In light of recent events, we promised a devlog by month's end, and here it is!

Lone Wolf Release

Bendy: Lone Wolf dropped a few weeks ago, which is something I and a few developers were greatly looking forward to. From teasers to trailers, this game looked like it was going to provide a bountiful amount of inspiration and assets that could carry over to Master's Pen, and it delivered! Let's talk about the Abyss- essentially the Projectionist's domain (sort of) in that game. Its design influenced us to reevaluate the look and feel of Reel Rampage in Master's Pen, and we swiftly got to work on updating it! Updating this level and getting it ready for release is our top priority, and also our only one... more on that later.

We Were Almost Cancelled!

Joey Drew Studios (the Bendy devs) changed their fan content policy over the summer, prohibiting the usage of ripped assets from any of their titles in fangames. Ripped Bendy assets (mostly BATIM) comprise a sizable chunk of Master's Pen- really the only custom things we have are music and animations, and even those are rooted in official content. This amendment to their policy unfortunately meant Master's Pen was cancelled for a night. Fortunately, we got clarification the following day from Mike D., which cleared things up. While Joey Drew Studios won't officially support/endorse fangames using their assets, they won't pursue any of them legally. Thus, we're in the clear! We really didn't want to cancel this project after all the time, planning, and development everyone poured into it, but we really felt we had no choice for a moment there. However, having our project stare death right in the face made us realize that if we were to move forward, some change would be in our best interests.

Game Engine Port

For those who didn't know, Master's Pen was developed in Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) for much of its creation. This version of the engine is undeniably powerful, yet it's a bit infamous for its instability and higher demand for performance. I assumed the latter issue would be the only obstacle, which I didn't see as too much of a problem since I knew I wanted to optimize the game as much as possible. However, developing the game in this engine has presented plenty of dilemmas over the past year. Gamejolt connectivity for achievements and scoreboards was a big one we tried to iron out since the process isn't identical to implementing it in other Unreal Engine versions. Additionally, the project just began to fail working for one of our programmers. On top of this, we faced plenty of smaller, yet still annoying bugs that were more difficult to locate than anyone expected. None of this is an issue anymore, as Shift in the Master's Pen is now in Unreal Engine 4. This should be more stable for everyone (developers & players)! If you're worried about the time it takes to port everything over, don't sweat it- we started this process in early August and most of what we need is carried over seamlessly. Manually redoing the code isn't that difficult when we have the UE5 version to compare with, or other fangame projects also in Unreal Engine 4.

Release Plan (Demo!)

We have a new plan on how we'll be releasing Master's Pen to benefit all parties: we're having a demo! The demo will feature Reel Rampage in all of its entirety... and honestly not much else. Upon clicking "New Game" on the main menu, you'll immediately be plopped into the level's portal hallway, all set to begin. After beating the level, you'll have an opportunity to upload your score to Gamejolt (assuming we get it all working properly), and that'll be it!

"Is the demo not just Chapter 1?"

Not exactly. I don't recall how much I've shared about this, but the game's intro/prologue is quite involved. From a development side, it'd compare it to the production of a whole chapter in itself. We're of course not allowing it to be too large to avoid clashing with the scope of the rest of the game, but it's taking a lot of time to get right. Its complexity has been quite a hurdle for us, since setting the mood right for everything after is vitally important to us. If Chapter 1 was simply just Reel Rampage, I promise it would have been completed WAY before now. To no longer hold it (the content I feel you're all currently more invested in) hostage, we've decided on this demo approach. The game's hub (or "The Collage" as we call it) also won't make an appearance, since its inclusion feels wrong without the necessary groundwork from the intro. However, we're still going to provide a little tease at the end of the demo for Chapter 2. You've waited long enough!

Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your day. Goodbye!