Hey everyone!
I'm here with a quick status update about what's been going on with Baldi's Basics Plus' development lately. There's not much to talk about this time around, so let's dive straight into development updates!
Development Update!
...There are no development updates.
Okay okay, I'm kidding, but the reality is I've been pretty busy with more business-y stuff since the last status update. For a full rambly rundown, you can check out the latest episode of the Basically Games Podcast, but essentially, in December Nayan and I were working on preparing our pitch for publishers while I also got version 0.13.1 ready. I took some (In hindsight, much needed) time off around the holidays, and then I spent most of January doing graphic design work for our pitch deck. It always frustrates me when responsibilities prevent me from doing game development work for any extended period of time, but ultimately there were responsibilities I had to tackle myself.
The great news is that the pitch deck is finished! Nayan will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting from here, while I have resumed normally scheduled game development again! This past week I did some pretty notable work for the horizontal slice. It's getting closer to completion! Here's this status update's mysterious horizontal slice screenshot:
Now, let's talk about 0.14.
Version 0.14 Status Update
I unfortunately have yet to complete any meaningful work on version 0.14. That, combined with the work I still have planned for the horizontal slice (There's about one month's work of development to do to get everything to the "placeholder sufficient" stage, which is the current goal), puts plans for 0.14 in kind of a weird state. Do I pause the horizontal slice this February to focus on 0.14? Do I delay 0.14? Well, I haven't made a final decision yet, but here's what I'm thinking I'd like to do.
Instead of trying to make 0.14 one massive, bug fixes, balancing and polish update, I think I'll opt to make 0.14 a series of smaller updates instead. This will allow me to work on it and release updates alongside my horizontal slice work. So expect a small 0.14 release in late February, followed by sub-versions for some time afterwards with more fixes, QOL features and balancing.
To give you an idea of what to expect throughout the course of 0.14.X, here's a random selection of some of the tasks I have marked for this version:
Adding a display in the Pitstop that will show what the next level type will be
Reducing the max distance that power levers can generate from their respective classrooms and adding a circuit reset button that will lower all raised power levers in a level
Fixing NPC navigation in rooms that aren't one large open area
Adding signs to the exterior of classroom doors that will display the activity type and when a bonus question is available
Making it possible to click through open doors; They will still be able to be held open by clicking on the hinge
Changing it so that Match Machines only require three matches to be made to be completed, since at that point the last match cannot be failed anyways
Reworking elevator programming to not be terrible so it is easier to work with in the future
Improving the behavior of the conveyor belt room
Not much of this is particularly exciting I know... But that's the point! It's about time I focused on tackling the large list of issues that I've allowed to build up over time while I was so focused on adding content and features. As mentioned above, 0.14 will be broken up into several sub-versions, so don't worry if any of the above fixes don't make it into the first update. It will probably come later.
Conclusion
That's all I have to share for this update. It's a short one, I know, but I still hope you all will enjoy 0.14 when it, and its sub-versions, release. These updates will surely improve the game! As always, thank you very much for the support!