To start this devlog off, I wanted to celebrate Animatronic Data Repair's 5th Anniversary! It's so crazy how far this game has come in it's development since it's 2020 release, even though the game looked and played out like a heaping pile of shit.

But in all seriousness, I'm very grateful to be able to do this for you all as this project is very very dear to me and I can't wait to finish it up and release it! So thank you very much for following along with my game's development!

Now onto the game stuff! I mentioned in the last devlog that I was able to complete a huge chunk of its development, which was remodeling the entire Pizza Palace.

After completing this, I was able to get a huge boost of motivation to complete the game, and because of that boost I was able to get a lot done over these past few months.

But before I start showing stuff off, I wanted to quickly let you all know that I had to make a slight change to the game's story.

While I was burning off the excess energy from that boost, I decided to re-read the game's story, which is something I do often whenever I'm rendering something, or when I'm just straight up bored.

But if you didn't know, the game initially had 10 nights in its main story, and after re-reading it, I realized that a small part of the story felt rather useless. Not as in it didn't need to be in game at all since its information is quite important to the game's plot. But more as in that it didn't need to be condensed into separate nights. So instead of having 10 nights in the main story, look forward to around 7-8 nights.

Now onto the stuff I showcased in the video.

I started working on the game's main menu! I'm not too sure whether I like it or not, but it makes a great placeholder! What I showcased was just a visualizer of what I had in mind, and in addition, I might have it change as the game goes on.

I know there aren't a lot of settings to choose from but trust me, I'll have options for the game's audio, the only reason why it's not in the video is because..the game has literally no audio in it. Adding audio to the game will be the very last thing I do because at that point I know that everything works and I'll have a good idea of how I want things to sound, I vividly remember people complaining about the volume differences in the demo so expect to see that setting in the full game.

Next, the free roam!

Not too long ago I decided to finally work on the free roam aspect of the game. There will be two separate free roam parts in the game, the one you're currently looking at is the first one.

At the beginning of every night, the player will have to make their way to the office themselves. The path that I took in the video was just a visualizer just like the main menu was.

My idea is that as the nights go on, the player will slowly start to shorten which ways they'll take to the office. For example, on night one, the player will be able to walk around the map freely, waltz right into any room they want without having a care in the world. But as the nights go on the player will begin to be afraid to go into certain room and will either be hesitant, scared, or straight up refuse to go into one. In the future I want to add an indicator that the main character (Lake), is scared to be in a certain room, or something like that.

The player's dialogue will also change as the nights go on as the player learns more about the restaurant and its history!

As for the second part of the second part of the free roam, that will take place near the end of every night, just like it did in the demo. This part of the game will have the player try to locate their post-shift task in the Pizza Palace, taking any safe route that they can. I actually have renders of this part of the game, I just haven't coded it or added it in yet..

Also spoiler alert!

Trying to leave the restaurant after the shift is over will result in a penalty! So don't do that!!!!

Moving onto the cameras.

Not a lot to say about this, just that since I finished remodeling the restaurant, I was able to add the rest of the cameras to the game.

Also I'm gonna go off track for a second and say if anyone knows way to add cameras with animatronics in them without using too much of clickteam's memory to please let me know because I know how to do it the regular way, but I wanna optimize this game as much as I can and right now, I'm doing a TERRIFIC job for what I have right now, the game isn't even a quarter of the demo's size. But in all serious if anyone knows how to do it I'll greatly appreciate it!!

Now it's time to talk about the game's AI.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that I started working on the game's AI. And recently, I was able to finish not just Freddy's AI, but also Bonnie's, which I'll discuss later, but one thing about the animatronics in the demo is that all of their mechanics were...bland. They were all dealt with in the exact same way, which is to just turn the office's lights off. That's it. For all 4 of them. But I kind of liked Freddy's mechanic in the demo.

If you refuse to play the game's demo, which I don't quite blame you, Freddy acted like the game's anti-cheat system in the demo, he only attacked you if you just sat in the office with the lights off for a long period of time. But in the clip you're probably looking at right now, I gave Freddy an actual purpose! And if you couldn't tell, I removed the flash beacon from the game. Before I removed it I actually had a flashlight mechanic like I used for when the player steps out into main hall, but I removed it cause it looked fugly. So about the anti cheat system? You'll just have to find that out later.

As for Bonnie,

I recently started working on his AI and it's been looking pretty good so far! All of the animations that you saw in the video are all placeholders and they might change in the full release.

As I said earlier about the animatronics all having the same mechanics in the demo, Bonnie's mechanic has nothing to do with shutting the office's power off, and even though that feature isn't entirely gone, I still thought the game would be more unique if every single animatronic had a different mechanic, one of them even has the player using the monitors in the office, which I haven't gotten to just yet but expect to see it in the next devlog.

As for Bonnie's jumpscare, I kinda like it, I didn't have to go back into Blender and re-animate it, I think it turned out great. But unfortunately, even though Freddy's AI is done I haven't gotten around to animating his jumpscare yet, so that'll also make its way into the next devlog. : )

Now if you've been keeping up on these devlogs, you're probably wondering where the super big secret that I've been teasing for god knows how long is at.

Well...it's not done yet, but I was able to finish a huge chunk of it, so instead of just spoiling it I'm just gonna show you a preview of what it entails.

I can't quite say what it is just yet, but if I'm on the right track, it should be done by the next devlog, which will be in a couple months, so look forward to that!

To end this devlog off, I wanted to say thank you all for 1,000 followers! I cannot thank you enough for how much I appreciate every single one of you for following along with this game's development. I could've never expected it to become such a big thing, so thank you very much!

I'll see you all in the next one, bye bye!

And goodnight! ♡