Hello all.

Last month was the one year anniversary of the last update to Ultra Custom Night. Crazy how fast that went by. This isn't an update announcement or anything like that, just wanted to talk a bit about the game since i’ve been thinking about it a lot recently (and some people still seem to be interested in it?)

Looking back i have no idea how i made the first version so fast. I think it took around a week to recreate all the original UCN characters. This was before people figured out how to decompile FNaF games past World (or at least before it was made public?) so i was mostly eyeballing it and playing the original to get the values close enough.

I think part of the ease would be because at that point i had already worked out a system for making UCN fangames.. albeit i don't think the system was very good. My first UCN fangame (and my first game i’d consider of any value) was Rejected Custom Night, which i started almost immediately after the original UCN came out. The actual game is pretty terrible, it was one of my last GameMaker games (until i returned to it about two years ago) and even then i was really bad at using it. I avoided learning anything too complicated and just stuck to the bare minimum parts of the visual coding. I didn't know how to make it so values increase or decrease depending on AI level so i hardcoded everything for each level. I didn't know how to make the game save and load so there was no score system (i remember MatPat naively thinking it was just hidden and there'd still be cutscenes for getting score milestones.. sorry.) Worst of all: i didn't even play the final game before releasing it. The laptop i was using at the time wasn't the greatest, and it took ages to build and open games on it. Near the end of development i just programmed the features and hoped they'd work. I didn't even bother making a new build so the public final release to this day has a “YouTuber Demo” watermark in the corner.. awesome.

I started developing UltraCN pretty much right after finishing my prior UCN fangame.. i don’t like that one. It was really poorly optimized, mechanics didn’t work well together, it was one of the first projects i made renders for myself in Blender so i was still learning how that even works. I think people were mad when i started posting the “CN” teasers with the empty roster again so soon after.

I'm sure everyone knows at this point, but the original premise for the game was to add features from the (at the time) very recent UCN mobile port to PC. I still have the original document i used for documenting the differences back on 2 May 2020:

Besides also making DeeDee’s roster customizable, I thought it’d be fun to include a couple “bonus” characters after recreating base UCN.. i knew i wouldn’t be able to add too much since my last project was running out of video memory with just a bit over 50 enemies. In retrospect, i think animated jumpscares were what was killing that game.. high resolution 10 or however long frame animations being always loaded alongside everything else messed the game up a lot. When 100 characters were done i decided to end it there (Totem Panic was the last one) and make the trailer. The trailer sucked though it was just me playing 100/20 mode and being horrible at it. The later trailers (all edited by CircusRama) were so much better. It wasn’t until i was making the trailer i decided to finalize the name for the game (which before that point was “Ultimate Custom Night - Definitive Edition”.. the folder i kept all the assets and projects in is still called that though.)

Night frame code from the first back-up i have of the game from May 7, this system would haunt me for years.

After the game came out i kept adding and adding.. The characters kept getting more outlandish and jokey. It’s weird to look back on the early updates and see just how fast i was working on them near the beginning.. not a good thing, though, they usually turned out buggy and undercooked. Several times i had to make two or three additional patches right after an update came out just to make things work right.

There were lots of systems i made early on that made it difficult to implement new features.. Just adding a new character (without adding any night functionality) was a pain, you had to:

• duplicate a previous icon object, replace the image

• duplicate a previous ai number object

• make a new clone of the border object

• move all of these into the right place in the roster (move all other icons, ai numbers and borders if it’s in the middle of a section/creates a new row...)

• in the event editor, update the two events for saving the ai values to global values and for setting the score

• new event for changing the character description when hovering over the icon

• in the night frame, also update the event that counts up the score

If i was doing this these days i’d probably make it a big list the game dynamically reads from and creates the roster on the fly. People have asked for a search bar so much.. something like that would make it so easy to add one..

I won’t go into as much detail here, but similarly needlessly complicated systems existed for character skins, cameras, vent and duct systems, and probably a bunch of others i’m forgetting. I remember having to re-do the duct system later in the game’s development because it was broken and hard to add new characters for (though i think it only made it worse.. sorry.)

My favorite time of UltraCN development was probably the development of Campaign Mode. It was a nice change of pace compared to adding characters (though in the middle of it i was also adding a few characters so themed levels can work better.) I think it’s obvious that i like Undertale/Deltarune when you’re playing it. 

Top of the Campaign Mode Script document CircusRama (mainly) and i (somewhat) worked on.

Despite starting making music in 2018, i feel like it wasn’t until Campaign Mode that i started getting Good at it. I’m still generally proud of that soundtrack. Every now and then i get comments on the YouTube uploads that i think relate to other games that use the music and i’m left confused.

It wasn't until i took this screenshot that i realized how inconsistently named the playlist tracks are.

There were a bunch of plans for Campaign Mode expansions that didn't go anywhere. The music that was made for them was eventually released (i like this one in particular):

Besides an extra campaign (somewhat focused on Minigame RXQ), one idea was heavily inspired by A Hat in Time's Death Wish mode, with harder, remixed versions of the Campaign levels/minigames (Crazed Shadow Puppet from Quidd would be the Snatcher equivalent like how Jetpack BB is Spamton.)

Around that time we were also planning to add The FazPhone as a new night mechanic (like the monitor) - it'd have modes and minigames ("apps") that some characters would use, or would be used to earn money/power/that kinda stuff. A bunch of ideas were made but not much else.. looking back it was definitely a bit too ambitious.

Other really fun periods of development were the Advent Calendars in 2021 and 2023, as well as the big June-July-August 2024 event. For the Advent Calendars the majority of the characters were planned out and done before December. For the last one, a lot of the later ones were added during the event..

All the gifs for the 2023 event were made by me in Blender. The Crash mechanic box is really tiny since the camera zooms in so much at that point.

The running jokes throughout them (“It begun with an idea”, “Survive the night to win!”) were funny i think. I never actually finished Mario Super Picross, the later Wario levels are really difficult. (maybe someday i’ll get back to it)

Back in 2022 i had an idea for an in-game Advent Calendar, where you would have to complete night challenges each day of December to unlock upcoming character reveals. The functionality was all implemented, but not many challenges were made, and a bunch of the character reveals didn’t have finalized mechanics.

Monty picture by etti. i’ve been using this picture as much as i can

3D renders by rawkit, pixelart by SpringPopo, awesome mechanic by CircusRama (i think??)

A majority of the out-there Challenger characters were thought of in a shared Google Doc we worked on for a bit.

these are very funny still

A lot of UltraCN was just experimenting with stuff for fun. I think that’s most obvious with the trophy room/minigames. They didn’t really add anything to the game, they were very basic, but i had fun implementing weird stuff like that (let me know if you’ve ever gotten the Auto Chipper trophy.) There were a lot of these features that i made because it seemed “cool” but didn’t add much in the end. The shop was updated a bunch when it was first released but then i left it alone forever. Same with the online Crowd Control (which i don’t think even works anymore?) The custom character creator was pretty similar to that, i wish i made it better from the get-go so i wouldn’t have people still asking if you can have multiple characters loaded at once... that system really sucks...

The Forbidden Balls never actually had a chance to delete your save data.

Since finishing UltraCN, i’ve mainly been working on an original puzzle game (play the demo which is getting more and more outdated here: https://gamejolt.com/games/hopping-out/1006317). It’s getting close to completion and i’m really happy with how it’s turning out. I’d really like to get it done next year, and i hope you guys will check it out then. I have another idea for an original game which i’ve been thinking about since 2021.. i hope i get to do that eventually.

In case you want more FNaF, though, i’ve released some miscellaneous music from Forsaken AR on my YouTube channel recently (https://www.youtube.com/@KamilFirma), and my music for myPOPGOES will be audible on mobile devices hopefully this month (https://twitter.com/POPGOESdev/status/1984394955691888642). I also made a FNaF Heardle game (where you guess the day’s song based on increasingly longer snippets) almost a year ago, which i wouldn’t be surprised wasn’t played by anyone outside of my friend circle (https://kamil-firma.github.io/fnaf-heardle/index). Also consider Digital Nightmare: Recharged (https://gamejolt.com/games/fnafdnr/1015852), which i didn’t make and only really contributed music but it has a similar vibe to UltraCN.

One thing UltraCN helped me realize - and i hope others had a similar experience - is just how cool lists are. Big lists are awesome. Lists are what keeps me going in life. Lists are where it's at.

A game like this is something i genuinely would like a second chance at making someday.