Hello everyone, welcome to the June 2023 devlog of Hack's Custom Night!

Every month, on the 20th, I'll go over what I have been doing over the past month/30(ish) days! Oh boy do I have quite a bit of stuff to showcase today! Main progress being the night menu to the main gameplay!

During the 30 days, I decided to change the workflow of this game in order to get progress done more efficiently. I've created more deadlines for this project instead of relying on everyone to take their time. It helped create more stakes and courage for everyone to work on the project. Besides that, here's what was done!

Night Menu / Main Roster Partial Reveal

This is the Night Menu! As of right now, it has 11 character slots presented here.

For the visuals side, we have quite a bit of stuff. Based on their current AI LVs, their icons will change from 0, 1-19, to 20! For one, characters will have a wobble effect based on the AI LV state. Each character has a parallax background including the mechanic description box. For the credits, each character was drawn by the original artist character while I did post-production on the visual side, they all have done a fantastic job making their icons to be presented in-game.

In addition to the base Night Menu, there is now the new Multi-Select Mode! If you hold the right-click button on your mouse on a character, you can highlight a character to adjust multiple characters at a time instead of one! You can see the reference at 1:18 in the video!

Besides the functions of the Night Menu, we have the reveal of 11 (out of 20) characters for the demo! You can see the actual characters including their mechanic description! All of the characters will be listed below to check out their social media, so please support them!

Character List (Left to Right)

Hack ▼
https://twitter.com/HackGameX294

Rosa ▼
https://twitter.com/rosiee204

Evelyn ▼
https://gamejolt.com/@TheresNoSteak

Twig ▼
https://twigs-sprigs.tumblr.com/

Emma ▼
https://twitter.com/EmmaPond101

Kaun ▼
https://www.tumblr.com/biocrafthero

Inferno ▼
https://twitter.com/PyricInferno

Ink ▼
https://twitter.com/k0isen

Crow ▼
https://twitter.com/Net33033513

Louie & Lou ▼
https://twitter.com/k0isen
https://twitter.com/Net33033513

Goopy ▼
https://twitter.com/JellyGoopy

Gameplay Footage

And now, we have the office gameplay! As you can see, there were A LOT of changes to the visuals of the game.

I've decided to scrap the shading aspect for a few reasons. The first one being that it makes the general process of the game much longer to make. The second and primary reason is that I feel this game's art style would benefit a lot more to giving better expressions and presentation. And before anyone thinks, no this isn't in inspiration to Pizza Tower, though that is a very good game you all should check out, in which is linked right here. Overall, I do feel it helps give the game's presentation a lot more spark and freedom than having to rely on a lot of complex shading. Though this doesn't mean that shading/shadows are entirely absent, it just won't be the base style overall.

About the doors, as you can see, they have a full animation when toggling them. In my experience in making them, animating them is a VERY annoying process to deal with. They're so annoying that the doors were JUST made before I had recorded the footage for the devlog. Even more irritating is that I had found a mistake with the left door midway in making the doors, which will take a while to go back and fix.

Let's get to one of the most presenting aspect of the video, the cameras! In the video, there are four rooms outside of the office. Dining Area, Blue Hallway, Red Hallway, and the Arcade Area. The cameras were something I was afraid to tackle on, because there isn't a final interior design for the game, even to this day. What I am planning for right now is to keep the design plain and simple until we come up with something. Ideally, it'll be this way all the way until the demo is released.

Also in those cameras, it has a light source coming off of different devices. The first three having a Cam Light you can click and hold, while the Arcade Area has arcade cabinets to light the camera! The Arcade Area ended up being my favorite out of the four for being the more aesthetic room.

That's it for right now! Needless to say, I am very happy about the amount of work that is done for this project. Things are finally moving without relying on small details to ensure certain progress. By the time I am making this post, I plan on taking a week (or more) break due to the amount of time I had spent on this project. It has taken so much time that it strayed me from focusing on other things, so please understand if there isn't going to be too much the next month.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you all have a good day/night. See you all in the next devlog!

— Hack 💜