reflection shader messing up a bit. It'll be fixed.
We've also finalised an icon for the game, and it will just be called "POPGOES Arcade" since there won't be a free version on mobile. Here's a before and after:
Aside from technical issues, the most difficult part of this port process is probably translating the controls. The mouse is NEVER used in POPGOES Arcade, so taking advantage of a touchscreen to play the game is a pretty crazy change. We plan on adding a virtual d-pad of sorts, like this:
Other buttons like the inventory, pause menu, and basically any shop or other unique UI will probably be interactive by just touching them. It's a TOTAL overhaul, so it will take a while. But it's the main thing Emil is working on right now, with the guys over at Clickteam who have been helping a lot too.
Merch:
I received an update from Dawko earlier this week on the Popgoes Hex plushie, basically just improving/increasing his chin/lower jaw:
Looks better, right? Try to ignore the buttonless eyes...
Though nothing is confirmed, I believe the Popgoes and Candy Hex plushies may be available to pre-order later this month or sometime in March. They are very close to being finished. Candy was finished a while ago actually.
Hope you're excited!
Other:
Popgoes the Weasel is now available in Forsaken AR: Darkest Delivery, a fanmade mod/fangame of FNAF AR: Special Delivery!
I want to clarify that though this is not an official POPGOES product/collaboration, it is something I approved and helped with a bit. The Popgoes model used in Forsaken AR is fanmade. I want to thank those of you who messaged me, thinking this was unauthorised, but it's fine! I allowed it. Go have fun with it!
On a bit of a sadder note, I mentioned on Twitter the other day that my IRL job has been made redundant, and that by the end of the month I'll be without a salary. I can confirm that today was my last day. I don't have a job anymore.
Some of you may not know this but POPGOES/FNAF has never been my "job". The Fanverse means I can make some money from my series, like with Arcade sales on Steam, merchandise, etc. And I also have things like Buy Me a Coffee and the Game Jolt Creator program to keep things going too. But I have relied on an actual real-life career for five years now, which has suddenly disappeared. Quite scary.
For the time being, I am planning on increasing the amount of content I make online, and seeing if it can become a sustainable source of income for me in the coming months. If not, I'll have to come up with a backup plan. But things are relatively stable right now and I'm excited to try new things, like maybe more videos or even streaming. We'll see.
Your support means more now than ever. Drop a charged sticker, buy a Popgoes plushie, gift Arcade to a friend... anything helps! But it's not required, and I'll continue giving you all updates regardless.
Alrighty, that's today's devlog. Quite a bit more than usual - I hope it tides you all over until next week. Seeya!
- Kane
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