Hello everyone.

It is 2:16 AM for me as for the moment of starting writing this article. I will give the time of finishing it at the end.

I want to talk to you about Bloodshed, my life and overall experience with game dev lately.

I've thought about making a post for few days if not longer. I actually am not consulting this with anybody and this might actually be a pretty much bad idea.

Anyway...

I am broken. I mean kinda. My brain is. But to be more specific... Well I don't actually know how to say it all...

Development of this game started long time ago, back in 2020. It was a great challenge, honestly a 2nd game I've ever "made" in my life. I was honestly lacking some pvp experience with this franchise that I loved or still love. I mean I guess I still do. Some people know I've honestly always been a competitive PvP online games player. I had a short valorant phase back in the day (sometimes it still happens). I loved Overwatch a lot (sad to see what this game has become these days)

So... Other than first thinking about making this a fighting game (I also played a bit if Mortal Kombat X at some point) I've made a decision to make an actual "hero shooter" (not really a shooter) but FNaF. The idea was not really appealing to most of the people that I've talked to, but I genuinely wanted to make a cool game even if people say it's a stupid idea.

Turns out, they were kind of wrong. Which is okay though.

Game along with me got the taste of recognition. IULITM made the first video, then guys like FusionZGamer, Rexter and a lot of other guys did and I am very very thankful for this. You all helped so much. Kept me going. The problem was still kinda... Me. I wasn't experienced. It was like my 2nd game ever. First ever multiplayer game. We've been learning together (to those who are here since the first flat map builds and Nowhere to Run and then FNAF AR music as the menu music)

We've been on this journey together.

Since the first days of this project I've always just wanted to make a cool FNAF PVP Experience. Making games became something I enjoyed. Some of you also know that I've been trying to also do some SFM animations.

This is before I actually gave game dev a PROPER try.

Seems like I found myself in this more than in anything else. Game development.

This game overtook all the time from my older game, The Factory of F.U.N.

The fact that TFOF was simply kinda cringe game didn't help in preserving it. Although it was pretty silly game I still like to sometimes go back with the memories to it, as this is what even made me here where I am now. A starting point.

I've dedicated myself to Bloodshed. I came back from school, and then I actually enjoyed going in unity for Bloodshed development. I've shown it to my teacher if I remember, got some nice words... yeah these are some cool pleasant memories.

I've met one of my best friends along the way. One of the first players of Bloodshed, GIOVy. Met some cool people, some bad ones... how I consider them now, but that's the risk of meeting people. And after all, there were some good times too. I am still thankful for all the good that this game brought to my life.

I genuinely felt a lot of motivation and just wanted to keep going with this game.

I finished my school... The Freddit Jam came.

Me and my friends decided to make an actual cool tycoon experience that actually focuses on the tycoon aspects, especially considering the theme was non horror.

Whole pizzeria building system that your friends or other people can visit, I've even planned some sabotages and animatronic customizations. We had some concepts.

Anyway, the jam turned out to be a complete disaster, generally terribly organized, without even knowing who are the organizers, and actually some aspects of the jam being complete lies. I wanted to make a whole video about it but I should've actually made it a long post instead because the video just took so long I gave up on it at some point... but I don't know if making another "drama" in this community would be a good idea. I just told myself I'm not gonna participate again if they organize it again.

2 months wasted, game didn't even turn out to be fully as we planned.

Then my uni came.

Stuff became rough. Very rough. Spending 12 hours at my uni sometimes, because somebody decided to make us wait 4h in total for our classes, but spread it out across the day so that we wouldn't even come back to our apartments and stuff and we'd just have to wait in between the classes. Coming back at like 8 PM, many tests, hard ones to be specific... basically a natural selection and battle royale of people that are the chosen ones to survive the first semester. My mental health was collapsing many times.

I survived.

In the meantime, after seeing so many stupid mistakes and bugs in Bloodshed... Considering the entire code was very very outdated and spaghettified, I've decided to remake the whole game. Fixing some of my older mistakes and generally improving the experience. And using our own models too, one reason being called some stuff like... Idk, low effort game with stock animations (which was not truth btw), or that it got popular only because it had multiplayer and that a specific YouTuber takes any game with multiplayer in it... Getting these things said about you by the person that you used a model they ported, which they also commented like... They said something they don't really mind but it's weird we used it, and that they're not meant for games. Which is of course nothing wrong to say, but this all made me just want to have our original models too. This combined with my own sake and the future skins that we'd want to make. Way easier I guess. All this and overall upgrade.

I'm losing some tracks and actually this whole article is very chaotic. I know. I also probably forgot about a lot of stuff, mixed some facts or just chronological order of things. It's been a while and I have memory of a golden fish unfortunately.

In the meantime after... I even passed my second semester, I've also been doing some SFM commissions, just to have some money because I am still unemployed and have literally no source of income. The SFM part is slightly important for the later stuff. As a context. In my lifetime I've did a lot of these.

But this was honestly just when I was temporarily free from uni. I've worked on Bloodshed too, of course I did. Sometimes I had the guy in my DMs tho asking how's the commission going and then I had to work on it even though I'd rather work on bloodshed at that time. Which sometimes I did.

I've currently finished 4th semester btw. In a week, 5th one starts.

I've been promising bloodshed remake/update for a long time at that time already. Each passing day was making me feel worse and worse about still not giving you guys anything.

I was supposed to release this by the end of 2023 btw. We achieved 5k follows and I decided to reveal what's coming.

There was some progress tho, stuff felt very close many many times, and then I kept making promises feeling some nonexistent stares and frustration (some frustration did exist tho I guess but my brain over exaggerated all this I think)

All this also to have plans ruined by stupid bugs again... I guess some stuff never changes about me and this game.

All this for a silly HOBBY project that I started in high school for fun.

I was and I think I still am way too stressed about the game and opinions about it.

Stuff feels like it became less fun and more of meeting expectations. Expectations, also of my own that I can't even meet myself with my experience and knowledge I guess.

Progress generally was speeding up, slowing down, again speeding up the moment some summer breaks and weekends came, and somehow we've managed to make it to the private beta. At first a supporter beta but after meeting low interest I've decided to open it up a bit more to interested people that are no longer required to be supporters. A build that was never considered to be a proper release btw. Just for tests and finding initial problems. And oh boi we did find these.

Once again, bad words felt like a disaster the first day. Like my entire world was falling apart. Almost 2 years of development (4 if we count the original bloodshed) felt like my greatest failure of my entire life and I felt like people literally hated me, like they want to tear me apart for what I did. Some of you might remember my posts. The extreme guilt I felt was unbearable. Now after a while has passed, I see that stuff wasn't as bad as it felt at first, I just had to objectively take a look at stuff and listen to more people. I do regret removing the posts though.

Game of course has its problems. I know about them.

And here, in the perfect world I'd say... And I'm actively working on fixing them.

Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world, and I'm also not perfect. I'm far away from that, even.

The progress has been slow since the beta dropped.

First after the beta felt really bad, I did not work on the game for most of the May.

Then I guess I did a bit? But then had to focus on my uni as the end of semester was coming. The judgement day(s) of 4th semester.

I did work a bit though, sometimes even though I should be focusing on my uni stuff... But I just wanted to finally do some progress.

I've started making things for the game that were actually completely new to me. It's still not fully done to this day. Server authoritative movement, now remaking the ability system, then the melee system to make them work better with the latency (literally did stupid mistakes again and didn't know because lower ping didn't feel as bad)

I've passed the semester. I've said to myself: FINALLY!

I was so sure this will be very productive summer. SFM Commissions, Bloodshed, maybe open beta finally.

But...

Almost every time I went in unity it felt like I'm there in a form of punishment. Maybe not actually this bad, but I definitely didn't have great time.

Maybe I did sometimes.

But most of the time I just felt exhausted just by thinking about this game.

But then if I did actually still enjoy it sometimes then it makes it even more stupid, the whole situation.

I can't really do anything productive. I've wasted 3 months on sitting on my chair, doing nothing productive on my PC.

You first feel bad about not doing productive stuff and then you don't do the productive stuff one reason being you feel bad about the very thing you're doing this very moment.

Only thing I could do is go play some games and try to kill time. And my desk and keyboard along the way because yeah

I've started to rage more in games again. My motivation dropped a lot. I've also felt worse about myself and then the next day I forgot I did and then one day I did again. Every time I think about this game I actually am getting stressed for "no reason" like my brain actually seems to have problems with this game.

And actually SFM commissions... Yeah I started one. Did barely 40 seconds (out of 3 mins) and then I didn't do more for 2 months.

Why is that? What did actually happen to me? Is it laziness? Am I just lazy? Good question. Don't need to answer tho.

Now, every time I hear a question when is the next update I feel kinda like a monster.

Seeing people excited about the game makes me think "if they only knew..."

Hearing my friends say stuff like their ideas, concepts, and making stuff also hurts because you just know that in the end it's you and you probably won't do most of this stuff and don't even want to touch the game for the moment. Seeing people excited while you're in something completely opposite feels very weird. Frustrating even.

People talk about your own creation and you don't want to hear about it because it makes you feel bad.

My friend says, maybe even as a joke but maybe not really, that I hate this game. Some part of me I'm afraid does. Which is maybe why my friend is actually serious.

A part of me loves it though. I'd just want to skip to the part where I'm doing the cool stuff with it like the new characters and maps and game modes... Not fixing the same problem for 2 months. Or to be actually more accurate... Few weeks actually for just one problem in a thing I'm making for 2 months.

Sometimes, now, I just go in unity, visual studio, stare at the code and literally can't come up with a starting point like... How do I start, what do I do, how do I start that how do I make the base.

The ideas, the overall ideas are not here and if you don't know what you want to code then you're definitely not going to code it. Because what are you gonna code?

And when I do actually think of something, it turns out to be way too overcomplicated and then I notice that in the middle of coding. Happened at least once like last week. You just realize stuff doesn't even make sense in the middle of making it.

I want to clarify that I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad about it. And me in general.

I just want to be more open about what's been going on around me and this game for the past few months. And years actually.

You guys deserve to know.

If anyone's even reading this... because holy yappers this is so long already and so chaotic.

I live in the shadows of my former self, even though technically I'm better with this stuff.

And I can't really help it. I'm stuck in a loop of wasting time but not wanting to change it.

Anyway, thanks for reading if you actually did. Maybe now if I actually told you how stuff is I will feel a bit better about this game and its development hell.

Or worse, that's also an option.

Remember don't even try to cheer me up just for the sake of cheering me up. I never actually had a goal of getting people to be my therapists or something.

I'm actually just neutral right now as I'm typing it.

For sure, I shouldn't ever try to be professional in here. I am not. I've never been, I am LyviN and we're all just some guys, FNAF fans, all in touch here, on GameJolt. You guys can talk to me here and I'll respond. Like just a guy, because that's who I am and always have been. A person like you. So you can talk to me about anything unless that's gonna be some questionable stuff or things I don't want to talk about or reveal about the game lol... I mean just casual comment talks or something, I don't usually talk to strangers about stuff. Always preferred straight to the point conversations.

Not small talks like how are you and stuff because then I'd have to say good and that would be a lie

Just kidding

(Even though I don't want to be professional, because I'm simply not, I've still tried to stay decently professional with some individuals that are here just to help with the game meaning voice actors we've had for Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy, or the music composer that left long time ago, I hope this at least I could handle)

Uhh so yeah... About the future of this game... It's of course still existing. Unfortunately I've mostly wasted my time that would be perfect for this game's development process and I don't really know how much I'm gonna be able to work on it when my uni comes back in a week. We'll be kinda back to how it was, with the lack of time but honestly with my current state it wasn't much of a difference.

Uni = no time, sometimes motivation, not a lot of progress

Normal summer = a lot of time, some more motivation, a lot of progress

This summer = a lot of time, no motivation, even less progress

I don't want to look for excuses here, and for anyone feeling bad for me or anything like that.

A part of my small "change of ways" and not being "professional" is to be more open and telling you guys stuff as it is.

Finished typing. It's 3:27 AM

LyviN out.

There's still probably a lot I missed and will maybe mention in edit of this or in the comments.

I've been reading all this again and changing some stuff. Still chaotic.

But as for now, it's 4 AM.

And actually, I did it again. And now it's 4:18. 2 hours for yapping. There goes my sleep schedule

I mean it already is destroyed. Ah yeah, that's also a thing this summer. Forgot to mention. Going to sleep every day 4 or 5 AM waking up like 1 PM.

It's kinda messed up.

Anyway this time for real

LyviN out.

TLDR

For the past 3 months I've wasted way too much time, I can't make myself work on anything productive, not only Bloodshed. I feel worse these days about everything around and I honestly thought that now while uni was gone for 3 months things would be different than what it's been. Not looking for excuses or people cheering me up in the comments. I wanted to let you just know guys. This game is not canceled or anything, I'm just slow now. Very slow. I'm not having as much fun as I used to while developing this game and I feel bad about it but still can't really change it. I wish things were different.