Hello everyone!
I hope you all have been enjoying the improvements I brought to endless mode in version 0.11. Today I'd like to bring you all a status update with a sneak peak at version 0.12, but first I've got some very big news to share!
Baldi's Basics Plus now has a producer!
As I've mentioned in previous status updates, I'd begun searching for a producer/project manager. Primarily to help me get a publisher for Baldi's Basics Plus, but also to help keep things on track and wrap up the project within a reasonable amount of time. Well I'm happy to announce that Nayan Ramachandran has been brought onto the project to fill that role!
Nayan has had several years of experience within the video game industry, specifically working with independent game developers. With his experience I believe he will be a huge help in getting Baldi's Basics Plus a good publisher and, ultimately, finished!
We've been working together about a month now and are starting to really get into the swing of things. So far this has been great as we've begun working on our pitch and getting more organized with Baldi's Basics Plus' development cycle! In the future I will likely bring a few more team members onto the project, at which point Nayan's management skills will become invaluable. All that is to say, I'm incredibly thankful to have his help moving forward!
What's in store for version 0.12?
A lot of my dev time since 0.11's release has been for 1.0 stuff, but I have also created some new content for version 0.12! Here's a couple sneak peaks:
These screenshots are of some of the new surprises you can expect in version 0.12. Any guesses as to what they are?
In more technical news, I have made some big improvements to the way collisions between entities are handled. You know how in the current version of Baldi's Basics Plus, characters who are chasing you, such as Playtime and Principal of the Thing, will hover on top of you while they're squished until they finally regain their normal height? Well I've now set up a system where entities can detect invalid collisions as well as valid collisions and react accordingly. On top of that I've extended this system to other scenarios that affect the ability of entities to interact, such as Gravity Chaos. This ensure consistency between entity interactions so they'll always behave how you expect.
So now if a squished Playtime reaches you she'll become sad and wander away instead. If Principal of the Thing is chasing you, but you're upside down and he's not, he'll try and fail to send you to detention, which results in him teleporting there but not you. And good ol' Dr. Reflex can no longer squish entities if he's in a scenario that should prevent interactions!
This change not only fixes several longstanding issues, but also makes it easy to ensure future collision affecting mechanics I may introduce in the future will be consistent with the existing ones.
Let's Talk About Challenge Maps
Something I've been thinking about for a while now is the future of challenge maps. As I've focused more and more on the core of Baldi's Basics Plus I've started wondering if challenge maps might be outside the scope of the project, at least in their current form. Before making any drastic decisions though I wanted to get feedback from all of you!
Legacy challenge maps
As I'm sure you all know, the game currently has three challenge maps which I've labeled as "legacy" content since they've become pretty outdated relative to the rest of the game. I've tried to make sure they remain playable as I update the game, but they do have a handful of issues due to changes breaking certain behaviors in the challenge maps. With that said, I'm wondering how you all would feel if they ended up getting removed at some point during the early access.
Now this isn't something I plan on doing, but if at some point I make a change that breaks the legacy challenge maps, I would prefer to be able to just cut them instead of spend time trying to fix them. Since I don't plan on making any new challenge maps until version 1.0 releases I wouldn't be able to replace them quickly like when I temporarily removed the old field trips to make way for the current one.
I don't like removing content that I've already released, because I know there may be players out there who still enjoys it, but that's why I'm asking now. How many of you still enjoy the legacy challenge maps and would be disappointed to see them disappear in future early access versions? Your current feelings will help me make the decision should I ever need to make it. I'll also add that if I were to remove the challenge maps, I'd let you all know beforehand to give anyone who cares the chance to back up the current version. Of course, the current challenge maps will end up getting scrapped in 1.0 anyways, so no matter what they won't last forever!
The future of challenge maps
Speaking of 1.0 though, that brings me to the other point I'd like to discuss, and that's whether or not challenge maps will make the cut into the final game at all. As I've continued developing Baldi's Basics Plus I've become less excited about the idea of challenge maps, and have also started questioning how well they fit into the overall design of the game. In terms of development, designing several levels by hand is very different from everything else I've been doing. In fact, not even the legacy challenge levels were designed by hand, they were procedurally generated levels that I converted into premade map data!
What I'm getting at is, designing levels, like really good levels, would require a skill that I've never practiced before. Whenever it would be time to start designing challenge maps, I can't help but feel like that would put a weird damper on development as we'd probably be nearly finished with everything else. I'd very likely need to bring an experienced level designer onto the team, which of course would require a higher budget than without. If I did the level designs myself, that would take me away from working on other, more important things, and probably result in levels that are just okay. In either case it would probably extend development time.
Of course, I don't want to scrap a feature that I've been saying would be added to the game in the future. Even with my disclaimer of "everything is subject to change" it's not something I take lightly when it's an entire game mode at stake. At the same time, I'm trying to consider what's overall best for the game. So currently, I see three options:
A) I keep challenge maps as originally planned.
B) I scrap challenge maps entirely.
C) I compromise and make challenge maps procedurally generated levels, focusing entirely on interesting gameplay scenarios instead of unique level designs.
Currently, I feel like option C is the one I'd like to take, but what do you all think? Making the challenge levels mostly procedural would be relatively simple, as I'd mainly only need to worry about programming the conditions that make them unique. On the other hand, the unique potential of hand-made levels would be lost. Originally, one of my main goals for challenge maps was for them to function as subtle tutorials, where they'd be designed in such a way that they'd help players learn game mechanics without outright explaining them to them (Similar to, for example, how the beginning of Super Mario Bros. level 1-1 almost forces players to learn that goombas are bad and mushrooms are good). While I would like to maintain that aspect of the challenge maps, I do wonder if it's really necessary or if experience in Hide & Seek is enough for players to learn how everything works. Maybe there's another way entirely I could allow players to more easily experiment with individual game elements. There's a lot to think about!
I will not be making a final decision on this matter for a while, and will continue considering other approaches I could take that could work better than the original idea, but I'd love to hear feedback from you all to help me navigate this issue and make the best decision possible!
Conclusion
I hope you all will look forward to version 0.12! I plan on releasing the pre-release on August 25, followed by the public release on September 1. As with version 0.11, this will be relatively small update, but I think there will be a lot of fun to be had with the new content!
I think that covers pretty much everything for this status update. Thank you all for the support, and I look forward to reading everyone's comments about the challenge map stuff!