[DISCLAIMER: I've made an error on my part to post this devlog on my profile instead of this game page! Gonna hope this doesn't happen again in the future... Regardless, this post was made at January 20, 2024, just at the wrong place. Without further ado, enjoy reading!]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the new year, 2024! (We're far into the future, huh?)

For this devlog, I won't have much to showcase, but more of talking about the current and change plans for this game. Luckily, it isn't the biggest change, but it may be something worth reading.

Redesigned Pause Menu

Before going over the plans, I'll at least talk about some additions and changes within the game. First, we have the completely redesigned Pause Menu! Whether if I had made a devlog post regarding there being a Pause Feature in HCN, then I'll confirm this and say yes, Hack's Custom Night can allow you to pause the game.

Regarding the Pause Menu, I have redesigned what used to be a more plain menu. I'll go ahead and show what it was before and after the changes.

(Screenshot provided by Syl, one of the play-testers, thank you Syl.)

This is what the pause menu looks like back in the first playable demo for the testers! It looks alright for a simple menu, the design of it was meant to sort of represent The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe with the "The Game Is Now Paused" text being replaced with "Your Shift Is Now Paused."

Keep in mind that before the Pause Menu was redesigned, the old one did have a solid colored background to not have the buttons blend into the gameplay. It's just that I could not find a proper screenshot with my own builds with the background (due to external file changes.)

Here's what the menu looks like now! It's a bit more stylized with there being bordered buttons and outlines, with a revised description box. This is meant to aim for a manga or comic book art style, utilizing its setup for creating a simple menu.

The colors and presentation of the UX design is my favorite part of the Pause Menu, seeing the buttons when they are being hovered over, the description box reloading when on a different cursor, and the color blending!

Regarding this art style, I have been considering whether or not I should apply this to other menus or areas of Hack's Custom Night. Right now, every menu has a plain text menu with not much styling going on.

As much as I find the Pause Menu to have a cool style, I am not 100% sure about Hack's Custom Night having entirely a comic book art style, mainly because I've always liked chalky or crayon style in artworks generally.

However with the experience I have in making the comic book style, I can try to apply it with the style I've always wanted to pursue. So in this case, I'll see if I can create a wonderful chalky art style for the menu UIs of HCN.

Quick Restart

It may not be entirely a unique feature within itself, but I am very happy with the presentation I have created! The Quick Restart is a QOL feature where you can restart the night with a click of the Backspace key. Once pressed, a quick clapboard animation will play, briefly displaying on how many attempts you've been playing the night, while displaying additional info like the date you're playing, night information, and etc.

Creating a visual for this feature was somehow one of the most time consuming process besides the character jumpscares. It went so long as 6+ hours of overall work to create the final version. The whole thing works like this:

1. Create a poorly made clapboard model, then make its movement animation. (18 frames within 24 FPS)

2. Draw the base clapboard concept within post-production.

3. Redraw/trace and color the clapboard on every single frame of its animation within post.

4. Create a chart on how the information layer will be skewed on every frame of the animation in Clickteam using an in-built editor I've created.

5. Programming it into the game.

All of this sounds easy on paper, while the creation process is very time consuming with the amount of frames and detail I have to put. I personally don't like going for the easy route when it comes to the presentation, seeing the amount of potential every part of the game has to have great quality.

I am very proud of what the final version of this feature is, I do think a lot of people will appreciate not only the QOL itself, but the quick and beautiful indicator to help them know they've successfully input the command. I feel if I were to have the shortcut instantly restart by input, it can look janky by just constantly spamming it quickly.

Once change I may consider for the Quick Restart is have it so instead of simply pressing on the input, you have to press and hold the button for a whole or half second. I can only imagine someone accidentally pressing the button to completely obliterate their good run of a difficult night. lol

Overhaul Changes Regarding the Main Roster

For the past five years, I have planned out Hack's Custom Night to have around 50 characters to be in the main roster. The main roster is meant to have characters full of friends, acquaintances, and allies over the years, and still doesn't change even to this day. (With the addition of characters that resemble my memories or charm.)

Throughout the entire development of Hack's Custom Night, the game has struggled to maintain the target of 50 characters, and is still having a difficult time to this day. It isn't an easy decision after baring with many years trying to keep it up. I am here to announce that:

Hack's Custom Night will no longer have 50 main roster characters.

There's a lot to go over why, but to summarize, there were a lot of communication issues going on both ends to the point chunks of the roster kept getting removed from the game. For as much as I want to stay determined to develop the game, I simply cannot maintain that many character artists who are part of this game.

That being said, I cannot really definitively say how many characters will be in the final version of the roster, it is currently undetermined at the moment. With the stakes of the roster, I am unsure about the fate of Hack's Custom Night itself.

That is all I have to go over for this month. This isn't the most positive post regarding this game, but I'll do whatever I can to continue development. If it goes downhill, I'll at least showcase what I have done at that point.

Have a good day/night everyone.

— Hack 💜