Hi guys,
I'll have some things to share this week but unfortunately two of our major contributors are still gone. No idea what has happened. I'll talk about it a bit more later, but we will try to recover from this and work with what we've got!
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POPGOES Evergreen:
So yeah, unfortunately a major modeller and a major 2D artist for Evergreen, both focused on the complex post-night sections, are both "missing". The modeller has been away for over a month now, and nobody has seen them anywhere. The 2D artist has now been active elsewhere but is unfortunately not responding to me (and they haven't for almost four months).
Both of these contributors are very important for the post-night sections of the game, and on top of this, if the 3D modeller does not return, then a lot of produced content will be lost due to a lack of backups being made before their departure.
These unfortunate turn of events, and the potential unsustainability of the post-night sections (in how long they are taking to develop), means that we are considering working on yet ANOTHER redesign to make them simpler. They need to incorporate the False animatronics and some other important core features, but it seems like we'll NEED to streamline them. I'm in the middle of talking with the long-term dev members (Emil, Ellie, Sian, Garrett, etc) about this. It may take a while to figure things out, or maybe the original contributors will return and we'll be fine. This isn't something we could have seen coming, especially from people who weren't given stressful deadlines, were paid for the work they completed, and signed paperwork for the Fanverse. I'm really quite upset about all of this and I apologise that yet another delay has been put on the project.
In the meantime, the remaining contributors have been working on bits and bobs for the other parts of the game.
Ellie / StupidButterfly did a livestream on Tuesday where she made new artwork for Evergreen's "mystery single" card packs. You can watch the VOD here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iF4vJaXYrg
This culminated in three new amazing pieces, for Corrupt Bonnie, Robot Manora (the Halloween one, not the one from POPGOES Arcade...) and Blake the Badger:
You guys already know, via a stream with Dawko, that an "Arcade" set of trading cards is part of the full collection, with Morse the Mole as one of the characters. Corrupt Bonnie is another one! I have compiled these pieces from Ellie (and some other spoilery ones) into textures for the mystery single packs, and they are looking real good. I won't show them here though (yet)!
Here's something new - it's been a while since I've played Deep Rock Galactic (an FPS game that I accidentally got Emil and Ellie addicted to earlier this year...) but there's something in that game called "Deep Dives" which has intrigued me for a while.
As a quick rundown, DRG mostly consists of playing individual missions with specific goals. Deep Dives, however, are sets of three consecutive missions where your gear (health, ammo...) carries over across them. Meaning you need to be careful in the earlier missions, to not waste stuff, to make sure the next missions are manageable. And if you lose any mission, you have to start the Deep Dive from the first mission again.
I had a theory that, in concept, you could translate some parts of a Deep Dive into a challenge mode in Evergreen. So I mocked up a new version of the post-game challenges (poorly) to get my idea across and get some feedback from the other dev team members and my BMC server.
Endless mode is kinda self explanatory. Custom Night was never going to be a thing in Evergreen (I think Custom Night is kind of shit). Endless Night has been an idea for ages, as a really fun way to farm lots of coins by pushing you to the limit.
Endless mode has you battle a night that never ends, with longer survival times rewarding you with more coins. Even more coins are given if you toggle on challenges which change how the game plays slightly. Every challenge is compatible with every other challenge, meaning you could, if you want, turn them all on. This concept (choosing how difficult the night is) is somewhat similar to a Custom Night, but ALL characters will be active no matter what, with their AI increasing slightly each hour.
Don't bother trying to decipher the challenge icons. I mean, you can if you want, but like... look at them man.
And here's the brand new idea inspired by Deep Dives.
In this mockup, Survivor consists of three nights with increasing AI difficulty, and if you're playing it on "normal", you'll also have one challenge (from Endless mode) randomly picked for each of them. You can pay come coins to shuffle the challenge, but only once for each night (unless you beat the level, then everything is reset).
The "nightmare" Survivor is the same concept but with two challenges each, and the AI difficulty is bumped up further.
Most importantly, robot AI will reset at the beginning of each night, but perma-panic and Blackrabbit pieces will NOT! That's the magic of this concept. Poor decisions in nights 1 or 2 will punish you for the rest of the experience. It's a real test of endurance, and the randomised challenges keeps things interesting. Once you beat Night 1, you'll be forced to continue straight into Night 2 with the next challenge. You won't be able to go to the menu. Scary.
Like with Endless mode, beating Survivor challenges would grant you a ton of coins. And maybe surviving through night 1 or 2 will give you a few... but nowhere near as much as beating the full thing.
What do you think? Let me know if you have any questions. This is just an idea but its had a good reception so far!
Last thing I want to show is this:
Emil has worked on programming this setup for opening card packs. It's still a WIP, and we already know some things we want to update (the lighting on the card, the animation, adding some effects...) and the background is of course a placeholder. But otherwise... how cool is this? Actual card pack opening with a pseudo-3D shader in Clickteam. And we'll keep playing around with this.
One last thing to mention: Simon looks to be around 90% done and he looks craaazy. We're really happy with it. Great job Alexis!
Merch:
Firstly, I want to remind you guys that the Hex Fanverse plushies are available right now!
Popgoes the Weasel Hex Plushie
Please feel free to ask me any questions about the Popgoes Hex plushie and I'll answer in the comments. If Wave A of these plushies are especially successful, we'll begin working on Wave B, which will likely consist of Blake and Cindy!
Another thing I want to mention is that I am in the middle of kickstarting a new wave of Youtooz figures for the Fanverse! It took a damn long time for the first wave to come to fruition, so I'm talking to Austin from Youtooz about some of my ideas for the future. I've even had some concept art made!
So for those of you who want more Youtooz figures of other Fanverse characters, you may be in luck. Let me know who you'd want made first - I imagine only for the FNAC, POPGOES and TJOC series though. Exciting!
Other:
My girlfriend, concept artist on Evergreen, and recently-made official FNAF artist Sian / Turntail... is now a Game Jolt Creator!
She's trying to develop her Game Jolt profile by posting old and new artwork. Check it out! @turntail 
Alrighty, thanks for reading. Some good stuff, some bad stuff. Thank you as always for all of the support!
- Kane
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