Hey everyone!

It's been a couple of months since the last status update, so now it's time for another! Even though things are quieter right now, I still intend to stay in touch throughout the rest of Baldi's Basics Plus' development through these status updates. This time around I won't have much to share, but I still want to let you all know what's been going on over the past couple of months!

Baldi's Basics Plus Early Access Development

Since the last status update, Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.14.2 was released. This was another minor update with plenty of fixes and little improvements to the game! Since then I've done a bit more work that will be pushed out in version 0.14.3 sometime in the near future.

That said, my focus has been elsewhere (The horizontal slice and MOISE) since 0.14.2 released, which I'll discuss below, so despite the time that has passed since then you can still expect 0.14.3 to be about the same size as the previous update. That said I plan on diving back into 0.14.3 work this week to make more improvements. In particular, I've heard a lot of feedback regarding Student Shuffle, so I'll dive into that event to see how I can balance it a bit better (It needs optimized too!).

The Horizontal Slice

...Is finished!

After many months, I've finally completed every task that was set for the horizontal slice version of the game! Every key feature is now in what I am calling a "placeholder sufficient" state. Those features, while far from complete, now exist in some form which means we now have an excellent blueprint for everything that needs to be in place for version 1.0!

This milestone is huge as it will help Nayan and I properly plan out the rest of development. Even more importantly though, completing the h-slice pushed me to fill in several blanks that still existed in the game design document. While I've had a solid grasp on the story of the game and how I wanted the game to be structured for a very long time, there were several finer details that I hadn't quite pinned down. Some of these were gameplay ideas I wasn't happy with, while others were gameplay elements I wanted to keep that weren't totally consistent with the story elements of the game.

The process of finishing the h-slice really pushed me to think through these issues and I'm happy to say there are practically no more blanks in the game design document! I've pretty much pinned down all the "what"s and "why"s for all the game design and all the key features that we wanted represented in the h-slice. I'm super happy with how all the pieces have come together and I'm excited for when I'll be able to share it all with you when version 1.0 releases! If all goes according to plan I think the result will be a far more cohesive experience than Baldi's Basics has ever had before.

Finally, as usual, here's an out-of-context screenshot the 1.0 development branch of the project!

MOISE - An interactive music system for video games

The horizontal slice was completed around the end of April. In may, I had plans to take a significant amount of time off to spend with family, so I decided to dedicate what time I would be working that month to working on MOISE, an interactive music system I've been wanting to create for quite a while now. It looks like I haven't actually posted about MOISE in a status update yet, so I'll explain what it is in a bit more detail.

Baldi's Basics Plus currently features realtime MIDI music playback. That is, the music data is stored as a series of notes (Rather than one big waveform, which is how music is usually stored digitally) and then those notes are played back while the game is running by what are, essentially, virtual instruments. This is made possible with a Unity asset I purchased many years ago called Maestro (AKA Midi Player Tool Kit).

The reason I took this route instead of using a more standard method of playing music in Baldi's Basics is because I wanted an authentic MIDI sound to the game, just like many games in the '90s had. It's subtle, but it allows for details such as the music notes finishing when a song is stopped instead of all the music audio being hard cut, or fading out while you can hear it continue to play.

Currently, Maestro works fantastically for the authenticity part. However, I really want to go beyond authenticity- I want interactivity as well! I want each music track to be able to change in many different ways based on what's happening in-game. Maestro wasn't designed with interactivity in mind, and while there are workarounds (The [SPOILERS!] sequence in Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered had some interactive music powered by Maestro, but that required a lot of hacky solutions), I realized many years ago that in order to achieve what I want, I would have to create my own solution, as I've never been able to find one that works quite how I want it to.

So, I came up with MOISE - the Musical, Open and Interactive Sequence Engine. The idea is simple. It will allow for music sequence data to be played back, note-by-note, similar to how classic MIDI files work, but with a key difference: Each music command can be given a condition (Based on what's happening in the game) that determines whether or not it will actually activate. This means I will be able to seamlessly design interactive elements of the soundtrack while I am composing it. Not only that, but it will make it possible to do some really cool stuff that could only be achieved with a sequenced music system like this, all while letting me maintain an authentic '90s video game MIDI sound.

MOISE is open source and I hope it is used for more than just Baldi's Basics in the future, however I have a lot of ideas on how I'd love to use it in Baldi's Basics Plus specifically, so I really hope to be able to finish it in time to include it in the game. After a few years of spontaneous prototyping and planning, I began working on MOISE early last year, though very little work has been done since then except for when I commissioned a programmer to help me get past some of the initial hurdles I was facing.

In May however I was finally able to dedicate a significant amount of time to the project and I'm very excited about how things are shaping up now. It's still very early, but most of the core functionality has been implemented now and with most major hurdles behind me I've now got some decent momentum going. The next major task is to create an editor so I can actually compose music for the system, but the engine itself seems to be working about as well as I'd hoped!

Now obviously I can't just cease work on Baldi's Basics Plus for several months to work exclusively on MOISE (Even if that technically is work on the game), so my hope moving forward is to occasionally find time to chip away at MOISE while I keep my focus on stuff directly related to Baldi's Basics Plus.

Hopefully that all makes some sense! As excited as I am about MOISE I understand that it's not the easiest thing ever to explain. Once I have a good example of MOISE in action I'd love to show it off, since I think that's the best way to explain it, but unfortunately I'm not quite there yet. Hopefully sometime soon I will be!

Publishers

I still have nothing to announce regarding the search for a publisher, but I can say that there has been more movement in this area since the last status update. As soon as I can give y'all more info I will, but for now things need to be kept under wraps!

Conclusion

That's it for this status update. I know it's another pretty small one, but I still wanted to make sure I keep everyone in the loop. You can expect version 0.14.3 to release in the coming weeks, followed by more 0.14 sub-versions for the foreseeable future. As I work on those I will, of course, continue working on 1.0 stuff and MOISE! The next status update will be posted about two months from now. I'm not sure if I'll have anything more substantial to share then, but we'll see!

For now, thank you all for your patience as I work towards Baldi's Basics Plus version 1.0. I sincerely appreciate it and think the wait will be worth it!