Hey everyone! Just wanted to let you all know that version 0.10.1 is now available. This patch fixes a handful of bugs. Most importantly, it fixes the nasty bug that frequently broke the game in the factory levels. So sorry about that one! Here is the full changelog:

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an error that would break audio, among other things, on the factory level under certain conditions.
• Fixed the teleporter control panel not having collision.
• Fixed Math Machines not rewarding any more YTPs after incorrectly answering it earlier in a round.
• Fixed the outer labels in Johnny's Store being mixed up.

[ 2025-04-22 21:10:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! I'm happy to announce that Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.10 is available now! This is a huge update that features a ton of new content. I'll get into all of that below, but before I get into spoiler territory I first want to show off the new Baldi Two-Sided Doughboi from Makeship!
This squishy pillow plushie has a happy Baldi face on one side and an angry one of the other so you can pick a face that suits any mood! This was a pretty goofy idea I had but Makeship did an awesome job working with me to make this happen. It needs to sell a minimum of 200 units by May 3 to be produced and it hasn't quite reached that goal yet, so if you want one be sure to make a purchase and help spread the word! If the goal is not met, no one will be charged so there's no risk in ordering early. You can check it out here!

Version 0.10

Now it's time to discuss the new update. Turn back now if you want to discover what's new for yourself! The biggest new addition to the game in his update is two new levels, bringing the total of levels in Hide & Seek to five! I didn't just increase the level count though, I've also introduced new level types to the game! Previously the only level type was the school, but levels four and five can be one of three brand new level types: Maintenance, laboratory or factory. Each level type comes with its own unique set of structures that you'll have to master if you want to beat them! The maintenance levels have a focus on stealth as you can control the lights in classrooms and hide near leaky steam pipes. You'll need to make sure the lights are on in any room you want to solve an activity, but be careful! Turning on too many lights at once will blow a fuse and send the entire level into total darkness! The laboratory levels have a focus on teleportation, as they are broken up into four sections that you can travel between using a teleporting machine! You can also hop in the wormhole for a more chaotic way to get around, or use an item to sneak through one of the new faculty only doors. The factory levels are focused on changing pathways and are full of lockdown doors, roto-halls and conveyor belts. Flip levers and press buttons to open and close doors, spin roto-halls and change the direction of conveyor belts! Aside from the new mechanics, these levels also feature a higher overall difficulty than the previous ones as you'll encounter more characters and Baldi will be even faster than before. You'll need to strategize better than ever before to beat Hide & Seek now! Aside from the new levels, there are some other big new things you'll find in levels as well. Locked rooms contain valuable items, such as the bus pass, and can only be entered if you can find the matching key (Or if you can find some other clever method of getting in). You'll also find students hanging out around classrooms. Return lost items to them in exchange for YTPs! This update also includes several QOL improvements and bug fixes. I'll stop rambling now though, and give you the entire changelog below. This is a big one!

Changelog

Additions

• Added levels four and five to Hide & Seek.
  • Level four contains seven notebooks and will either be maintenance, factory or laboratory. Baldi's speed curve becomes more aggressive in this level than in previous levels.
  • Level five contains nine notebooks and will either be maintenance, factory or laboratory.
• Added three new level types: Maintenance, Factory and Laboratory. Each level type has its own unique combination of structures. Level types will never repeat in a run (Excluding the school level type).
• Maintenance
  • Added power levers. These can be used to control power and lights in connected classrooms. Classrooms must be powered on to solve their activities.
    • Each power lever has a cable connecting it to its class room. You can follow this cable to figure out which lever controls which room. When a power lever is on, the cable will emit an electric humming sound. When flipping a lever, the room it controls will be discovered on the map if it hasn't been found yet and the room's state will be shown on the map as well.
    • Each power lever has a gauge next to it which shows how much power is being used. Turning on too many levers at once will blow a fuse and turn off all the lights in the level.
    • When this happens, the player must find the breaker and reset it to restore power to the level. The breaker emits a green light and alarm sound which can be used to easily find it.
    • Elevators cannot be entered or closed while the power is out.
  • Added steam valves. Leaky steam pipes fill surrounding areas with clouds of steam which can be hidden in, but reduce visibility. They can be toggled on and off with nearby valves.
  • Added the lightbulb testing room. This special room randomly toggles the lights off and on every ten seconds, creating potential hiding spots in unlit areas.
  • Added new wall and floor textures and light sprite for maintenance.
• Factory
  • Added the conveyor belt room and new associated conveyor belt structure. This room splits the level into two halves and, when entered, randomly sends the player through a maze of conveyor belts which will send the player elsewhere in the level. This includes two belts at opposite sides of the level which move in opposite directions and can be changed with a button press. These are the primary means by which the player can get from one side of the level to the other.
  • Added new floor texture, swing door variant, light object and special suspended ceiling object for the factory.
• Laboratory
  • Added teleporter rooms, the wormhole and faculty only doors. These structures generate in conjunction with each other to split the level into four distinct sections separated by the faculty only doors.
    • A teleporter generates in each section and can be used to get to any other section. Teleporters must cool down for 30 seconds after being used however, so be careful! When pressing a button and opening the teleporter, any entity that enters the teleporter will be sent to the destination, so it is possible for characters to be teleported.
    • In the center of the level there is a wormhole room. At the start of a round, this room is closed off, but when all notebooks in a section have been collected, that section gains access to the wormhole room by opening the lockdown doors. The wormhole room is a large room with a wormhole at the center that pulls any entity inside towards it. Any entity that enters the wormhole will be sent somewhere random in the level. When an entity is sent through the wormhole, an indicator appears at that entity's destination a few seconds before it arrives. If you see one appear near you, watch out!
    • Faculty only doors are a special type of door that allows all NPCs to pass through, but not the player. The doors only close when the player is detected however, so it is possible to pass through by using certain items or scenarios to your advantage.
  • Added new floor, wall and ceiling textures for the laboratory level.
• Added locked rooms. These are special faculty only rooms that generate with a large lock over the door with a shape on it. In order to remove the lock, players must either find and use the matching key item on it, or access the room by some other means. Locked rooms typically spawn with very valuable items inside. On level two, the locked room will always contain the bus pass.
• Added students. These NPCs spawn around classrooms and only wander around nearby areas. Each student that spawns will also cause an associated lost item to generate somewhere else in the level. Standing near a student will cause them to show you what item they are missing. Return the lost item to them in exchange for YTPs. The amount of YTPs you earn for this increases for each student you return an item to in a round.
• Added status effect gauges to the HUD. These indicators are used to communicate which effects are active and how long they will last. Some items have been updated to use this instead of their own, unique indicators, such as the Techno Boots and the Faculty Nametag.
• Added push pins to the advanced map. These are a special type of marker that are placed in pairs and can be used to marked connections between points on the map. These are useful for marking where vents lead or what buttons control for example.

Changes

• When a controller is disconnected, the game will now be paused.
• Baldi will now pull players out of the lockers if he hears them hide inside one. This is accompanied by a new voiceline. Baldi won't tag you while he's speaking so you can use this as a chance to escape!
• Changed Big Ol' Boots to Techno Boots to more clearly communicate their behavior. Boots now prevent being pushed by forces in addition to movement modifier values. When being moved by an outside force while wearing Techno Boots, the player will move very slightly in the pushed direction to make the effect of the boots more obvious.
• Reduced the volume of Beans' voicelines.
• Gravity flippers now freeze time while the player is getting flipped. This helps prevent confusing control scenarios.
• Gravity flipper shader is now transparent.
• When reduce flashing is on, the gravity flipper animation is skipped.
• Item loadouts are no longer seed dependent. Both the items that spawn and where they spawn will change every time a level is loaded. This increases the difficulty of repeat attempts at a level.
• All entities now become invisible in total darkness to match the player's ability to become hidden to NPCs in total darkness. In this state, the entity can only be seen once it is close to the camera.
• Chalk eraser clouds now make all entities invisible, not just the player.
• Improved the appearance of chalk eraser clouds.
• Changed rooms to use more consistent texture types. Faculty only rooms now all have the wood panel walls for example.
• Reworked The Test. The Test is now more of a useful tool than a threat, but players must still be careful.
  • Looking at The Test will cause time around the player to dramatically slow instead of stop entirely.
  • Looking away from The Test will cause it to teleport to a random hallway cell in the level instead of chasing the player.
  • Looking at The Test for too long will cause it to start shaking. Once it begins shaking violently it is very unstable. Look at it for much longer and it will explode!
  • Once The Test explodes, time around the player will speed up significantly for a little while. This means the player will still move at normal speeds, but NPCs, other entities and level objects will be sped up.
  • The Test will not respawn until another round is started.
  • Updated The Test's poster description to match its new behavior.
• Lockdown doors are now controlled by levers which provide an instantaneous response based on the lever's position. Up means the door will be open, and down means the door will be shut.
• Propagated audio managers now have a minimum distance.
• Missing a jump in jump rope will now make a sound Baldi hears.
• Mrs. Pomp no longer freezes the player and stops the environment when informing them about her class.
• Audio from propagated audio managers is now pitch shifted based on that object's corresponding time scale.

Pre-release Changes

• Adjusted level 5 map price and total items in shop.
• Made some relevant items more likely to spawn in factory and laboratory levels.
• Made it so late game locked rooms will usually contain high end items.
• Reduced the max item values in late game levels a little bit.
• Chalk clouds are now culled.
• Power levers are now limited in how far they can generate from the room they are powering.
• Changing the state of a power lever now reveals the connected room on the map and updates the appearance of the room on the map to reflect whether or not it's currently powered.
• Changed placeholder power lever cables with colored cables that can be followed more easily.
• Created a proper model for the power gauges.
• Restored characters rewarding YTPs.
• Mrs. Pomps YTP reward now varies based on how long it takes to reach her class.
• Losing Reflex's test no longer makes noise.
• Reduced the speed at which the faculty only doors close to enable more ways to pass it (Such as using a 'Nana peel).
• Each section of the Laboratory now contains posters that label each one with a number.
• Teleporter rooms now show their corresponding numbers on the map.
• Increased initial Student YTP value.
• Now when a level generation error occurs, the player's game is saved with the seed changed and they are given the option to return to the main menu. The game can then be loaded and continued.
• Buffed the test a little bit by increasing the amount of slow down and the time it can be looked at before exploding.
• The Test now has a crumbled sprite for when it explodes.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed characters who cannot open locked doors being able to navigate and pass through them.
• Fixed the dither screen transition being tied to the framerate, which caused extremely slow transitions on lower-end hardware.
• Fixed a rare level generator error where it would attempt to build a special hall formation outside the bounds of the level.
• Fixed Hide & Seek options not saving immediately upon being changed. This resulted in settings reverting to a previous setup in some scenarios.
• Added a buffer around the math machine in Room_Class_MathMachine_2 to try preventing balloons from getting stuck between it and the wall.
• Fixed NPCs not targeting entity safe cells when traveling through open areas with no valid exits aside from the one they used to enter.
• Extended the second conveyor belt in the tutorial such that it extends through the entire hallway.
• Fixed Rewired input mapper calibration window. It previously was not modified to work with the OS themed sprites and text was unreadable.
• Fixed issues with particle effects not being affected by things like lighting and fog.
• Mrs. Pomp will now assign a class to go to even if she cannot navigate to any at the moment she attempts to do so. After this she will wander randomly until she is able to find a path to the selected room. This prevents her from breaking in this scenario.
• Playtime can now only start jump rope if she can see the player.
• Fixed rooms not being found in their entirety when entered instead of only finding open areas.
• Fixed conveyor belts not being affected by the environment time scale.

Pre-release Fixes

• Fixed a bug caused by an outdated door position outside the bounds of the lightbulb testing room which caused swinging doors to rarely generate in an adjacent room.
• Fixed trap detection not working reliably due to it not counting already blocked off cells as neighbors to check path finding against.
• Belt constructor now blocks off belt cells in all directions during level generation. This fixes softlocks in the factory level.
• Fixed lockdown doors that start closed not blocking paths during level generation, resulting in softlocks in factory levels.
• Fixed extra doors on locked rooms changing the other room's cell room to its own room.
• Fixed Baldi saying "nine notebooks" instead of "seven notebooks" on level 4.
• Fixed room group lights not being implemented.
• Fixed class rooms in levels 4 and 5 not using the wall with molding texture.
• Fixed tutorial doors being able to be closed.
• Fixed tutorial doors using levers instead of buttons.
• Power lever cables now stop at classroom doors and connect to lever walls.
• Increased the size of the game lock collider so that principal's keys cannot be used on the door.
• Fixed the jump rope failure sound value being lower than that of doors.
• Blocked all the walls in the belt room so that buttons and similar level objects will not generate inside them.
• Fixed missing controls for lockdown door in Stealthy Challenge.
• Cells that are blocked by objects in the teleporter room are now marked as blocked so that objects cannot be generated or placed on those walls.

This update took a lot of work, and I still am not quite done with it! Endless mode for example has not been updated with the new level types yet, so I will be making some improvements there soon. I also want to flesh out the new level types with new decorations and faculty rooms among other fine details, so expect that kind of stuff in the near future. As I've mentioned in previous updates though, major updates will become smaller in scope from here on out as I will begin shifting my focus towards the development of stuff for the distant future of Baldi's Basics Plus, much of which will not be seen until version 1.0 releases. With that in mind I'm glad I was able to make this last fully-focused early access major update a big one! With my attention split it may seem like things are slowing down, but rest assured this is a necessary change in getting this game finished. Lastly, thanks to everyone who continues to play Baldi's Basics Plus! Special thanks to all the Kickstarter backers and Patreon members who provided feedback on the early access release. There was a lot of great feedback which has resulted in a much better update and will continue to help make further improvements! With all that said, I hope you enjoy Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.10!

[ 2025-04-21 14:16:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, Unfortunately, as I said might be possible in the previous status update, I've made the decision to delay the release of version 0.10 by a week. This means the pre-release will now release on April 14, and the public version will release on April 21. My apologies for the late notice on this- I kept telling myself that maybe I could make the previous dates work, but I've realized the update just needs a bit more time before it's ready. It was reaching a point where I was considering excluding some content that just isn't ready yet from the pre-release and saving it for the public release, but I feel like that would defeat the purpose of a pre-release! A big reason for this delay stems from my trip to the Game Developers Conference. (Which I mentioned on my socials, but yeah, I went to GDC this year if you didn't know!) That trip was extremely important for Baldi's Basics Plus in the long term, but it also took over two work weeks out of my usual development schedule. The week prior to the conference was spent making preparations and the week of the conference was spent traveling and, obviously, being at the conference. Several days after arriving back home were just kind of weird as my regular schedule had been disrupted and my body needed more rest than I'd anticipated. This was my first time flying, and even leaving the East Coast, so I had no idea what to expect. With the initially proposed dates I felt like I was properly accounting for that lost development time, but in hindsight they were just a bit too tight. One more week ought to be enough for me to get this update pre-release ready in time for that and cleaned up for the public release on the 21st. Again, I apologize for the delay, but I think the wait will be worth it!

[ 2025-04-03 20:30:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! I wanted to post a quick status update on how development of version 0.10 is coming along! Between how much work I've been putting into this update and some other business related stuff, I've got a lot going on this month, so I'm going to keep this update short and sweet. So far, I have finished programming and designing pretty much all of the new features I had planned for this update! At this point all that's left to do is create and implement all the audio/visual assets and fine tune/balance everything. I'm very happy with how much I was able to get done in February and can't wait for you all to be able to play this new update For this update, partly to keep it short and partly to keep the new features a surprise, I'm just going to post some WIP screenshots of some of the new stuff. Just a few teasers of things to look forward to! Please keep in mind that there are still plenty of placeholder assets in use in these screenshots, so the new stuff will mostly look very different in the release version.




Currently, I'm aiming to release the pre-release of this update on April 7 (Pre-releases are available via my Patreon) followed by the public release on April 14. However, audio/visual work can take an unexpectedly long time sometimes so don't be surprised if I have to push it back another week. I will certainly try to avoid delays though! One more thing before I wrap this post up. I want to remind you all that, while 0.10 will be a pretty sizable update, 0.11 and onward will be smaller overall as I will begin shifting my development focus so that half of my efforts will be spent on content for immediate release and the other half on stuff that will be reserved for the future, primarily version 1.0. You can read more about this plan in a previous staus update I posted here, but the TLDR is that I want to get the game's planned structure (All the key moments I have planned from the beginning to the end) up and running by the end of the year. This stuff will not be a part of the early access, but having those things in place and somewhat functional internally will, I believe, be a huge help in finishing the game. All that is to say, don't be surprised when 0.11 releases and seems significantly smaller than 0.10! It won't be because I'm slowing down, just due to me shifting my focus. With all that said, I hope you all look forward to the release of Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.10!

[ 2025-03-10 18:01:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, I'm just letting you all know that I just released a super minor update to fix an issue where finishing the tutorial would not switch Steam Input to the "Interface" action set, which made it impossible to close the tutorial results screen and continue to the main menu when using Steam Input (This was most noticeable on Steam Deck where Steam Input is on by default). Since the first thing most new players will do now is play the tutorial, I didn't want to leave a bug that would require some to force close the game after completing it, so I went ahead and fixed the issue now. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this issue may have caused, and thanks to those who reported it!

[ 2025-02-11 02:18:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Previously I had announced that 0.9 would be focused almost exclusively on bug fixes. However, before I got started on that I decided to do some work on the tutorial level I have been planning for a little while, and that ended up taking most of my development time in January. So unfortunately I did not get around to fixing many bugs, instead opting to work on some other important, albeit unexciting, improvements to the game. I definitely still want to dedicate a good chunk of time to fixing bugs sometime soon though! Alongside the new tutorial I added an in-game keyboard to make creating a new file easier with controllers, and a new Hide & Seek menu where the play style and challenge options can now be found. Explorer mode is also here now as its own play style. There are a handful of other tweaks which you can see in the changelog below. So overall this is a very small update, but I've already started working on 0.10 and if all goes to plan that one should be very exciting! I hope you all will look forward to it, thank you for your patience!

Changelog

Additions

• Added an interactive tutorial level. This tutorial teaches players about the game's core mechanics.
  • Players on files that have never been prompted before will receive a prompt to play the tutorial when clicking the play button on the main menu.
  • The tutorial can be accessed by clicking the new tutorial button on the mode select screen.
  • The tutorial features chalk boards which display the currently set inputs for game actions. These chalk boards will refresh whenever the game is un-paused to reflect any changes to controls made during the tutorial.
  • The tutorial includes a new placeholder music track created with Microsoft Music Producer.
  • Added tons of new Baldi voicelines for the tutorial.
• Added a dedicated Hide & Seek menu.
  • Play Style, challenge options and seed input have been moved to this screen.
  • Explorer mode has been moved to this screen. It is now a play style option.
  • When there is a saved game, there is now a button which will allow players to start a new game alongside the continue button. Pressing this button will prompt players to make sure they're okay with losing their current saved game before starting a new one.
• Added an in-game keyboard for entering new file names.
  • If there are no save files, players will be taken directly to this screen when starting the game.
• Gave Baldi a new speaking animation which automatically lip-syncs to his audio. This is used in the tutorial and when correctly completing activities. Added lockdown doors which cannot be closed after being opened (Currently only used in the tutorial).
• Added the Anim8or Community Discord to special thanks section in the credits.

Changes

• The new file button is now always visible on the file select screen if there is an unused slot available, instead of only being visible on Steam Deck.
• Certain structure builders can now be used to populate premade maps. This is used to generate lockers, water fountains and plants in the tutorial map.
• Tweaked Baldi's file select screen voicelines to accommodate for the changes made to file creation.
• The save and quit poster in the pit stop no longer mentions that players cannot save in explorer mode. That information is now shown on the play style tooltip.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed volumetric audio sources, such as that of conveyor belts and Cloudy Copter's wind, not being propagated.
• Fixed, for realsies this time, BSODA not properly pushing entities through conveyor belts/wind when they enter the triggers of those objects after colliding with the BSODA.
• Fixed a few old typos.

Pre-release Changelog

• Added a third class room to the final section of the tutorial to prevent it from being completed too quickly.
• Fixed a bug that caused all modes to use whatever challenge and playstyle settings were selected in the Hide & Seek menu.
• Fixed a bug that caused saved games to be erased when playing any mode, not just starting a new game.
• Removed the window between the first hall and the principal's office in the tutorial.
• Posters in the tutorial principal's office are now spread apart.
• Fixed a bug in the tutorial that caused Baldi to repeat instructions when placing a BSODA in the storage locker and taking it out again. Now Baldi will only repeat the instructions to spray him with the BSODA when using the quarter on the BSODA machine.
• Increased the prices of items in Johnny's store in the tutorial.
• Re-enabled the ability for Johnny to let players buy items they are 100 or fewer YTPs short of affording in the tutorial.
• Fixed a bug that allowed buttons behind the tutorial prompt to be clicked on.
• Updated the copyright year to 2025.
• Fixed an oversight that caused level 3 to be labeled as level 2 in Steam Recorder.
• Fixed an bug that caused Baldi to become stuck on his praise sprite in some scenarios.
• Fixed a bug that caused the item icons of items in slots that had previously been lost via the shrinking inventory challenge to not appear when losing and reloading.
• Reduced the volume of the tutorial music track.
• After Baldi finishes counting down, he will briefly switch to his smiling sprite before changing to the normal ruler sprite.

[ 2025-02-10 15:01:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy New Year everyone! As we begin a new year, I thought it would be good to discuss my thoughts on how 2024 was for Baldi's Basics development and how I plan on tackling things in 2025!

2024

In 2024, I managed to release five major game updates, starting with 0.4 and ending with 0.8. Though there were a few delays, I managed to stick pretty close to the plan on releasing a new major update every two months, and I'm very happy with how that worked out! That said, going into 2024 I explained that my plan was to essentially just work on stuff and then release whatever was finished when it came time to release a new major version. Despite my intentions however, I often didn't end up developing things that way. Instead I often found myself trying to cram certain features into the game in time for updates or working on new features that were so time consuming they were all I had been able to work on between updates and so they had to be completed within that time frame or else I'd have nothing to push whenever the next update was due to release (This mainly happened with 0.7's field trips). For better and for worse this led to occasional crunching. Near the end of the year I did experience a bit of burnout, but now that I've had some time to reflect on things I feel that burnout stemmed more from lost development time (Largely due to some IRL issues such as mice and carpet beetles showing up in my house around November which I, admittedly, allowed to distract me from my work way more than I should have) and the stress I felt as a result of falling behind.

2025

With those lessons learned I'm making some lifestyle tweaks going into 2025 to help me work more a bit more consistently than in 2024, put less unnecessary pressure on myself, and make better use of my spare time so I can better recharge my batteries for work hours. I'm pretty happy with my work/life balance, but I think it will be even better in 2025! To get more specific about Baldi's Basics Plus plans though, I want to outline my plans for the next couple of major updates and then discuss some changes I'll be making to my approach to updates afterwards.

0.9

As I took off work for most of December, I'm just now getting back into the regular development cycle. Instead of pushing 0.9 into the beginning of March to give it a full two-month development cycle however, I still plan on releasing it in about a month from now to maintain a two month gap from the release of 0.8. With that in mind, 0.9 will be mostly, if not entirely, focused on bug fixes. The list of known issues has gotten quite large and I don't want my desire to add new content to overshadow the need to fix bugs, and now seems like a good time to squash them. So, while 0.9 will not be very exciting, it will still be a very important update.

0.10

Version 0.10 however... Well, I'm not going to get into specifics, but my hope is to make this a relatively large update! There's some new content I have planned that I've been very excited about for a while, and I think things are likely to line up to allow me to finish it all in time for 0.10. All I'll say about the update right now is that, if all goes according to plan, conveyor belts will return, but as part of something that will totally change the game. Make of that what you will!

0.11 and Beyond

Once I finish 0.10, my plan is to change up the way I develop updates. As I mentioned above, I ended up falling into some needlessly stressful development habits in 2024. In 2025, after version 0.10 is released, I'm going to more closely stick to my plan of just releasing what is finished when it's time to release new major updates, without worrying about the size of updates. I will still plan on releasing a major update every two months, but to better achieve this goal I will be breaking up the time between updates into two types of development: Immediate and future. Immediate development time will be focused on developing smaller, self-contained pieces of content that, once finished, can immediately be queued for the next update. Future development time, on the other hand, will be spent developing stuff that is not planned to be released any time soon, or stuff that may take longer than a single update period to finish. So, once version 0.10 releases, I'll spend about a month working on relatively simple, new content for version 0.11, while the next month will be spent working on stuff such as new/reworked game systems, end-game stuff, secret levels, etc., much of which will not appear in the game until the 1.0 release. This pattern will continue as long as I keep releasing early access updates. With this development pattern, I believe I'll be able to more consistently provide cool new stuff for each major update, while also getting a chance to work on stuff that will allow me to get closer to wrapping up the game. I still have no idea what version 1.0's release date will be, but for the first time since I started this project I feel like I can see a tiny bit of light at the end of the tunnel... In fact, if all goes well I hope to have an internal build that closely represents the structure of the finished game by the end of the year. This does NOT necessarily mean that I will be close to finishing the game, just that I hope to have reached a point where I can start a new game, play through all the planned levels, and reach something of a real ending. This build would still be crammed full of placeholders and be missing a ton of content, but I'm reaching the point where I think having a complete structure to build off of and refine is important. To be clear, this goal is entirely an internal one. This hypothetical build would not be released publicly or as part of the early access, it's just a development milestone. I also plan on making some real attempts to get some other folks involved in the project this year. There are certain aspects of the game I know I'll need help with and I'm also still interested in seeking out a publisher. I've already got some concrete plans regarding this this year, so here's hoping I can find some help and speed things up even more!

Conclusion

Just as last year, I think 2025 will be a super exciting year for Baldi's Basics Plus! I hope you all will look forward to what's coming. Thank you all for the support and patience, without which I'd never be able to do this.

[ 2025-01-06 20:45:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Merry Christmas everyone! This update is just a quick patch fixing a few major issues that were introduced in 0.8, mainly issues with certain functions not being called when exiting rooms via vents. However, due to popular demand, I've also re-added the time limit test option from the pre-releases as a challenge option which you can find in the game settings menu! On top of that, I've also added two additional challenge options! One which disables the map and one which causes item slots to disappear when using items. Think of these as a little Christmas gift! If you've been looking for some extra challenge, these settings will definitely help. One other note, the Principal of the Thing plushie campaign from Makeship has been extended to Friday, January 3! If you want to grab one, you now have some extra time. You can check it out here: https://www.makeship.com/products/the-principal-of-the-thing-plushie Now, onto the changelog:

Additions

• Added new challenge options accessible in the game settings menu.
  • 1 Minute Limit: Sets the time limit on every level to one minute. Hurry up!
  • No Map: Completely disables the map. Pay attention!
  • Shrinking Inventory: When using an item, you will lose a slot for the rest of the level. Think carefully!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Strict mode being labelled as "Intense"
• Fixed a bug that caused room exit functions to not be called when a player/NPC/entity exits a room via vents.
  • This fixes the game staying muted when leaving a library via a vent.
  • This fixes Chalkles continuing to charge when leaving the room via a vent.
• Fixed missing captions for the time out bell.
• Fixed walls forming inside the pillar in the special hall formation with the pillar, which could trap players inside. There are still some generation issues with this pillar, but players should no longer be able to get trapped if they end up inside (Except in very rare cases where lockers or other objects trap the player).

That's it for this update. I hope you all have a merry Christmas!

[ 2024-12-24 21:02:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! I'm happy to announce that Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.8 is available now! This update brings a mix of different new features, the biggest of which is the new time limit! Each level now has a time limit and when that runs out the school begins to shut down and the game begins to get harder. Lights will go out, Baldi will begin to get faster and Principal of the Thing will send you to detention if he sees you in school after-hours. You'll still have plenty of time to explore each level, just be sure you're not wasting it! Thankfully, if you ever do find yourself taking too long to complete a level, there's another new mechanic that will come to your aid: You can now hide in the dark! If you stand on a cell that is as dark as possible, you will become hidden, and NPCs will not be able to see you. You'll need to take advantage of dark areas if you want to survive as Baldi gets faster and faster! This update also includes an upgraded advanced map that allows you to place markers. These markers are not only visible on the map, but also at the corresponding location in the level when viewing the quick map. With these you can mark the location of important points like the storage locker, an area you used WD-NoSquee on, a room you left an important item in, etc. You could also use them to plan a route or to note the status of a structure. The possibilities are endless! The last big new feature of this update is a new structure: [spoiler]Vents! Vent entrances can now be found in some rooms in level 3. Any entity that enters these will get sucked in, pulled through a series of ducts and then dropped through an exit in the ceiling somewhere else in the level. Vents are a great way to quickly traverse large distances in a level, but beware! Other characters can also wander into vents or follow you in if they are chasing you! If you're inside a room with a vent on the ceiling, keep your ears opened. You might just hear slapping coming out of the vents, in which case... get out of there![/spoiler] Alongside the new structure I've also made several improvements to the level generator. Halls no longer generate with unfair dead-ends or bottlenecks, and I've streamlined the systems used to generate structures in order to pave the way for future structures. I've also made several tweaks to level generation parameters to try and reduce the frequency of empty areas appearing levels. Those are all the major changes in this update, but before getting to the changelog I want to announce that Makeship and I have partnered once again to release a new Principal of the Thing plushie! You can check it out here.
Principal of the Thing was a very challenging character to transform into a plushie, but I'm very happy with the design I and the team at Makeship ended up with! It will be available to purchase until December 28, so if you want one be sure to grab it before the deadline. As Principal of the Thing once said, "No buying the Principal of the Thing plushie after the deadline in the halls!" With all that said, I was hoping that this update would be much bigger, especially since it was delayed. My apologies to anyone who was expecting more in this update. Unfortunately life got in the way quite a bit and my productivity took a hit. To be honest, I feel like I may finally be experiencing a bit of burnout as well, but considering this is probably Baldi's Basics Plus' most productive year I guess I shouldn't be surprised! Because of this I will be taking most of the rest of December off and getting back to work, hopefully refreshed, in January. Version 0.9 will be mostly if not entirely dedicated to bug fixes as the list of known issues is getting pretty big and since that will be a good way to warm back up after my break. I'll post a status update around the beginning of January to discuss my 2025 plans beyond version 0.9! As always, I thank you all for your patience. Now, on to the changelog. Please note that no new features will be covered by a spoiler bar, so don't continue if you don't want to know what the new structure is!

Additions

• Added time limits. When time runs out, a special event activates which causes changes in the game and level. Each level has its own time limit. Level 1 = 5 minutes, level 2 = 7 minutes, level 3 = 9 minutes. The time out event does the following:
  • Baldi begins to get faster and faster over time.
  • The player will become permanently guilty for being in school after-hours. If Principal of the Thing sees the player in this state, he will chase them and send them to detention.
  • Individual lights in the hallways begin to dim until all have dimmed.
  • Principal of the Thing will turn out the lights in rooms with the exception of rooms with incomplete activities. Rooms with bonus questions do not count as incomplete activities.
  • A new music track will play. This track is a placeholder created using Microsoft Music Producer.
• Added timers to elevator areas that display time remaining in a level.
• Added decorative items and an exit sign to elevator areas.
• Open elevators now act as light sources. When all notebooks have been collected and all elevators re-open, they will light green to make them easier to find.
• Players can now hide by standing in cells that are as dark as possible.
• Added map markers. Map markers can be placed by clicking the new map marker buttons on the advanced map and removed by clicking on placed markers on the advanced map. Map markers can be seen at their corresponding position in 3D space when viewing the quick map.
• Added a new structure: Vents!
  • Vents generate in levels as an entrance in a wall connected to an exit in the ceiling elsewhere in the level via a series of winding ventilation ducts.
  • Any entity that enters a vent entrance gets sucked in and pulled through the ducts, eventually being ejected out of the exit point.
  • Vents apply a reverb audio filter to any entities with propagated audio while inside.
  • When the player is outside vents, entities with propagated audio will have their audio propagated from the vent entrance or exit, depending on how close the entity is to either.
  • When the player is inside vents, the player will hear the audio of all entities with propagated audio that are currently inside the vent regardless of position.
  • When the player is inside vents, they will hear audio outside the vents from the position of either the vent entrance or exit, depending on how close they are to either.
  • When any entity hits a turn while traveling through vents, a metallic bang sound will be produced. This can be heard from both the entrance and exit of a vent regardless of the position of the entity that triggered the sound's position in the vent.
  • When the player exits a vent, the exit will make a noise Baldi hears.
• Added new Play Style option. This option controls how lives work.
  • Normal (Default): You start each level with three power tubes.
  • Arcade: You start with three power tubes, but do not get any more each level.
  • Strict: You only get one power tube per-game. Lose once and that's game over!

Changes

• Made several changes to the level generator.
  • Halls now generate more intelligently and avoid forming dead-ends and bottlenecks.
  • Structure generation has been reworked and streamlined.
  • Swinging doors should now generate such that there is only one per-hall.
  • When controllable lockdown doors are added to a level, there can now be more than one.
  • When roto-halls are added to a level, there can now be more than one.
  • Some structures that were previously only generated in halls, such as storage lockers and vending machines, can now also generate in rooms at pre-determined safe positions.
  • Phones can now only generate in rooms.
  • More plants now generate in levels.
  • Level size in Hide & Seek levels is no longer random. As a result, levels are a more consistently compact with less wasted space.
  • No special halls are placed before hallways are generated. Now, special halls are only placed after halls are generated (Previously, special halls were placed both before and after). This prevents issues with inaccessible areas of levels being generated.
  • There are likely other small, unintended changes due to the structure rework.
• Activities can no longer be completed if a room is not powered. This means bonus questions cannot be answered if Principal of the Thing has turned off the lights in the room. If a room is not powered, all lights on the Math Machine will be off and it will not indicate that it is clickable.
• Changed advanced map interface. It now features on-screen zoom and scroll buttons, marker buttons and a timer display. The on-screen size of the map display has been reduced to make room for these new buttons.
• Made changes to shaders to improve lighting in darkness. Textures no longer become totally black and there is now a much more noticeable increase in contrast in dark areas.
• All three Hide & Seek levels now use the same lighting method in order to accommodate lights going dark once the time limit has expired.
• Removed the detention HUD element that displayed detention time and replaced it with a timer that sits above doors in the principal's office.
• Detention no longer uses real seconds and time counts down at 1.25 times the normal speed.
• Cloudy Copter's wind will now affect other Cloudy Copters (This scenario is currently only possible via modding).

Removed

• Conveyor belts have been temporarily removed as they are in the middle of being reworked. They will return in a future update!

Bug Fixes

• The elevator gate can no longer be seen in the playground in the endless medium map.
• Fixed Mrs. Pomp crashing if there are inaccessible classrooms when she tries sending the player to a class.

New Known Issues

• Getting flipped due to Gravity Chaos starting or ending while traveling through a vent causes the camera to move outside the vents.
• The lighting of entities traveling through vents appear to flash frequently due to using the grid-based lighting system.
• Due to the way vents can crisscross, entities can occasionally be seen clipping through the walls of vents.
• Time limit ticking and bell sounds are missing captions.

Pre-release Changes

Thanks to everyone who played the pre-releases and offer feedback! I was able to fix a lot of issues and oversights with vents and some other new features thanks to y'all.

• Updated Baldi's placeholder time out line with finalized line.
• Added sound effects to vents.
• Added above mentioned audio mechanics to vents.
• Fixed NPCs being able to see the player (And Principal seeing the Bully) while in vents.
• Fixed Dr. Reflex being able to hammer entities while inside vents.
• Fixed Mrs. Pomp being able to grab and drag the player while inside vents.
• Fixed being able to see entities traveling through vents the player is not in.
• Fixed vent exits being able to generate in Playgrounds.
• Fixed vent entrances being able to generate in the principal's office and in playgrounds.
• Updated and re-enabled pre-made maps.
• Fixed vent exits being able to generate over lights.
• Fixed being able to see lockdown doors and elevator gates inside vents.
• Fixed room functions triggering when entities are traveling through vents.
• Fixed issue where vents would sometimes generate with a segment near the end that reverses 180 degrees in order to ensure it connects to the selected destination point.
• Fixed an issue which allowed vent exits to generate too close to vent entrances.
• Fixed levels generating with inaccessible areas.
• Slightly reduced time limits (Okay but actually after testing these adjusted time limits I felt they were a tad too tight, particularly level 3 without a map, so I meant to set them back to where they were but forgot WHOOPS. Hope this update isn't too hard!).

I think that's everything. I hope you all enjoy version 0.8!

[ 2024-12-09 16:15:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! I hope y'all are doing well. I'm back with a new status update all about version 0.8 of Baldi's Basics Plus! Let's start by discussing a couple new features that will be in the next update.

Play Style

This first one is pretty simple, but I think it will be an addition welcomed by many of you. I've added a new play style option that allows you to change how lives work to make for a harder or easier experience. The options are:

• Normal - You start each level with three power tubes (This is how the game has worked since launch).
• Arcade - You start with three power tubes, but do not get any more each level.
• Strict - You only get one power tube per-game. Lose once and it's game over!

If you've found the game to be a bit too easy, or are looking for a more typical roguelike gameplay experience, this option can be adjusted to your liking! Normal helps balance the sometimes unfair chaos of the game by giving you a chance to learn levels and adapt accordingly, arcade still offers some leeway, but makes losing much more punishing, and strict won't let you have any second chances. Choose whichever option you think makes the game more enjoyable! Note that this option won't impact the power bonus. The power bonus will be based on the number of attempts it takes to beat a level. So on the Arcade setting for example, if you go into a level with one power tube and beat it on your first try, you'll still get a 3X power bonus. With that explained, let's talk about a much bigger new feature coming in the next update.

Hurry Up!

Recently I asked on Twitter what y'all's average times were per-level. I wanted to know to help balance a mysterious new feature. Well, I'm ready to reveal what that new feature is!

Time Limits

Yep, in version 0.8 you'll want to make sure you don't spend too much time in a level because school is only going to be in session for so long! This is a feature I've been planning on adding for a long time and I think it will add a good sense of urgency to the game. Finding good places to hide will still be important, but you won't want to hide forever! With this new feature, once the game begins, you'll be able to see how much time you have via a timer near the elevators. I also plan on making the time viewable via the map. As time runs out, the Baldi TV will occasionally notify you as well. Once the clock hits zero, school is out! Things will start changing fast!
First off, Baldi will begin speeding up over time. The longer you stick around, the harder it will become to avoid getting caught! Principal of the Thing will also try to send you to detention for being in school after hours. Even after getting sent to detention for this reason, you will remain guilty in his eyes so be sure he doesn't see you again!

Lights Out

Characters aren't the only things that change when school is out though. The level changes as well! As soon as time is up, lights in the hallways will start dimming, and the Principal of the Thing will turn out the lights of rooms he exits. Things will get pretty dark fast, and you'll need to take advantage of this if you want to survive as Baldi gets faster and faster!
How can you take advantage of the lights going out? Well, this update will add a new mechanic that allows you to hide in dark areas! If you are standing on a tile that is as dark as possible, you'll become hidden and NPCs will not be able to see you. You'll need to find dark spots to survive and finish the level as Baldi begins reaching terrifying speeds. In the future I plan on adding more content that utilizes lighting, but for now this is all I've implemented. To accommodate these changes I've also slightly reworked the lighting system to make super dark areas easier to see in. There is now a much more noticeable contrast when objects are in dark areas, and the minimum brightness is now limited so not everything becomes pitch black.
I may adjust lighting further to ensure things don't get so dark it's too hard to see. I might add more effects for when you run out of time, but for now this is what I've implemented. In my testing I've found that trying to survive after time has run out is super intense, so it should be a lot of fun for those rounds that take a bit longer to beat than usual! Of course, I'll try to balance the time limits to make sure there is still time to thoroughly explore levels, you'll just have to be sure not too much time is wasted.

Level Generator

Aside from those new features, I've also dived back into the level generator to tackle several issues that have been on my to-do list for a while. One issue, which I've now successfully solved, is eliminating dead-ends and bottlenecks in hallway generation. In previous versions of the game it has not been uncommon for huge, unpredictable dead-ends to form in levels which can unfairly end a round. Another issue was bottlenecks, where certain areas of a level could only be accessed via a single hallway. I created a new algorithm to more intelligently generate halls and avoid these issues. This will allow me to, in the future, be intentional about dead-ends generating in levels and better balance the risk involved with them. Another issue, which I am currently working on, is that of open areas. When a level is generated the game scans it for open areas. Open areas are any parts of a level that have a 2x2 or larger group of cells connected to each other. Rooms are mainly where open areas are found. In order for NPCs to be able to navigate these spaces and avoid colliding with objects in them, the game generates a NavMesh and other data which makes this possible.
The blue grids are NavMeshes which have been generated in open areas. The issue with the way this has worked in previous versions is that this data is only generated once when the level is first generated. If the level layout changes to change the shape of an open area (For example, it multiple portal posters are placed next to each other) none of that open area info is updated. So, I'm currently reworking this system to make it possible to update this info as the level layout changes and to optimize it so that this can be done with very little performance impact. It's proven to be pretty challenging, but I've made good progress and I'm pretty confident I'll be finished with this soon. Perhaps not in time for 0.8, but this is high on my priority list for now. Aside from that I'm also improving the way structures (swinging doors, conveyor belts, roto halls, etc.) are generated/loaded to pave the way for new ones! I really want to get some new structures in the game for 0.8 to really spice up the level generation since it's been a while since that aspect of the game has seen any new content. With that said...

Slowing Down

I've decided to delay the next update by a month. I plan on resuming the two month schedule again afterwards, but for a number of reasons I feel like it will be best to give 0.8 some more time in the oven. So the plan now is to release 0.8 in early December. My main reason for delaying the update is that, due to how much time has been spent working on technical aspects of the level generator, I haven't had much time to actually create new content. I don't want 0.8 to just be the time limit and a new option so my plan now is to try wrapping up all the technical work I'm doing by the end of October and spend the entirety of November creating new structures and other content for the game. Another reason for the delay just comes down to the fact I probably won't get a ton of work done in December due to the holidays, so it makes sense to crunch a little bit at the end of November to wrap up a big update and then be able to relax in December. With that in mind, 0.9 (Which will likely release at the beginning of February) will probably be focused on bug fixes since the list of known issues getting quite large and that will be a good way to warm back up after taking a short break. Oh, and just a note since there seems to be some confusion regarding version numbers; Baldi's Basics Plus is using semantic versioning, so after 0.9 will come 0.10, 0.11, etc. I wanted to clarify this since I've seen that some people think 0.9 will be the last early access version of the game. I don't currently know what the last early access version will be, but it will be well beyond 0.9!

Conclusion

I think that pretty much covers everything that's going on regarding version 0.8 at the moment. I hope the delay doesn't come as too big a disappointment, but I will try my best to make sure the wait is worth it!

[ 2024-10-28 17:21:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.7.1 has just released! I've been hard at work on 0.8 since 0.7 launched, but I made some time for a small patch as well. This patch makes several QOL improvements to the game based on feedback from 0.7. Thanks to everyone who has shared their thoughts! Most notably, I've added a new option for players who might not want to play field trip minigames, but don't want to miss out on items. For quite a while I've considered the fact that not everyone is going to enjoy having to learn separate minigames in order to not miss out on any good items, so I've come up with a compromise. This is something I had intended to implement for 0.7, but just didn't quite have the time to. This new feature is the ability to give Johnny your bus pass! He'll go on the field trip in your place and bring back a random selection of three of the available minigame items. If you do this, you'll miss out on a potential perfect bonus, and Johnny may not select the same items you would, but the option is available now if you'd rather skip the field trip! Another neat new thing: I've added Steam Timeline/Recording support to the game! Steam has a new game recording feature in the works. Currently it is only accessible if you are using the beta Steam client, but it's a great way to record and review gameplay sessions. Now that Baldi's Basics Plus supports this feature, if you look through your recorded footage through Steam, the video timeline will clearly indicate where gameplay occurs vs. menus, the current game status at any given time (Such as the level you are on and how many notebooks you have), and it will highlight wins, losses and high scores! So if you've played for a while and want to review some gameplay highlights, it will be easy to find, clip and share specific moments. Oh, and also a reminder that the Dr. Reflex plushie is only available for a few more days! You can check it out here: https://www.makeship.com/products/dr-reflex-plushie
With all that, here's the full changelog:

Additions

• Added the ability to give Johnny a Bus Pass when a field trip is available. He will go on the field trip in your place and bring back three randomly selected items.
• Added Steam Timeline/Recording support. Steam Recording is currently only available in Steam client betas. Whether you are currently using the beta, or wait for the feature to release officially, Baldi's Basics Plus will indicate useful information on your recording timeline to make it easier to find specific moments from your play session.

Changes

• In Pick-Quick-Nic, the round indicator text color has been changed to green.
• In Pick-Quick-Nic, the round indicator will now say "Final Round" on the final round, and "Bonus Round" followed by the number of bonus rounds that have been played if the player manages to go beyond the final round.
• When playing minigames in Hide & Seek, there is now text if you lose indicating that you could have earned items if you had won the minigame. If you win, but do not get a perfect bonus, there is now text explaining that you can now pick three items.
• When playing Campfire Frenzy in Hide & Seek, there is now an indicator showing how many tosses are left until the game is finished.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed field trip entrance ambience not being affected by volume settings.
• Fixed field trip minigames being in scoring mode while accessing them in Explorer Mode.
• Fixed a bug that caused the grade bonus to not award the same amount of YTPs as displayed on the results screen.
• Fixed a visual issue where the elevator screen would zoom a bit more than it was supposed to for one frame at the end of the animation.
• Fixed an error that would silently occur due to banana trees spawning bananas in an invalid location.

Known Issues

• Balloons occasionally clip into objects.
• NPCs will often not try to flip themselves when they are oriented opposite the player during Gravity Chaos. This can lead to strange NPC behavior.
• NPCs will occasionally appear to turn-around when entering open areas where a hallway bridges between two different parts of that open area.
• Lockdown doors near spawn can be seen snapping into the open position at game start.
• Dr. Reflex can squish NPCs even when they do not match his orientation during Gravity Chaos.
• Captions are more likely to stack on top of each other and become hard to read due to the new sound propagation system. I plan on finding a way to prevent captions from rendering on top of each other.
• There is no indication for when entities are about to become unsquished.
• It is possible to see out of bounds while being rotated by a gravity flipper while squished.
• On some screen resolutions, it is possible to see a gap through some elements on the elevator screen.
• Some NPCs are very annoying when they are squished.
• Wind and conveyor belt audio is not propagated.
• NPCs will occasionally end up wandering into an area they should be fleeing from.
• Dr. Reflex can sometimes get his hammer early while being pushed around by outside forces or when he is not able to find a path to his clinic.
• NPCs can collide with other entities through walls, triggering their effects.
• Math Machine balloons can rarely get stuck behind the diagonal math machine.
• Principal, under some circumstances, can maintain his fast speed after using the principal whistle.
• Arts and Crafters' echoes while attacking don't always match his orientation during the gravity event.
• A seed is displayed when playing pre-made maps.
• Held sprite objects, such as the math machine balloons, can be held into other areas such that their lighting noticeably changes.
• Mrs. Pomp doesn't wander around class rooms in pre-made maps. She just stands in a corner.
• Certain sound effects are delayed while the environment is frozen (Such as when Mrs. Pomp is asking the player to come to her class).
• Maps from saved games of Hide & Seek from older versions of the game will fill out the areas found from the previous play session, even if it doesn't match new level generation.
• Principal doesn't open office doors during detention while fleeing from a tape.
• During the flood, hall swinging doors do not open, while swinging doors that lead into rooms do open.
• AudioManagers playing multiple sounds in different mixer groups at once causes volume conflicts.
• NPCs occasionally getting stuck in walls/objects.
• One-way swinging doors can generate on top of standard swinging doors.
• Cloudy Copter's wind can pass through solid objects like lockdown doors.
• Placing an alarm clock in a doorway prevents the door from being clicked.
• Gotta Sweep can navigate through locked standard doors but will not open them.
• The Test can spawn close to the player.

[ 2024-09-23 13:59:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! I'm happy to announce that Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.7 is available now! This update is entirely focused on bringing field trips back to the game so that now you can go camping again! Field trips work a bit differently now, though. You will now be able to find the bus in The Pitstop before level 3, and you'll need to bring a bus pass with you if you want to take a ride to the field trip! You can find the bus pass on level 2, so make sure you grab it! When you go on a field trip, you'll be able to pick one of two minigames to play. When you win a minigame you'll get items that you can bring back with you. With a little bit of practice, you can even earn a perfect bonus of 250 YTPs! As before, each minigame also has a score based variant and a high score table, so you can compete with others! That's about it for the update, but before I move on to the changelog, I'm also excited to announce that I've teamed up with Makeship again to make a Dr. Reflex plushie! You can check it out here.
I worked closely with the team at Makeship to make sure all the details were just right and I couldn't be much happier with how it turned out! It will be available to purchase until September 28, so thiiiiiink fast and get it before then if you want one. Now, on to the changelog:

Additions

• Added new field trip format.
  • Field trips now have 3D, explorable hub areas.
  • Each field trip now has two minigames to choose from.
  • Winning a field trip minigame spawns in eight items that the player can pick. The player can pick up to three of these items.
  • Playing a minigame perfectly rewards the player with a perfect bonus of 250 YTPs.
• Re-added camping trip.
  • Added new minigame Campfire Frenzy: Keep the fire roaring by launching fuel into it. Watch out though, not all fuel is good for the fire!
  • Added new minigame Pick-Quick-Nic: Be quick to pick a bite to eat before Baldi's appetite gets the better of him! Don't take his favorite food though!
• Added a tutorial for each minigame. Tutorials can be accessed by clicking on a Baldi that is standing nearby a minigame area.
• Added new music for minigames.
• Added the Bus Pass item. This item must be in your inventory when clicking the bus door to go on a field trip.

Changes

• You now must click on the bus door to go on a field trip, rather than just walking up to the bus.
• The bus sprite has been updated to a rendered 3D object that better matches the game's style. Baldi finally gave the bus back to Joe after "borrowing" it for six years.
• The bus now has collision.
• Items can no longer be used in The Pitstop. This prevents several bugs from occurring.
• The Pitstop now gives the player unlimited stamina.

Pre-release Changes

• Made several small difficulty tweaks to Pick-Quick-Nic.
  • The round where all food appears and Baldi is only thinking of one item now has slightly more reaction time.
  • Hotdog bomb and pizza bomb rounds now have slightly more reaction time.
  • Slightly reduced the difficulty curve in normal (Non-scoring) mode.
  • Reduced the frequency of hotdog rounds relative to pizza rounds in normal mode.
• Fixed a Pick-Quick-Nic issue where occasionally on round 2 all plates would unintentionally contain valid food.
• Made food in Pick-Quick-Nic easier to click by making the plates valid hotspots as well.
• Fixed the campsite ambience not being affected by volume settings.
• Camping Baldi now has an animated mouth controlled by the volume of his voicelines.
• Fixed an error that would be logged when entering the field trip entrance room in The Pitstop when no field trip is available.

I think that's everything. I hope you all enjoy version 0.7 and look forward to version 0.8!

[ 2024-09-09 13:43:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, in this status update I'd like to discuss the new version of field trips that will be added in version 0.7 of Baldi's Basics Plus! Camping will be the first to be re-added, with the farm to follow in a future update, and then brand new ones on occasion after that. Before we can head out though, first you'll need to find...

The Buss Pass

The buss pass is a new item that will be added in version 0.7 which will be required to go on a field trip. One will always be found in level 2, so if you want to go on a field trip be sure you find it and take it with you to the next level! You can get some big rewards from field trips, so it will be worth the effort.
Once you reach The Pitstop for level 3, you'll find Baldi outside waiting to take you on a field trip! If you have a bus pass in your inventory, you'll be able to click on the bus door to be taken to a field trip hub area.

Field Trip Hubs

The field trip hub areas are freely explorable spaces where you'll be able to find minigames to play and take a break from the main game. You'll also be able to find and talk to Baldi who will explain how each minigame is played, which will make instructions less intrusive than they were in the previous iteration of field trips.
Many of you missed when field trips offered 3D spaces to explore, so for some time I'd been thinking of a way I could bring that element of the old field trips back, and this seemed like a good solution! While the minigames themselves won't take place in the hubs, these spaces still provide a nice change of scenery from the rest of the game.

Minigames

Once in a hub, you'll be able to freely explore and find not one, but two minigames to play! By offering two per-field trip, you're less likely to end up getting forced to play a minigame you don't like. Each time you go on a field trip, you'll be able to play one of the two available minigames and if you win, you'll be given a large selection of items from which you'll be able to grab up to 3, and if you win without making a single mistake, you'll be rewarded with a Perfect Bonus of a few hundred You Thought Points!
Item loadout in screenshot is subject to change Each minigame is a 2D affair as in the previous iteration of field trips, but I'm putting a greater emphasis on keeping minigames fast paced, simple and fun. In particular, each field trip will have at least one minigame which only relies on using one button, which not only forces me to think more creatively about how the minigames should play, but it also ensures there will always be a more user friendly option for people using a controller or touch pad which can make moving the in-game cursor harder than intended. That said, I plan on keeping minigames that use the cursor relatively simple as well. No more mazes or anything else that requires complex movement! I want to mention that this video by Masahiro Sakurai was really helpful in getting me to reconsider what makes for a fun minigame and to put a focus on one button minigames. To anyone who is interested in game dev, check out his channel if you haven't! He has made a ton of great videos on the topic. As before, each minigame will have two modes. An in-game mode when you are playing Hide & Seek where the minigame will last about a minute, as well as a scoring mode accessible when playing the Field Trips mode. The scoring mode of each minigame allows you to try and set high scores and in many cases only ends once you make too many mistakes! Now that I've given an overview of the new field trip system, let's take a quick look at one of the two minigames that you'll be able to find at the campsite!

Campfire Frenzy

Campfire Frenzy is a fast-paced one-button minigame where you'll have to keep a campfire lit by launching fuel at it. Different objects will be tossed into a launcher from the side of the screen and, if it's fuel such as a log, you'll click to launch it into the fire. If it's not fuel, you'll have to wait until another object is tossed onto the launcher to take its place. If you fail to launch proper fuel into the fire, or launch something that isn't fuel, the fire will die a little, and if it goes out that's game over! It sounds pretty simple, but it gets hectic quick when the speed increases and when multiple objects get tossed at the launcher at once!

Conclusion

That's about it for this status update! I'm trying my best to take the lessons learned from the first two iterations of field trips to make something that will be a solid addition to the game. At this point, even if it's not perfect, I'm confident it will be good enough for me to safely say that this will be the final iteration of field trips and that I won't be reworking them again! Which is a relief to be sure, because I hate thinking about time spent working on stuff that ultimately ends up getting scrapped. Currently, the plan is to launch the 0.7 pre-release on September 2, then the public release on September 9! Oh, and speaking of the pre-release, I now have a Patreon which you can find by clicking here! Anyone who joins will also be able to access the pre-releases, so if you missed out on the $30+ Kickstarter tier and would like to try out pre-release builds, check it out. That's all for this status update! I hope you all enjoy the new camping field trip when it releases in version 0.7!

[ 2024-08-14 15:12:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! A small patch was released today which fixes a few small bugs. Mainly, the water supply has been cleaned of the mysterious pink elixir Baldi spilled into it and whirlpools are back to normal. Here's the full changelog:

Bug Fixes

• Restored a missing depth buffer shader that made whirlpools appear pink.
• Fixed the inventory item sliding animation being tied to the frame rate.
• Fixed the staminometer needle sliding speed being tied to the frame rate.
• Fixed the exit sign in the pit stop not billboarding.

[ 2024-08-02 17:18:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.6.1 is available now! This update fixes several bugs that were in the game. Thanks to everyone who reported bugs as many of these would have been missed by myself! Here's the full changelog:

Changes

• Propagated sounds are no longer audible if they are coming from silenced cells (For example, when WD-NoSquee is used). Note that non-propagated sounds, such as the sound that plays when entering a locker or Chalkles' laugh, will still be audible for now.
• The Library now silences all cells inside so they behave the same as an area covered by WD-NoSquee.
• Merry-go-rounds now fluctuate in direction and speed. This should prevent NPCs from getting stuck on them.
• If a save file is corrupted or lost, the game will now search the save folder for existing files and recreate the NameList file based on its findings. This check will help prevent files from being excluded from the name list due to errors.
• The save & quit poster in The Pitstop now clarifies that save and quit is for Hide & Seek only. Entering the save & quit room in explorer mode will just quit the game without saving.
• Updated the contents of the crazy vending machine to include more items.
• Shader variants are now used to control whether or not sprites billboard.
• Tile materials now do not use alpha clipping shaders unless one of the tile textures has transparent pixels.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Diet BSODAs not saving in the inventory or storage locker when saving and quitting a game.
• Fixed the HUD not returning to full brightness when exiting a hidden state.
• Fixed NPCs getting stuck in the ground due to whirlpools... Probably.
• Fixed an error which could occur when trying to load a corrupted NameList.lst file, which would cause the file select screen to cease functioning and essentially lock players out of the game until the file was manually deleted. The game should now be able to recognize when the NameList file is corrupted and replace it with an uncorrupted file.
• Fixed whirlpools pulling on entities through one way colliders that the entity cannot pass through.
• Fixed some main menu sounds not playing after completing a challenge map.
• Fixed the grappling hook motor audio volume not being affected by volume settings.
• Fixed a bug where the world wouldn't render if the player unpaused the game on the same frame the pause screen transition finished playing.
• Fixed a visual issue that would occur when opening the advanced map while viewing the quick map.
• Fixed the hand icon sometimes not disappearing when finishing/losing a level with it active.
• Fixed the inventory saying "Nothing" when first spawning after loading a saved game even if an item is highlighted.
• Fixed some playground variants not having any chance to get apple or banana trees.
• Fixed a potted plant that was clipping through the wall in one faculty room.
• Fixed the pickup that appears for the party event disappearing when the event is over if it has been collected and swapped with another item.
• Several characters now override caption colors to make sure they are consistent.
• Fixed the "*SNAP*" caption for the grappling hook being green.
• Fixed the open save folder button not working on MacOS. NOTE: Since logs and save files are stored in two different locations on MacOS, this button will open two folders, the save folder and the log folder.
• Fixed Mrs. Pomp's stomping sound playing rapidly for a few moments when she is teleported.
• Fixed Baldi's sprite not immediately changing to his slap sprite as soon as he becomes dangerous again after being in a safe state.
• Fixed fog rendering onto some UI elements.

Known Issues

I have read all the bug reports posted on the Steam forums for version 0.6! If you reported a bug that wasn't fixed and don't see it on the known issues list, I have probably noted it internally but have not listed it here due to it being low priority. That, or it's working as intended. Note that many of the issues listed here have been reported by players, but I have yet to reproduce them myself, so the accuracy of them might vary.

• Balloons occasionally clip into objects.
• NPCs will often not try to flip themselves when they are oriented opposite the player during Gravity Chaos. This can lead to strange NPC behavior.
• NPCs will occasionally appear to turn-around when entering open areas where a hallway bridges between two different parts of that open area.
• Lockdown doors near spawn can be seen snapping into the open position at game start.
• Dr. Reflex can squish NPCs even when they do not match his orientation during Gravity Chaos.
• Captions are more likely to stack on top of each other and become hard to read due to the new sound propagation system. I plan on finding a way to prevent captions from rendering on top of each other.
• There is no indication for when entities are about to become unsquished.
• It is possible to see out of bounds while being rotated by a gravity flipper while squished.
• On some screen resolutions, it is possible to see a gap through some elements on the elevator screen.
• Some NPCs are very annoying when they are squished.
• Wind and conveyor belt audio is not propagated.
• NPCs will occasionally end up wandering into an area they should be fleeing from.
• Dr. Reflex can sometimes get his hammer early while being pushed around by outside forces or when he is not able to find a path to his clinic.
• NPCs can collide with other entities through walls, triggering their effects.
• Math Machine balloons can rarely get stuck behind the diagonal math machine.
• Principal, under some circumstances, can maintain his fast speed after using the principal whistle.
• Arts and Crafters' echoes while attacking don't always match his orientation during the gravity event.
• A seed is displayed when playing pre-made maps.
• Held sprite objects, such as the math machine balloons, can be held into other areas such that their lighting noticeably changes.
• Mrs. Pomp doesn't wander around class rooms in pre-made maps. She just stands in a corner.
• Certain sound effects are delayed while the environment is frozen (Such as when Mrs. Pomp is asking the player to come to her class).
• Maps from saved games of Hide & Seek from older versions of the game will fill out the areas found from the previous play session, even if it doesn't match new level generation.
• Principal doesn't open office doors during detention while fleeing from a tape.
• During the flood, hall swinging doors do not open, while swinging doors that lead into rooms do open.
• The speed at which items slide in and out of the inventory can be inconsistent. This does not affect the responsiveness of using items.
• AudioManagers playing multiple sounds in different mixer groups at once causes volume conflicts.
• NPCs occasionally getting stuck in rooms.
• One-way swinging doors can generate on top of standard swinging doors.
• Cloudy Copter's wind can pass through solid objects like lockdown doors.
• Placing an alarm clock in a doorway prevents the door from being clicked.
• Gotta Sweep can navigate through locked standard doors but will not open them.
• The Test can spawn close to the player.
• Some users have reported getting regular BSODAs from Diet BSODA machines. I have not been able to reproduce this. If someone finds a way to reproduce this or can record it happening, please let me know.

[ 2024-07-29 14:00:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

I'm happy to announce that Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.6 is available now! This is a few days earlier than expected, but I'm going to be pretty busy with some IRL stuff for the much of next week so I figured it would be best to release this update now. The biggest change in this update is the introduction of the tentatively named Pitstop. This is a small area that loads between levels/attempts where you can buy items, manage your items in the new storage locker and, in version 0.7, go on field trips! Johnny's store, which is now a 3D room, can also be visited in endless mode, where you'll be able to spend the YTPs you earn on items. The store will restock every so often so make sure you check in when you're in a pinch! Unfortunately, as development of a third (And final) version of field trips is underway, I had to strip the game of the previously available camping field trip. My apologies for the inconvenience. My plan is to finish up this new version of the field trips in time for 0.7. Hopefully, the third time will be the charm and the changes I'm making will be a lot more fun and please everyone! This update also includes a new item, the Diet BSODA! Diet BSODA is mostly the same as regular BSODA, except it only lasts three seconds. Since normal BSODA is a pretty overpowered item I wanted to find a way to balance it without ruining it, so I decided a good solution would be to introduce a weaker version of the item and make the original much rarer. Now you will find Diet BSODA about as often as regular BSODA showed up, while normal BSODA is harder to find, but more precious as a result. I'm hoping this change will make the game a bit more challenging without totally undermining existing strategies! Aside from those changes I've also made several improvements to the interface and HUD. In particular, I've added several sound effects to certain interactions that were previously silent and polished out a few small quirks that I'd never been fully satisfied with. The game now offers players more feedback when they interact with it! With all that said, here's the full changelog:

Additions

• Added the (Tentatively named) Pitstop. This is a small rest area which loads between levels or before a level reloads after losing a life. In the Pitstop you can:
  • Visit Johnny's store and buy items with YTPs inside a new 3D store.
  • Manage items in the storage locker.
  • Save & Quit
  • In the near future, go on field trips.
  • And in the further future, even more cool stuff!
• Johnny's Store can now occasionally have items on sale at a randomized discount.
• Johnny can, once per-game, lend a hand by letting you by an item if you are 100 YTPs or less short of being able to afford it.
• Johnny's Store now appears in endless maps, and you can buy items with the YTPs you've earned. It starts out closed but will open once five notebooks have been collected, and will restock every five after that.
  • All YTP values are multiplied by three in endless order to easily afford items.
  • Johnny can now be robbed.
• Added several new sound effects where previously there were none. These sounds are:
  • Notebook pickup
  • Item pickup
  • Clicking menu items
  • Using the dirty chalk eraser
  • Inserting a tape in the tape player
  • Using the swinging door lock
  • Earning YTPs
  • Unique sounds for picking up 25, 50, and 100 YTP items
• Added the Baldi TV to the HUD to replace the event announcement text that would appear at the bottom of the screen. Now, when an announcement needs to be made, a TV screen will lower from the upper left corner of the screen and display relevant information. Usually, it shows Baldi speaking as he announces an event or tells the player that all the notebooks have been collected.
• Added a tooltip box to the HUD which can appear to show item descriptions while in Johnny's store.
• Added the storage locker.
  • Appears in a random location in the halls of every level as well as the Pitstop.
  • This locker can be opened and you can place up to three items inside, which will carry over from level to level. The contents are saved every time you finish a level or leave the pitstop, but will reset to how they were previously when you lose a round, just like the inventory does. You can use this to save more valuable items you've found early in the game for later without using up inventory slots.
  • When it closes, it makes a loud noise Baldi hears.
  • If you walk away from it while it is open, it will close on its own.
  • Using it will get you in trouble with Principal of the Thing for looking in other people's lockers. The player will remain guilty until the door is shut, even if they are seemingly away from the locker (For example, if a wall is between the player and locker but the player hasn't moved far away enough for it to close itself).
• Added the Diet BSODA. This behaves similar to BSODA, but the spray only lasts three seconds.
• Added Diet BSODA vending machines.
• Added a skip button to the elevator which will skip the pitstop and load the next level if the player so desires.

Changes

• Made several improvements to the HUD.
  • The staminometer needle no longer snaps to it's correct position when the stamina value makes a big jump. Instead, it quickly, but smoothly, slides to the intended position.
  • When items are collected or lost, the item can be seen quickly sliding in and out of the inventory.
  • The notebook counter in the top left has been simplified to just the notebook count and an icon, rather than displaying the text "#/# Notebooks. The icon plays a small animation when notebooks are collected.
  • Improved the YTP information display when gaining or losing YTPs. Now, a display rises from the bottom of the screen and the amount of YTPs being earned will fall into the display. The display will then add up the earned YTPs before lowering off screen again. This display also lifts up while in Johnny's store so you can see how many YTPs you have.
  • Many HUD elements will darken to indicate when you are in an "invisible" state. When invisible, NPCs cannot see you.
• Field Trips no longer load in levels. When they return, they will be accessible in the Pitstop.
• Updated the textures for red and blue lockers.
• The fan favorite "nothing" item, which now appears in empty storage locker slots, now has a question mark sprite assigned as its large icon.
• Made big optimizations to light generation allowing light data to be recalculated at runtime with no noticeable performance impact. With this improvement, light will now respond to changes in the environment. For example, when placing a portal poster, light will now propagate through it.
• The Dirty Chalk Eraser cloud now sets the player as invisible in addition to preventing NPCs from seeing past it.
• WD-NoSquee has been overhauled such that it now creates a quiet zone when used and can be used anywhere, rather than needing to be used on specific objects. This quiet zone spreads about five cells out from the cell it is used on and all sounds made within it will not be heard by Baldi or any other characters. The quiet zone is signified by sparkles that appear and lasts for five minutes.
• The order and timing of random events is now independent of the seed, and will be different on every attempt of a level. The selection of random events to be used is still dependent on the seed, however.
• Changed the event start notification sound.
• Changed the Math Machine correct and incorrect sounds.
• Changed the countdown voice for the Test Procedure event.
• The payphone now plays a coin drop sound when using a quarter on it.
• Tweaked some event timing parameters.
• Added to and tweaked some info in the credits.
• Reduced flood ambient volume.
• The vending machines found in faculty rooms can now be randomized to other types of vending machines.
• Regular BSODA is now much rarer, with Diet BSODA being about as common as regular BSODA used to be.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a typo in one of Johnny's captions.
• Corrected a typo in licenses.txt.
• Actually fixed the flood ambient sound playing at normal volume for the first frame. It now fades in properly.
• Fixed being able to buy the map again for a floor it has already been purchased for.
• Fixed several objects in the playground rooms not being culled properly.
• Fixed the inventory saying "Nothing" when spawning even if an item is highlighted.
• Fixed an oversight that made it impossible to get in trouble for using BSODA.
• Fixed gum floating in place when the object it collided with is moved or disabled. It will now disappear if this occurs.
• Fixed Chalkles' audio cutting out when flying outside the room the player is in.

Pre-release Changelog

• Fixed a bug where, if a level ended while the Baldi TV static sound was playing, it would continue to play indefinitely.
• Added a poster to the Pitstop signifying where to Save & Quit.

Known Issues

Note that many of the issues listed here have been reported by players, but I have yet to reproduce them myself, so the accuracy of them might vary.

• Balloons occasionally clip into objects.
• NPCs will often not try to flip themselves when they are oriented opposite the player during Gravity Chaos. This can lead to strange NPC behavior.
• NPCs will occasionally appear to turn-around when entering open areas where a hallway bridges between two different parts of that open area.
• Lockdown doors near spawn can be seen snapping into the open position at game start.
• Dr. Reflex can squish NPCs even when they do not match his orientation during Gravity Chaos.
• Captions are more likely to stack on top of each other and become hard to read due to the new sound propagation system. I plan on finding a way to prevent captions from rendering on top of each other.
• There is no indication for when entities are about to become unsquished.
• It is possible to see out of bounds while being rotated by a gravity flipper while squished.
• On some screen resolutions, it is possible to see a gap through some elements on the elevator screen.
• Some NPCs are very annoying when they are squished.
• Wind and conveyor belt audio is not propagated.
• NPCs will occasionally end up wandering into an area they should be fleeing from.
• Dr. Reflex can sometimes get his hammer early while being pushed around by outside forces.
• NPCs will occasionally get stuck on the merry-go-round.
• NPCs can collide with other entities through walls, triggering their effects.
• Math Machine balloons can rarely get stuck behind the diagonal math machine.
• Principal, under some circumstances, can maintain his fast speed after using the principal whistle.
• Whirlpools that spawn behind a closed elevator gate still pull on the player, and this can cause the player to get stuck if there are multiple whirlpools.
• Dr. Reflex's sprite rarely getting tilted when pushed by multiple outside forces at once.
• Holding the quick map open while opening the advanced map causes a small visual issue.
• Arts and Crafters' echoes while attacking don't always match his orientation during the gravity event.
• A seed is displayed when playing pre-made maps.
• Held sprite objects, such as the math machine balloons, can be held into other areas such that their lighting noticeably changes.
• Mrs. Pomp doesn't wander around class rooms in pre-made maps. She just stands in a corner.
• Certain sound effects are delayed while the environment is frozen (Such as when Mrs. Pomp is asking the player to come to her class).
• Maps from saved games of Hide & Seek from older versions of the game will fill out the areas found from the previous play session, even if it doesn't match new level generation.
• Principal doesn't open office doors during detention while fleeing from a tape.
• During the flood, hall swinging doors do not open, while swinging doors that lead into rooms do open.
• NPCs can rarely end up stuck in the ground after the flood event. (A potential fix for this is lined up for a future update).
• The speed at which items slide in and out of the inventory can be inconsistent. This does not affect the responsiveness of using items.

[ 2024-07-12 21:09:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all! Today I'm posting a small status update to share some of the stuff I expect to make its way into version 0.6! Since releasing version 0.5, most of my time has been spent working on one really big change/new feature instead of several smaller new features. Because of this I may have to delay the update a week or two just to make sure I get it wrapped up and ready to ship first (I normally aim for the first Monday of every other month for major update releases). Normally I wouldn't delay an update like this under my new release schedule, and would just release it with whatever is ready, however if I do that for 0.6 before finishing this stuff, it will be a pretty small update. So what is the big change I've been working on? The (tentatively named) Pit Stop!
Now, between levels/attempts, you can visit The Pit Stop to shop, go on field trips when they are available and manage items with the new storage locker (More on that below). I have future plans for another big, brand new feature here as well, but until I've tested it and determined that it's actually a good idea it will remain top secret!
Johnny's store is now a room that maintains the style and functionality of the shop you're familiar with. Since it's an actual room now, it will also be able to appear in levels! I mainly intend to spawn it in endless mode so that you'll have somewhere to spend YTPs, however I'm also going to experiment with having the store appear in Hide & Seek levels.
Field trips will take place here now as well! After considering the changes I already had planned for field trips alongside feedback regarding how they currently work, I came to the conclusion that they would work better in The Pit Stop than in the middle of levels, since they break the pacing of Hide & Seek too much.
Unfortunately I don't think the new field trips will be ready in time for 0.6, so it will not have any. I removed the current camping minigame to clear the way for the new field trip system, so if you want to keep a version of the game that has that minigame now's the time to make a backup copy of the current version! My plan is to have field trips return in 0.7. Here's a teaser for that!
Then there's the storage locker! This big green locker appears in The Pit Stop and is also guaranteed to appear somewhere in every level. You can place items inside to store them for later, and the contents will carry over from level to level so you can stow away the best items for when you need them most. As with your inventory, the contents of the locker are saved every time you start a level, and will revert to the saved state whenever a life is lost.
Lastly, there's an exit which you can use to save and quit, replacing the save and quit button in the elevator. Aside from the pit stop and related changes, I've worked on a handful of smaller things, like some improvements to the HUD and optimizations to the lighting system which will finally allow lighting to respond to changes in the level layout (Meaning light will now pass through portal posters for example). There's also a new structure I'd like to work on soon! If I have time I'll try squeezing it in, but it's one of those things that could take a few hours to several days to finish. I think that's all I want to share right now! I'll let you all know when I've pinned down a solid release date for 0.6 and its pre-release. Until then I'll be busy getting this update ready to go!

[ 2024-06-17 18:55:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! With the last update, a new bug crept in that caused some captions to freeze in place in certain scenarios. That seemed like it would be a pretty annoying issue, so instead of saving the fix for another big patch in a few weeks, I decided to just release a small hotfix to take care of the issue now. In other news, Baldi's Basics Plus is currently 30% off as part of Steam's Endless Replayability Fest! Now's a great time to grab the game if you haven't yet! Here's the full (albeit tiny) changelog for version 0.5.2:

Bug Fixes

• Fixed some captions permanently freezing in place and never disappearing in some scenarios.
• Fixed propagated audio managers playing audio from an incorrect position on the first frame they are loaded. This issue also affected captions and so captions appearing in the incorrect position on the first frame they appear should also be fixed.

[ 2024-05-14 17:47:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Thanks for all the bug reports. I've spent most of my development time this past week fixing bugs, and version 0.5.1 brings all these fixes to you! Here's the full changelog:

Changes

• Dr. Reflex now opens locked standard doors when he passes through them, just like other school faculty characters do.
• Adjusted the balance of rare items.
• It's a Bully now only pushes the player and NPCs. Other entities now pass through him.
• Chalkles now forces all doors in the room shut when he activates.
• Mystery rooms no longer appear on the map, even if the map is purchased from Johnny.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed 'Nana Peels being lost from the inventory when saving and continuing a game.
• Fixed stamina not dropping when running against an opposing force such that the player's overall velocity is less than their walking speed.
• Fixed issues with how angles were calculated for sprites with multiple viewing angles.
• Fixed an issue that caused an empty caption to appear during the flood event.
• Fixed a confusing issue with power tubes. When the elevator screen is loaded, it will show how many tubes the player has at the moment, but now the tubes will also be updated when a new level is loaded and power tubes are restored to 3.
• Fixed the elevator for endless mode showing 2 power tubes instead of 1.
• Fixed a bug that caused some items with time limits, such as the name tag and boots, to continue using up time during field trips, wasting them.
• Fixed portal posters never spawning in levels.
• Fixed the principal whistle never appearing in Johnny's Store.
• Fixed a bug where an entity sliding on a banana peel into the bully would result in it getting stuck bouncing off of the bully until he left (And sometimes making a horrible noise as well).
• Fixed a bug where getting sucked into a whirlpool while holding a math machine balloon would result in it getting lowered.
• Fixed inaccessible cells being visible on the map as part of some of the new cafeterias and libraries when purchasing the map from Johnny.
• Fixed a bug that allowed lockers to generate into other rooms through doors or other openings.
• Fixed Dr. Reflex not always facing an entity as he squishes it.
• Partially fixed a bug that allowed swinging doors to generate on top of one-way doors and possibly other types. This may still happen occasionally but I have fixed one of the ways this could happen.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally resulted in some items in levels not being dependent on the seed.
• Fixed captions continuing to render for game objects that have been disabled (In particular, Arts & Crafters' caption remaining visible even after disappearing).
• Fixed a bug that allowed the player to click on a Math Machine after their held balloon has popped and still be able to submit the last held number as an answer.

Potential Bug Fixes

These are bugs that I was not able to reproduce myself, but that I still attempted to fix by reviewing code and cleaning out potential flaws. Since I have not been able to test these bugs myself, I cannot verify they have been fixed. If anyone still experiences any of the below bugs, please let me know and try to provide as many details as possible to help me figure out how to reproduce the bug.

• Hopefully fixed a bug that would cause Dr. Reflex to tilt the player camera up or down when turning the player to face him.
• Hopefully fixed a bug that would rarely cause Baldi to stop counting down at the beginning of the level and never beginning the game, allowing players to get through the level without any characters spawning or events starting. This fix was attempted by adding a failsafe to the AudioManager sound queueing system.

Technical

• The players height can no longer be changed by walking into a sloped collider or by any other means. This is a failsafe as sloped colliders should not be in the game but may occasionally slip in (As happened in version 0.4).
• Some cells in levels can now be marked as secret and won't appear on the map, even if purchased from Johnny.

Known Issues

Note that many of the issues listed here have been reported by players, but I have yet to reproduce them myself, so the accuracy of them might vary.

• Balloons occasionally clip into objects.
• NPCs will often not try to flip themselves when they are oriented opposite the player during Gravity Chaos. This can lead to strange NPC behavior.
• NPCs will occasionally appear to turn-around when entering open areas where a hallway bridges between two different parts of that open area.
• Lockdown doors near spawn can be seen snapping into the open position at game start.
• Dr. Reflex can squish NPCs even when they do not match his orientation during Gravity Chaos.
• Captions are more likely to stack on top of each other and become hard to read due to the new sound propagation system. I plan on finding a way to prevent captions from rendering on top of each other.
• There is no indication for when entities are about to become unsquished.
• It is possible to see out of bounds while being rotated by a gravity flipper while squished.
• On some screen resolutions, it is possible to see a gap through some elements on the elevator screen.
• Some NPCs are very annoying when they are squished.
• Wind and conveyor belt audio is not propagated.
• NPCs will occasionally end up wandering into an area they should be fleeing from.
• Dr. Reflex can sometimes get his hammer early while being pushed around by outside forces.
• NPCs will occasionally get stuck on the merry-go-round.
• NPCs can collide with other entities through walls, triggering their effects.
• Math Machine balloons can rarely get stuck behind the diagonal math machine.
• Principal, under some circumstances, can maintain his fast speed after using the principal whistle.
• Whirlpools that spawn behind a closed elevator gate still pull on the player, and this can cause the player to get stuck if there are multiple whirlpools.
• Dr. Reflex's sprite rarely getting tilted when pushed by multiple outside forces at once.
• Holding the quick map open while opening the advanced map causes a small visual issue.
• Arts and Crafters' echoes while attacking don't always match his orientation during the gravity event.
• When spawning in a level, the inventory says "Nothing" even if an item is highlighted.
• Chalkles' voice sometimes cuts out while laughing due to the audio being propagated and entering another room/going out of bounds.
• Going on a field trip while the "all notebooks" notification sound is playing will cause it to play a second time after returning from the field trip.
• A seed is displayed when playing pre-made maps.
• Held sprite objects, such as the math machine balloons, can be held into other areas such that their lighting noticeably changes.
• Mrs. Pomp doesn't wander around class rooms in pre-made maps. She just stands in a corner.
• Certain sound effects are delayed while the environment is frozen (Such as when Mrs. Pomp is asking the player to come to her class).
• Maps from saved games of Hide & Seek from older versions of the game will fill out the areas found from the previous play session, even if it doesn't match new level generation.
• Principal doesn't open office doors during detention while fleeing from a tape.
• Beans' gum will float if the surface it hit is moved away.
• During the flood, hall swinging doors do not open, while swinging doors that lead into rooms do open.
• The map in Johnny's store doesn't remain sold out after buying it when replaying the same level.
• NPCs can rarely end up stuck in the ground after the flood event (If anyone can figure out how to reproduce this please let me know because I cannot).

[ 2024-05-13 14:00:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.5 is now available! This update features a brand new item, the 'Nana Peel! Toss it on the ground and anyone that steps on it will slip and slide and bounce around until they hit an obstacle dead-on. This includes you! You can use it in a variety of situations to maneuver around characters, trap them, send them away or to give yourself a small speed boost. This update also adds You Thought Point pickups. These plus icons appear as items, but instead of going to your inventory, they add YTPs instantly! The more you explore, the more you'll be rewarded! Speaking of YTPs, this update also includes the new Power Bonus! This multiplies the YTPs earned in a level (Excluding from field trips) by the number of lives you have when you finish. This not only rewards better play, but it fixes a design issue where dying and replaying levels three times each allowed players to grind YTPs, making it the optimal way to play despite being super grindy. Alongside those big new features, this update also brings new room variants, posters and other small tweaks. The full changelog can be viewed below.

Additions

• New item, the "'Nana Peel"
• Dropped 'nana peels can spawn in cafeterias.
• Banana Trees can rarely spawn in playgrounds. These are surrounded by dropped 'nana peels.
• You Thought Point Pickups.
• Several new posters were added.
• A new type of poster, bulletin boards, was added. These only appear in faculty only rooms.
• Added a few different variants for the cafeteria, playground and library.

Changes

• Reworked the way items are distributed into levels by creating a loot table system.
  • Now, each level generates a list of items that should be found in it based on a set of parameters. These items are then placed throughout the level such that more valuable items favor harder to reach areas. Previously, items were generated by rooms individually, which meant it was almost impossible to control item balance per-level without changing the number of rooms that generated in a level.
• Reworked the elevator results screen to show the power bonus and other values in a more sensical order.
  • The "Total YTPs" value on the screen now shows the YTPs earned in that level times the Power Bonus instead of the total YTPs the player has at the moment.
• Many balance changes regarding items found in levels and YTP item prices in Johnny's Store.
• Slightly reduced the volume of Beans' voicelines.
• Big rooms in level 3 no longer have to be at the edge of the level.
• Dr. Reflex is no longer guaranteed to appear in a run.
• When telling a player to come to her class, Mrs. Pomp now favors class rooms that are farther away when choosing a room.
• Getting sent to detention or teleported by Arts and Crafters now resets Baldi's sound queue. He will now always head directly to the alerted position unless distracted by another source after the player is teleported.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that could cause some audio clips to be ignored when pausing/unpausing the game (E.g. pausing while Dr. Reflex was saying "try again!" would sometimes result in him ending the line early and starting another test).
• Fixed a bug that allowed posters to generate behind the water fountain in the cafeteria.
• Fixed some Beans' audio clips that were miscategorized and didn't properly reflect audio settings.
• Fixed various unintentional typos.
• Fixed the Math Machine rewarding double the intended amount of YTPs when correctly solving it.
• Fixed the portal poster being usable on one-way walls and not doing anything.
• Fixed a bug that would cause some positional audio captions to appear as non-positional captions (E.g. the conveyor belt caption in the endless medium map).
• Fixed an oversight where Principal of the Thing would shut and lock all doors when entering/leaving detention. Now, all doors will be shut/locked only when first teleporting into detention. When Principal enters/leaves through a door, only that door will be affected.
• Fixed an oversight that allowed Mrs. Pomp to have her class in a room she or the player is already in when first talking to the player.
• Fixed the flood water object not being big enough to entirely cover large levels.
• Fixed bus rendering issues.
• Fixed being able to look backwards while in a locker.
• Fixed doors staying open indefinitely when being forced shut during a flood.
• Fixed a bug that caused some entity/NPC movement to be somewhat inconsistent with other game elements when pausing/unpausing. This allowed for exploits in certain situations, such as being able to pause the game while being pushed by First Prize to escape being pushed.
• Fixed stamina dropping when run is held but the player is moving slower than their walking speed.

Pre-release Changelog

• Fixed a level generator crash that would occur when there were not enough item spawn points in a level to place all the items in the loot table.
• Fixed the endless random map always crashing.
• Added 'Nana Peel to Johnny's store.

Known Issues

Note that many of the issues listed here have been reported by players, but I have yet to reproduce them myself, so the accuracy of them might vary.

• Balloons occasionally clip into objects.
• NPCs will often not try to flip themselves when they are oriented opposite the player during Gravity Chaos. This can lead to strange NPC behavior.
• NPCs will occasionally appear to turn-around when entering open areas where a hallway bridges between two different parts of that open area.
• Lockdown doors near spawn can be seen snapping into the open position at game start.
• Dr. Reflex will not always be facing the entity he is hitting with his hammer.
• Dr. Reflex can squish NPCs even when they do not match his orientation during Gravity Chaos.
• Captions are more likely to stack on top of each other and become hard to read due to the new sound propagation system. I plan on finding a way to prevent captions from rendering on top of each other.
• There is no indication for when entities are about to become unsquished.
• It is possible to see out of bounds while being rotated by a gravity flipper while squished.
• On some screen resolutions, it is possible to see a gap through some elements on the elevator screen.
• Some NPCs are very annoying when they are squished.
• Wind and conveyor belt audio is not propagated.
• NPCs will occasionally end up wandering into an area they should be fleeing from.
• Dr. Reflex can sometimes get his hammer early while being pushed around by outside forces.
• NPCs will occasionally get stuck on the merry-go-round.
• NPCs can collide with other entities through walls, triggering their effects.
• Math Machine balloons can rarely get stuck behind the diagonal math machine.
• One-way doors can generate directly next to lockdown doors.
• One-way doors can generate on top of regular swinging doors.
• Principal, under some circumstances, can maintain his fast speed after using the principal whistle.
• Whirlpools that spawn behind a closed elevator gate still pull on the player, and this can cause the player to get stuck if there are multiple whirlpools.
• The camera can rarely be rotated up/down when getting turned around by Dr. Reflex.
• Dr. Reflex's sprite rarely getting tilted when pushed by multiple outside forces at once.
• Holding the quick map open while opening the advanced map causes a small visual issue.
• Arts and Crafters' echoes while attacking don't always match his orientation during the gravity event.
• When spawning in a level, the inventory says "Nothing" even if an item is highlighted.
• The wrong amount of power tubes is displayed when playing certain modes.
• Mrs. Pomp's map icon is awkwardly placed in some rooms.
• Chalkles' voice sometimes cuts out while laughing due to the audio being propagated and entering another room/going out of bounds.
• Going on a field trip while the "all notebooks" notification sound is playing will cause it to play a second time after returning from the field trip.
• A seed is displayed when playing pre-made maps.
• Held sprite objects, such as the math machine balloons, can be held into other areas such that their lighting noticeably changes.
• Mrs. Pomp doesn't wander around class rooms in pre-made maps. She just stands in a corner.
• Certain sound effects are delayed while the environment is frozen (Such as when Mrs. Pomp is asking the player to come to her class).
• Maps from saved games of Hide & Seek from older versions of the game will fill out the areas found from the previous play session, even if it doesn't match new level generation.
• Principal doesn't open office doors during detention while fleeing from a tape.
• Beans' gum will float if the surface it hit is moved away.
• During the flood, hall swinging doors do not open, while swinging doors that lead into rooms do open.
• The map in Johnny's store doesn't remain sold out after buying it when replaying the same level.

That's all for this update. This next week I'll be almost exclusively focused on fixing bugs for version 0.5.1! Of course, please be sure to report any bugs you find in this update that are not already listed as a known issue. Thanks, and enjoy the update!

[ 2024-05-06 14:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! I'm posting a quick status update to let you all know what's up with version 0.5 of Baldi's Basics Plus! First though, I'd like to say thanks to all the support and feedback I've gotten since the release of version 0.4. I'm so glad so many people are enjoying the new update and loving the new character, Dr. Reflex! Now regarding 0.5, I want to keep expectations in check so I'll say now that this update will be on the smaller side. With how long and how intensely I was working on 0.4, I was putting off a bit of personal business for a while that all added up over time. So, since releasing 0.4 and a few patches, I've taken off more time than usual to take care of things. Taxes, property maintenance, Basically Games business/legal stuff, etc. Add to that a few days of time off to spend with friends and family and I haven't gotten as much Baldi's Basics dev work done as I normally would, but don't worry! My work life imbalance will correct itself with all this stuff done and future updates should be a little bit more substantial in terms of content.

0.5 Info

There are two main things you can expect in 0.5: A new item and big changes to item and You Thought Points balance.

New item

I'm not going to reveal what the new item is just yet, but as I mentioned on my Twitter a few weeks ago, I think it will be the most versatile item to be added to the game so far! It has one simple mechanic, but can be used to great effect in a variety of different situations. It's also pretty funny! I'm looking forward to seeing how you all slip it into your strategies once 0.5 releases!

Item balance

The other big new change is to item and You Thought Point distribution and balance. First, the way items are placed into randomly generated levels is getting overhauled. Currently, each room has items spawned inside separately from other rooms. This makes it very hard to control item balance as more rooms always means more items. In 0.5, each level will instead generate its own loot table, a selection of items that are then to be distributed into the level. This means I can more easily control how many items and what kinds of items will be found in a level, regardless of the level's size. Expect the game to get a little harder in 0.5 as I reduce the number of items in each level a bit. Hopefully this will make the game a bit more interesting to play as really powerful items won't be quite as prevalent, meaning you'll have to get more creative with other items! Of course, I'll be monitoring player feedback to continue tweaking the game balance.

New way to collect You Thought Points

You Thought Points are also getting some big balance changes. First off, YTPs will be able to be earned by collecting plus icons!
These plus icons are unique items that immediately reward you some YTPs instead of going into your inventory. They can be found in green, silver, and gold variants that add 25, 50 and 100 YTPs respectively. If you want to get as many YTPs as possible, you'll want to make sure you fully explore each level to find as many of these as you can!

Power Bonus

There's one more big change coming to the YTP system though, and that's the Power Bonus! Now when you finish a level, all the YTPs you earned in that level will be multiplied by the number of power tubes you have. So 3X if you beat the level on the first try and 2X if you finish on the second. If it takes you three tries, you get no bonus. I added this multiplier to tackle a game design issue where it was technically advantageous to intentionally lose and replay levels after nearly finishing them to grind YTPs. This isn't something I've noticed players doing, but I still want to make sure the optimal way to play is fun! The Power Bonus eliminates this issue entirely and rewards better play. With this change comes increased prices in Johnny's store of course, as the average number of YTPs earned per-level is much higher now. My goal will be to balance prices in the shop so that it's a bit harder than it currently is to afford items, which will make it more important for players to try and get as many YTPs as possible. Again though, I will be monitoring feedback and adjusting accordingly! In the future, there will be more things to spend YTPs on, but I'm not ready to talk about any of that yet. Stay tuned!

And a little more!

So far, those are the two most notable things I'm certain will be coming in version 0.5, but I'm still working on the update! There will be other small changes and additions as well. I've been thinking about adding more posters lately, and I will probably throw a few new room variants into the update as well. I'll have all the final details when 0.5 releases! When does 0.5 release, you ask?

Release date

I plan on releasing the 0.5 Pre-release to Kickstarter Demo backers on April 29, followed by the public release on May 6. Mark your calendars!

New ANGRY Baldi Plushie!

Last year I teamed up with Makeship to release a Happy Baldi plushie. This year, we've created an ANGRY Baldi plushie with a detachable ruler!
The campaign is almost over. It ends this weekend! So don't wait too long if you'd like to grab one. There's no guarantee that this plushie will ever be made again after this! Each purchase will also include a Steam code for Baldi's Basics Plus. I'm sure many of you already have the game, so you can share the code with a friend! The codes will all be sent out some time after the campaign is finished.

That's it!

That's all I've got to share right now. Thank you all for the support and see you when 0.5 is ready to release!

[ 2024-04-08 20:56:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

The new ANGRY Baldi plushie campaign from Makeship is LIVE NOW! It will only be available to purchase until April 12, so don't wait too long! Every purchase will also include a Steam code for Baldi's Basics Plus! This is a great way to get the game if you haven't yet. If you do already have the game, you can share the code with a friend! I'm super happy with how this new plushie turned out. It even includes a detachable ruler accessory Baldi can hold! You can check it out here.
If at least 200 units are sold, the campaign will be successful and the plushie will be produced shortly after! If not, all orders will be refunded, so there's no risk in placing an order early. Steam codes will be sent out once the campaign ends.

[ 2024-03-23 00:35:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 0.4.2 is now available! This update may be small, but that's because I've begun working on new stuff! In fact, I've already finished a new item that will be added in version 0.5! As I continue working on new stuff, expect fewer bug fixes than in the 0.4.1 update. I'll try to get around to fixing all the current known issues eventually!

Changes

• Big Ol' Boots now last 60 seconds.
• Outside force modifiers (Such as wind or BSODA) now use a priority system that will cause lower priority modifiers to be ignored.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that would cause NPCs to navigate through walls when targeting, wandering, and then targeting again in quick succession, such that the start cell and target cell never changed with each calculation.
• Heavily reworked balloons to fix several issues they've had since the 0.4 update. They now pop when taken outside of a class room before respawning. When swapping a held balloon, the held balloon now takes the selected balloon's position. Balloons now have better movement.
• Fixed some issues relating to changing the height of a non-grounded entity.
• Fixed BSODA passing through entities when they are being pushed by multiple outside forces at the same time.
• Fixed BSODA and other non-grounded entities being affected by forces that should only affect grounded entities (Like the conveyor belt and merry-go-round).
• Fixed a bug where, if an entity was destroyed while on a merry-go-round (Such as an alarm clock despawning) it would cause the merry-go-round to stop affecting other entities.
• Fixed a bug that caused non-player entities being pushed by outside forces to move slightly faster than they should.
• Minor misc. fixes to the endless medium premade map.

Known Issues

Note that many of the issues listed here have been reported by players, but I have yet to reproduce them myself, so the accuracy of them might vary.

• Balloons occasionally clip into objects.
• NPCs will often not try to flip themselves when they are oriented opposite the player during Gravity Chaos. This can lead to strange NPC behavior.
• NPCs will occasionally appear to turn-around when entering open areas where a hallway bridges between two different parts of that open area.
• Lockdown doors near spawn can be seen snapping into the open position at game start.
• Principal Office door can get stuck open indefinitely if sent to detention during a flood.
• Dr. Reflex will not always be facing the entity he is hitting with his hammer.
• Dr. Reflex can squish NPCs even when they do not match his orientation during Gravity Chaos.
• Captions are more likely to stack on top of each other and become hard to read due to the new sound propagation system. I plan on finding a way to prevent captions from rendering on top of each other.
• There is no indication for when entities are about to become unsquished (Not a bug, just an issue I intend to address soon).
• It is possible to see out of bounds while being rotated by a gravity flipper while squished.
• On some screen resolutions, it is possible to see a gap through some elements on the elevator screen.
• Some NPCs are very annoying when they are squished.
• Wind and conveyor belt audio is not propagated.
• NPCs will occasionally end up wandering into an area they should be fleeing from.
• Dr. Reflex can sometimes get his hammer early while being pushed around by outside forces.
• NPCs will occasionally get stuck on the merry-go-round.
• NPCs can collide with other entities through walls, triggering their effects.
• Math Machine balloons can rarely get stuck behind the diagonal math machine.
• It is possible to escape being pushed by First Prize by pausing/unpausing the game rapidly.
• Principal locks all office doors when leaving his office during detention, even ones he is not leaving through, which can cause a door unlocked with keys to unexpectedly be locked again.
• Mrs. Pomp can ask you to come to a class room that the player is already in.
• One-way doors can generate directly next to lockdown doors.
• One-way doors can generate on top of regular swinging doors.
• Principal, under some circumstances, can maintain his fast speed after using the principal whistle.
• Stamina drops when trying to move even if the player cannot move.
• Whirlpools that spawn behind a closed elevator gate still pull on the player, and this can cause the player to get stuck if there are multiple whirlpools.
• The camera can rarely be rotated up/down when getting turned around by Dr. Reflex.
• Sometimes the edge of the flood water object can be seen.
• Dr. Reflex's sprite rarely getting tilted when pushed by multiple outside forces at once.
• Holding the quick map open while opening the advanced map causes a small visual issue.
• Arts and Crafters' echoes while attacking don't always match his orientation during the gravity event.
• When spawning in a level, the inventory says "Nothing" even if an item is highlighted.
• The wrong amount of power tubes is displayed when playing certain modes.
• Mrs. Pomp's map icon is awkwardly placed in some rooms.
• Chalkles' voice sometimes cuts out while laughing due to the audio being propagated and entering another room/going out of bounds.
• Going on a field trip while the "all notebooks" notification sound is playing will cause it to play a second time after returning from the field trip.
• A seed is displayed when playing pre-made maps.
• Held sprite objects, such as the math machine balloons, can be held into other areas such that their lighting noticeably changes.
• Mrs. Pomp doesn't wander around class rooms in pre-made maps. She just stands in a corner.
• Certain sound effects are delayed while the environment is frozen (Such as when Mrs. Pomp is asking the player to come to her class).
• Maps from saved games of Hide & Seek from older versions of the game will fill out the areas found from the previous play session, even if it doesn't match new level generation.
• Principal doesn't open office doors during detention while fleeing from a tape.
• Beans' gum will float if the surface it hit is moved away.
• You can look back while inside a locker.
• During the flood, hall swinging doors do not open, while swinging doors that lead into rooms do open.
• The map in Johnny's store doesn't remain sold out after buying it when replaying the same level.

[ 2024-03-20 19:16:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Baldi's Basics Plus players! First off I want to say a big THANK YOU for all the great feedback I've received regarding the 0.4 update! I'm so glad that so many of you are loving the update, and I will be taking the more constructive feedback and using it to improve the game where possible. Of course I also want to say thank you for all the bug reports that have been sent in! I would not have been able to fix so many bugs without them. Lastly, I want to note that old mods MUST be uninstalled before you can play the new updates! Several people have reported severe issues with the new update, primarily being unable to move when starting a game, and the cause has consistently been old mods conflicting with the new version of the game. If you have mods installed and are unsure how to properly uninstall them, the easiest way is to delete the entire Baldi's Basics Plus folder installed by Steam and re-install it. It is not always enough to just re-install it or check file integrity via Steam. If you are experiencing a game breaking issue, please make sure you don't have any old mods installed. With all that, here's the changelog for version 0.4.1, available now!

Changes/Additions

• Added an error screen to the elevator for when the level generator crashes. This screen will inform players that a crash occurred and give them instructions on how to submit a proper bug report.
• Mrs. Pomp no longer freezes the player in place when she first starts screaming at them.
• The party event now has NPCs wander around the Principal's office, rather than just stand in place.
• Math Machine balloons no longer have captions when they pop.
• Updated descriptions for explorer mode and challenges for clarity.
• Added a failsafe to the occlusion culling system which prevents it from crashing if an opening to an out of bounds area generates in a level.
• Made Kickstarter backer posters much rarer, and limited them to appear in level 1 only.
• Misc. code cleanup.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed some furniture with rotation that was misaligned around the Y-axis, allowing the player to change their height and fly over/under the level by walking into it.
• Fixed Mrs. Pomp being able to attack the player in rooms she cannot enter.
• Fixed Mrs. Pomp sometimes targeting a door that doesn't lead to a hallway.
• Fixed a bug that caused the player to be unable to move after using a teleporter while in a locker.
• Fixed the floodwaters being audible at full volume for a frame when the event starts.
• Fixed a bug that caused entities to get stuck in the ground when getting sucked into a whirlpool at the same time a field trip is played.
• Fixed an oversight that allowed players to use items during field trip minigames.
• Fixed Arts and Crafters attack sound being louder than intended and not respecting the sound effects volume setting.
• Fixed propagated audio being audible at the wrong volume level for a single frame when a level finished loading.
• Fixed several NullReferenceException errors that would occur when quitting to the main menu (These errors had no noticeable effect on gameplay).
• Fixed Dr. Reflex always knowing the player's location the same frame he gets angry, even if they were out of his line of sight.
• Fixed Baldi's "thanks for playing!" voiceline when quitting the game not respecting the voice volume setting. If the voice volume is zero, there will be no delay when quitting.
• Fixed The Test being able to move while not observed when its navigation was overridden by external events, such as the party event or playing the tape/phone.
• Fixed a bug that allowed hall lockers to be built into rooms.
• Fixed the elevator and elevator gate audio sources not being propagated.
• Fixed the order of challenge maps on the challenges menu to properly reflect the numerical order as displayed in the elevator.
• Fixed Baldi's "smarter than me!" caption not being green in some contexts.
• Further restricted the spawn positions of whirlpools to prevent players potentially getting stuck when the event ends while they are getting pulled down into a whirlpool.
• Fixed several issues with pre-made maps
  • Fixed notebooks icons being misplaced.
  • Fixed the playground in the grapple challenge not having the playground room function assigned.
  • Added EntitySafeSpawn points to all Principal's offices in premade maps. These points are used by some game events, and without them strange behavior would occur.
• Fixed a bug that could cause openings to an out of bounds area to form in special rooms (Like the playground or library).
• Fixed an object that was not being occluded properly.
• Fixed posters getting placed on the fence in outdoors areas.
• Fixed the library being the only special room to generate in level 3. Now the cafeteria can also generate in level 3.

Known Issues

Note that many of the issues listed here have been reported by players, but I have yet to reproduce them myself, so the accuracy of them might vary.

• NPCs are able to navigate through walls in rare cases. I'm not entirely sure under what conditions this is possible, but I've seen it happen a few times now.
• Balloons occasionally clip outside of rooms or into objects.
• NPCs will often not try to flip themselves when they are oriented opposite the player during Gravity Chaos. This can lead to strange NPC behavior.
• NPCs will occasionally appear to turn-around when entering open areas where a hallway bridges between two different parts of that open area.
• Lockdown doors near spawn can be seen snapping into the open position at game start.
• Principal Office door can get stuck open indefinitely if sent to detention during a flood.
• Dr. Reflex will not always be facing the entity he is hitting with his hammer.
• Dr. Reflex can squish NPCs even when they do not match his orientation during Gravity Chaos.
• Captions are more likely to stack on top of each other and become hard to read due to the new sound propagation system. I plan on finding a way to prevent captions from rendering on top of each other.
• There is no indication for when entities are about to become unsquished (Not a bug, just an issue I intend to address soon).
• It is possible to see out of bounds while being rotated by a gravity flipper while squished.
• On some screen resolutions, it is possible to see a gap through some elements on the elevator screen.
• Some NPCs are very annoying when they are squished.
• Wind and conveyor belt audio is not propagated.
• NPCs will occasionally end up wandering into an area they should be fleeing from.
• Dr. Reflex can sometimes get his hammer early while being pushed around by outside forces.
• NPCs will occasionally get stuck on the merry-go-round.
• NPCs can collide with other entities through walls, triggering their effects.
• Math Machine balloons can rarely get stuck behind the diagonal math machine.
• It is possible to escape being pushed by First Prize by pausing/unpausing the game rapidly.
• Using a BSODA to push an entity that is being pushed by a conveyor belt/wind in the direction the belt/wind is moving will cause it to pass through the entity.
• Math Machine balloons can end up outside of their correct room sometimes.
• Principal locks all office doors when leaving his office during detention, even ones he is not leaving through, which can cause a door unlocked with keys to unexpectedly be locked again.
• Mrs. Pomp can ask you to come to a class room that the player is already in.
• One-way doors can generate directly next to lockdown doors.
• One-way doors can generate on top of regular swinging doors.
• Principal, under some circumstances, can maintain his fast speed after using the principal whistle.
• Stamina drops when trying to move even if the player cannot move.
• Whirlpools that spawn behind a closed elevator gate still pull on the player, and this can cause the player to get stuck if there are multiple whirlpools.
• The camera can rarely be rotated up/down when getting turned around by Dr. Reflex.
• Sometimes the edge of the flood water object can be seen.
• Dr. Reflex's sprite rarely getting tilted when pushed by multiple outside forces at once.
• Holding the quick map open while opening the advanced map causes a small visual issue.
• Arts and Crafters' echoes while attacking don't always match his orientation during the gravity event.
• When spawning in a level, the inventory says "Nothing" even if an item is highlighted.
• The wrong amount of power tubes is displayed when playing certain modes.
• Mrs. Pomp's map icon is awkwardly placed in some rooms.
• Chalkles' voice sometimes cuts out while laughing due to the audio being propagated and entering another room/going out of bounds.
• Going on a field trip while the "all notebooks" notification sound is playing will cause it to play a second time after returning from the field trip.
• A seed is displayed when playing pre-made maps.
• Held sprites objects, such as the math machine balloons, can be held into other areas such that their lighting noticeably changes.
• Mrs. Pomp doesn't wander around class rooms in pre-made maps. She just stands in a corner.
• Certain sound effects are delayed while the environment is frozen (Such as when Mrs. Pomp is asking the player to come to her class).
• Maps from saved games of Hide & Seek from older versions of the game will fill out the areas found from the previous play session, even if it doesn't match new level generation.
• Principal doesn't open office doors during detention while fleeing from a tape.
• Beans' gum will float if the surface it hit is moved away.
• You can look back while inside a locker.
• Dr. Reflex is moved slightly faster by wind/conveyor belts than he should.
• During the flood, hall swinging doors do not open, while swinging doors that lead into rooms do open.
• The map in Johnny's store doesn't remain sold out after buying it when replaying the same level.

[ 2024-03-01 20:55:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

I'm very happy to announce that Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.4 is available right now! I know it's been a long wait, but this update brings with it a lot of changes that not only make for a significantly better gameplay experience, but also a much smoother development experience on my end. That means that you all will get more content more often. Approximately every two months to be exact! To celebrate the release of version 0.4, let's do some math! 0.4 X $9.99 = $3.996... and then $9.99 - 3.996 = 5.994... Round that to two decimal places to get... $5.99! That's right, Baldi's Basics Plus is on sale at 40% off for two weeks! That's the lowest price it's ever had! I sincerely want to thank you all for your patience. I'm very excited for this new chapter of the game's development and can't wait to show you all what I have planned. With all that said, here's the changelog. Get ready, this one's a doozy!

Additions

• Added a new character, Dr. Reflex!
  • Dr. Reflex wanders around and chases the player if he sees them. When he reaches them, he makes them take a reflex test which involves quickly clicking a circle icon he lifts up with random timing.
    • Successfully completing the test awards some YTPs. There is no penalty for failing other than wasted time, as Dr. Reflex will keep giving you another chance until you win.
  • Unlike other NPCs, Dr. Reflex can only see the player if they are in his line of sight.
  • During this test, the player can still move freely. If they leave before the test is finished, Dr. Reflex becomes upset and heads back to his examination room.
  • Once there, he grabs a giant percussion hammer and hunts for the player. He hears sounds made by the player and will use them to track them down. As he hunts, he will squish any NPCs he encounters with his hammer.
  • This continues until he finds and squishes the player. After this he returns to his default wandering state with a short cooldown.
  • The more times you take Dr. Reflex's test in a level, the more difficult/time consuming they become.
  • For all 0.4.X versions of the game, Dr. Reflex will be guaranteed to spawn in level 2. In later major updates, he will be set to have a random chance of spawning similar to the other characters.
  • Unlike other NPCs, Dr. Reflex can only see the player if they are in his line of sight.
• Added the squished status effect. When the player is squished, they cannot interact with most objects in a level. When an NPC is squished, they cannot trigger their usual effects when colliding with other entities.
• Ambience was added to outdoor areas.
• Several custom made rooms have been added to the game for the new level generator changes (See below for more info)
• Pre-made hallway areas can now be loaded into levels alongside the standard generated hallways. This allows for more interesting level layouts.
• Added a callout when all notebooks are collected notifying the player that they now must exit the level.
• Added a button to the about screen that opens the game's save folder (May not work on all platforms).
• Added a new door texture for the Principal's office.
• Added several new objects for level dcor: A computer, filing cabinets, bookshelves and a new desk.
• Added an echo audio effect when entering the library.

Changes

• Tweaked Principal of the Thing
  • The Principal now knocks on faculty room doors a few seconds before entering them.
  • The Principal will now quickly open and close the Principal's office doors during detention when entering or leaving the room, instead of just passing through them.
  • Individual rule breaks now have their own timing for how long the Principal must see the player before he will get angry at them.
• Tweaked Beans.
  • Added previously unused sound effects for when Beans is about to spit gum, when the gum is moving through the air, and when it hits an object.
  • The gum overlay is now rendered behind other HUD elements.
  • Beans' now runs away from his gum once it hits something.
• Tweaked Playtime.
  • Playtime will end jump rope if she loses sight of the player at any point.
  • Playtime no longer ends jump rope based on the player moving a certain distance. This functionality was made obsolete by the above change since moving far enough away causes Playtime to lose sight of the player.
• Tweaked It's a Bully.
  • The Bully no longer drops below the level when he leaves. Instead, the relevant components are simply disabled.
  • NPCs are now blocked by the Bully and must navigate around him,
  • The Bully now pushes entities that collide with him away instead of just being an impassible collider. This means it is now possible to pass through the Bully with enough speed.
• Tweaked Chalkles.
  • Chalkles no longer instantly cools down when leaving a room. Instead, it cools down over time the player is not in any of its rooms.
  • Chalkles can now spawn in faculty rooms, though a smaller percentage of them than class rooms.
• Sound is now propagated through levels by wrapping around walls, rather than just passing through everything. For example, if you are in a room with only one entrance, all sounds you hear will sound as if they are coming through the door, regardless of where the character is relative to you.
• The shape, size and contents of rooms are no longer procedurally generated. All rooms are now designed by hand and then loaded into levels procedurally. This allows for more interesting, better designed rooms to be added to the game.
  • Some objects in rooms can be randomized such that there is a chance they will be replaced by another object (E.g. BSODA machines in the cafeteria have a chance to be changed to a Zesty machine or, rarely, a crazy vending machine).
• Math Machines are now placed closer to the walls so that players cannot hide behind them.
• Made improvements to the map.
  • Tiles are now filled in with a transparent background to make it easier to tell the difference between actual rooms and empty space.
  • Changed room colors to better reflect the danger level of each room type (Class rooms are green, faculty rooms are red, etc.).
  • Added icons to the background of rooms when viewing the advanced map to make it more obvious what kind of room it is and improve color blindness accessibility.
  • Doors now have proper icons on the map which show if a door is locked or not.
  • Windows also have a proper indicator on the map.
  • Map icons for things like items and notebooks now stay right-side-up no matter how the map is oriented.
  • Elevators are now indicated on the map with an up arrow. This turns green when open and becomes a red "X" when the elevator is locked.
• The library no longer generates as a maze, and is instead a premade room like the others.
• The backer credits have been completely reworked with several improvements.
  • Names are now sorted alphabetically to make it easier to find a specific name.
  • Backer credits are now displayed with a pixelized font like text in the rest of the game.
  • The way credits are loaded has been changed to make it easier to add or change names.
• Math Machine balloons now drop down a little when they can be interacted. This makes it easier to tell which balloon you will grab when interacting with one.
• Adjusted the way items are placed in levels.
• The Energy Flavored Zesty Bar now makes a crunching sound when used.
• Changed the BSODA sprite to something more in-line with the game's current graphical standard and that can be seen through so it doesn't block the player's view.
  • The BSODA sprite is also randomly rotated when spawned.
• BSODA can now push the player, but only if they re-enter the trigger after exiting it.
• The alarm clock is now an entity and can be moved by outside forces.
• Playtime's music and the party music are now categorized as sound effects and will not have their volume adjusted by the music volume setting.
• Several NPCs now unlock locked doors when they pass through them. These NPCs include Baldi, the Principal and Mrs. Pomp.
• The tape player/pay phone now causes all NPCs to flee from it (Unless they are aggroed) alongside its old behavior of preventing sounds from being heard while it's playing.
• The flood waters during the flood event can now be seen from underneath. When the camera is underneath, there is also an underwater visual effect that limits how far you can see. You cannot be seen by NPCs while under water.
• Increased the launch and initial pull speeds of the grappling hook.
• Improved the appearance of the mystery room.
• Improved the placement of buttons in levels.
• The merry-go-round can now be walked on and it will spin any entities that are on it.
• Increased the speed of the roto-hall, and made it spin in the direction that will get it to the next valid position the fastest.
• Conveyor belts now only generate on Hide & Seek level 3.
• Safety Scissors now work against multiple things at once. Using them while playing jump rope and covered in gum will clear both for example.
• Misc. game balance changes.

Technical

• Created a new entities system used by nearly all moving objects with collision. Things like the player, NPCs, BSODA spray, math machine balloons, etc. now move via one unified system. This means interactions with and between entities are much more consistent and it opens more possibilities for emergent gameplay. It also means status effects, such as being squished, can easily be created such that all entities are able to have them.
  • All entities except for the player use a custom made collision detection system when calculating movement. The player uses Unity's built-in CharacterController component as it always has.
  • One new feature of this system is the ability to apply a force with frame rate independent acceleration to entities. This is useful for applying quick bursts of movement to entities, such as with the Bully's new pushing mechanic.
  • Physics updates are now called manually in order to work with the new entity system.
• Converted all NPCs and NPC navigation to a new state machine system.
  • The NPC state machine allows me to more easily program and bug fix complex behaviors.
  • The navigation state machine allows for more dynamic NPC behavior when conditions that alter how an NPC should behave are present (E.g. the party at the principal's office event).
• Created a custom occlusion culling system that prevents most areas that cannot be seen at any given moment and the objects in those areas from being rendered. This significantly improves performance and ensures it remains consistent, especially on larger levels.
  • This system is capable of re-calculating occlusion data during gameplay, so changes to the level layout (E.g. using a portal poster) will be respected by the culling system.
• Completely reworked the way level layout data is managed. "Cells" are now used to hold navigation and other important data, "tiles" are now just the 3D models the levels are made of. Previously cell data was tied to the tile objects. These improvements paved the way for faster level generation and loading as well as properly enabling the level layout to be changed during gameplay.
• Improvements to the way cell navigation data is checked when pathfinding.
• NPCs can now navigate through out of bounds areas if they somehow end up in them. They will try to navigate back in bounds if this happens.
• Changes made to level generator allowing for the new pre-made room system to work.
• Level loading is no longer based on the frame rate. Now, the level loader/generator will do as much as it can in a single frame before yielding to let the next fame begin. This allows levels to load much more quickly while still keeping the game responsive.
• Created a new room function system which allows me to easily add and change functionality for specific rooms (For example, to trigger the silence effect when entering the library or ambient noise when in certain rooms). This new system is based on player position, rather than colliding with a trigger as it worked previously.
  • This new system also opens the possibility to affect NPCs and/or entities as well as players.
• Improvements to door placement.
• Improvements to room distribution (E.g. a level is less likely to place all class rooms on one side of a level).
• Improvements to the system which prevents objects from generating on top of other objects.
• The level generator will now reuse matching room texture atlases instead of generating several identical room texture atlases. This improves load times and reduces memory usage.
• Other misc. level generation improvements.
• Implemented a Dijkstra map manager that is used for things like sound propagation, getting NPCs to flee locations, level generation, etc.

Bug Fixes

Note: Due to how long it's been since the last public update, I may accidentally list bug fixes for bugs that were introduced and then fixed internally between 0.3.8 and 0.4. Similarly, there may be some bugs that were fixed as a side effect of the extensive changes I've made, but that are not listed here since I didn't note them as bug fixes in my Git history.

• Disabled MacOS auto graphics API and added OpenGLCore as a supported graphics API. This will hopefully resolve an issue that caused graphics to not render on some older devices. If you notice any significant issues on MacOS with this update, please let me know as testing for this change has been minimal.
• The game's resolution can no longer be set to a width below 480 and/or a height below 360. This fixes a bug where setting the resolution lower than that would make the menus unusable.
• Fixed NPCs occasionally clipping through objects when navigating through open areas.
• Fixed Steam Input not switching to the "Interface" action set when finishing a round of endless mode.
• Fixed being able to get teleported into parts of rooms that cannot be escaped by assigning designated safe spawn locations to rooms.
• Fixed whirlpools being able to spawn in unreachable areas.
• Fixed the floodwaters running at half the frame rate when they were rising at the beginning of the flood event.
• Fixed being able to endlessly scroll the credits past the beginning.
• Made several improvements to NPC navigation to prevent them from turning around in certain situations when it makes no sense to do so (For example, sometimes NPCs chasing the player would see them enter a room, walk up to the door, and then immediately turn around instead of entering the room).
• Fixed Gotta Sweep occasionally not returning to his closet when done sweeping.
• Fixed a bug that caused Baldi to not move quite right when being slowed down or sped up by an outside force.
• Fixed a divide by zero error that could occur in some scenarios with characters like Gotta Sweep. This issue may have been responsible for some strange game freezing bugs reported by some users. In doing so, I also improved the smoothness of the pushing effect.
• Fixed some billboarded sprites updating their rotation with a one-frame delay.
• Fixed a bug that caused doors to play opening and closing sounds twice at the exact same time.
  • Fun fact: At the time this was fixed, it was probably the oldest unfixed bug in the game!
• Fixed issues with Arts and Crafters' attack animation.
• Fixed lockdown doors z-fighting with the skybox.
• Fixed Baldi being able to collide with the player through walls.
• Made improvements to level generation that should better prevent areas the player can get permanently trapped in from generating.
• The roto-hall will spin entities inside of it while it rotates. This prevents being able to clip inside of it, getting stuck.
• Fixed the controller vibrating when inside the library.
• Fixed a bug that made it hard if not impossible to use safety scissors on First Prize while being pushed. The safety scissors will now cut his wires while being pushed, even if not facing him.
• Fixed multi-angle sprites, such as those used by First Prize and The Test, rotating the wrong way when upside down.

Pre-release Changes

These are changes made between the pre-release and public release of 0.4.

• Decreased the starting pitch of Dr. Reflex saying "THIIIIINK FAST!"
• Decreased the volume of Arts and Crafters' sounds.

Pre-release Bug Fixes

These are bugs that were present in the pre-release version of 0.4 that I have fixed for the public release.

• Fixed Dr. Reflex continuing to say "THIIIIIIIII..." even after losing the player.
• Fixed apples not getting knocked down from trees with the grappling hook.
• Fixed the Bully not being seeable by the Principal.
• Fixed CoreGameManager audio, like Baldi's "all notebooks" notification, continuing to play when loading a level.
• Fixed the elevator screen being displayed when visiting what's left of the farm.
• Fixed portal posters not allowing sound through.
• Fixed NPCs not re-routing when placing a portal poster that opens a shorter path to their destination.
• Fixed Dr. Reflex entering an endless "THIIIIIIIII..." loop if the party event started while he was chasing the player.
• Fixed conveyor belts, Cloudy Copter's wind, whirlpools and Gotta Sweep only moving the player and NPCs. They will now affect all entities accordingly.
• Fixed Arts and Crafters' audio frequently cutting out during his attack animation.
• Fixed Mrs. Pomp stomping rapidly for several frames when she spawns.
• Fixed non-grounded entities not flipping upside down properly when squished.
• Fixed plants generating inside lockers.
• Fixed the counter and examination table in Dr. Reflex's clinic not carving the NavMesh, allowing NPCs to walk through them.
• Fixed Beans wandering weirdly in open areas when switching between walking and running.

Removals

• Removed the farm field trip until further notice as it is currently broken. I have plans to revamp field trips one more time, so instead of fixing it only to replace it later, I've decided to just disable it for now.
• Removed several unused and obsolete scripts/assets.

Known Issues

• NPCs are able to go through walls in rare cases, seemingly between adjacent open areas. I'm not entirely under what conditions this is possible, but I've seen it happen a couple of times now.
• Balloons occasionally clip outside of rooms.
• NPCs will often not try to flip themselves when they are oriented opposite the player during Gravity Chaos. This can lead to strange NPC behavior.
• NPCs will occasionally appear to turn-around when entering open areas where a hallway bridges between two different parts of that open area.
• Lockdown doors near spawn can be seen snapping into the open position at game start.
• Principal Office door can rarely get stuck open.
• Dr. Reflex will not always be facing the entity he is hitting with his hammer.
• Dr. Reflex can squish NPCs even when they do not match his orientation during Gravity Chaos.
• Dr. Reflex will always know where the player is the moment he becomes angry, even if he cannot see them.
• Captions are more likely to stack on top of each other and become hard to read due to the new sound propagation system. I plan on finding a way to prevent captions from rendering on top of each other.
• There is no indication for when entities are about to become unsquished (Not a bug, just an issue I intend to address soon).
• It is possible to see out of bounds while being rotated by a gravity flipper while squished.
• On some screen resolutions, it is possible to see a gap through some elements on the elevator screen.
• Some NPCs are very annoying when they are squished.
• Notebook icons are not positioned correctly on the map in pre-made levels.
• Wind and conveyor belt audio is not propagated.
• NPCs will occasionally end up wandering into an area they should be fleeing from.
• Dr. Reflex can sometimes get his hammer early while being pushed around by outside forces.
• NPCs will occasionally get stuck on the merry-go-round.

Whew, that's a big list! As always, if you encounter any bugs that I don't know about please do so on the pinned bug report thread here. So what's next? Well as I get around to fixing bugs I'll push out a few minor updates. If there are any super game breaking bugs, I'll fix those ASAP, but otherwise you can expect bug fixes to be released about a week apart as needed. Meanwhile, I'll also be busy working on new content for 0.5, which will release around the end of April/beginning of May. I hope you all will look forward to that!

[ 2024-02-26 15:00:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This is going to be a small status update, but I just wanted to let you all know that I'm ready to announce that Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.4 will finally release on February 26... At the latest! The update is nearly ready to go. The one thing that's holding it back is Dr. Reflex's animation work, which is taking longer than anticipated. I was hoping to be finished taking photos by now, but I ended up having to redo a couple of animations so I'm not quite there yet. I think I'll be able to finish this week though! After that I'll have to edit every single photo, which will involve removing the greenscreen, manually editing out any other artifacts, making sure everything is lined up properly, making everything low res and dithered, etc. There are a few hundred frames of animation to go through, so I'm not quite sure how long that step will take me. I hope you all end up liking the final result because this is the most effort I've ever put into a character's visuals! So that's why I'm saying February 26 at the latest. With that date I'll have plenty of time to ensure everything is ready to go, but there's a chance that, if things go really well over the next couple of weeks, I may be able to release it a bit earlier! Of course, once this update releases that will mark the beginning of the new update schedule of a major update every two months, so you can expect version 0.5 to release around the end of April/beginning of May. I myself am not sure what will be in these future updates, I'm just going to be working on developing the new content I have planned and I'll ship whatever is ready in each major update. This means that they will vary in size, but they will always contain something new to discover. There will also be no more delays since I won't be holding updates back to finish certain features! If something isn't ready yet, it will just be saved for the next major update. That's it for this small status update about a BIG game update! Thanks again for all the support!

[ 2024-01-30 18:59:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Baldi's Basics Plus players! First off I'd like to apologize for the lack of updates here on Steam. I have been posting status updates to the game's Kickstarter every two months for over a year now, but it didn't occur to me until recently that I should be sharing that news with everyone here as well! If you'd like to see what you've missed, all previous status updates can be viewed on the Kickstarter's updates page. I will be posting the latest update right here though! In it I discuss a big new feature coming to the game and the next character to be added, who will make their debut in version 0.4! When is 0.4 releasing you ask? Soon! February 2024 at the latest, but possibly sooner. Keep reading for more details!

Sound Propagation

Something I've never been super happy about with Baldi's Basics is the way sound works. Unity's built-in audio system is very basic and so it can't do much beyond very simple attenuation and panning based on a sound's location relative to the camera. This means that sounds have always ignored the level layout and passed right through walls. I'm sure many of you have noticed that in the game you can hear anything that's nearby even if there are several walls between you and the source of the sound that should affect it. What I've always wanted to do was have sounds wrap around the walls so that players hear where they are coming from, not where they are. For a stealth game, this sort of sound propagation is a big deal. For example, if you're in a room with a single door, all sounds from outside should be heard coming from the doorway. Even if the source of that sound is closer to the wall opposite the door, the sound should only be able to pass through an opening, not a wall. There are plugins available that try to solve this problem, but many of them either don't work with procedurally generated scenes or utilize expensive (On the CPU, not expensive monetarily) raycasting techniques to achieve a more realistic sound, which would be overkill for Baldi's Basics. I have for a long time felt that, due to the simple grid-based nature of Baldi's Basics levels, there had to be a good way to achieve what I wanted, and while I had several ideas on how to tackle the problem myself they were either too complex to tackle any time soon or would put too much work on the CPU and hurt performance. That is until I stumbled upon a sort of algorithm/technique sometimes referred to as Dijkstra maps! Without getting too technical, this technique involves creating a sort of map that points to the shortest path to the player's location from any other location in the level. You only have to generate this map once whenever the the player moves or whenever the level layout changes, and then it can be used by as many things that need it as often as they need it. This means that the game can calculate what route a sound needs to take to reach the player very quickly, much more quickly than other pathfinding algorithms, which means lots of sounds can be processed at once without impacting performance!
In this screenshot, you can see this system in action! The lines from Baldi are an approximation of the shortest path from him to the player (Who is at the red X). The audio source gets placed at the end of the cyan line so that the sound can be heard coming from the door, even though Baldi is technically in the opposite direction. I was able to develop, polish, and debug this system in just over a week. Performance testing shows it runs just as well as I was hoping. I was not expecting to get this done so early, but now it's likely it will be yet another big improvement to the game that will ship with Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.4! You might be wondering, besides the fact that it's really cool, what is the point of this? Well there are several reasons why I believe this is a big improvement over the way audio used to be:

• Sounds you hear are now more relevant - Just because you hear Baldi on the other side of a wall doesn't necessarily mean he's close to you. There might be a long winding path between you and him. With this system, you will now only hear sounds from things that are truly close to you!
• You can now hear where sounds are coming from - With the old system, you can roughly tell where a sound is, but not necessarily which direction it's coming from. With sound propagation, you can better tell which way to go to get closer to, or run away from, a sound.
• It makes captions less overpowered - Many people have noted that captions are a bit overpowered in their current form since they not only point to where a sound is at, but easily visualize how it's moving as well. Captions have been updated to reflect the new sound propagation system so now they don't provide as big of an unintended advantage while still providing useful info for those who need them to play the game properly.
• It improves the game's atmosphere - The game is now a bit more quiet overall which, combined with other factors, raises tensions a bit more.

Sound design is one of my biggest passions in game dev so I could keep going on about how excited I am about this feature, but I'll go ahead and move onto revealing the next character!

Spoiler Warning!

If you're trying to avoid seeing the new character before 0.4 comes out, turn back now! If not, scroll down! Oh, and please be mindful when discussing the new character online by posting spoiler warnings as well so that people who don't want spoilers can more easily avoid them!

Presenting the next Baldi's Basics character...

Dr. Reflex!

As many of you guessed, the next character will be Dr. Reflex, who I first talked about way back in a Kickstarter update I posted just a week after launching this campaign! I mentioned that the name was "definitely pending" but I ultimately just decided to leave it as-is haha.
What I didn't leave as-is are his game mechanics! The character works very differently than what I initially described in that previous post, as the idea evolved a lot since then. Dr. Reflex wanders around the school just like any other character, and when he sees you he'll rush over and, if he catches you, force you to take a reflex test in the form of a timing minigame. After a few moments he'll open up both of his hands and you'll need to quickly click on the correct one (Obviously there will be an indicator showing which hand is correct, but I haven't settled on what that will look like quite yet). If you click the wrong one or take too long to react the minigame will reset, and it will continue until you win, which will earn you some YTPs!
You might be thinking that that sounds a lot like Playtime, but Dr. Reflex has a big difference that sets him apart. Unlike with Playtime, you aren't held in place and can just walk away whenever you want. Baldi getting too close to wait for the test to begin? Just walk away! What negative consequence could you possibly face for leaving before completing the test?
Well that's when Dr. Reflex gets really interesting! If you leave before completing the test, Dr. Reflex will get angry and head back to his clinic (A special room that will generate in levels he is in) and grab a giant percussion hammer (You know, one of those weird reflex test hammers doctors hit your knee with). With this in hand, he will begin hunting you down, and if he catches you he will hit you with it several times and squish you!
When you're squished, your character will be half their regular height, and the things you'll be able to interact with will become limited. You'll still be able to open doors and solve math machines, but you won't be able to hit buttons, pick up items and notebooks or enter lockers among other things. This effect will wear off after some time, so you'll have to be extra careful until you regain your normal height.
You're not the only one who can get squished though! In his fury, Dr. Reflex will squish any character he comes across, including Baldi himself! When a character is squished, their interaction with you will be limited. So, for example, Baldi won't be able to end the game, Principal of the Thing won't be able to send you to detention, etc. If other characters get squished, make sure you take advantage of the situation! Once Dr. Reflex squishes the player, he will return to normal and, after a cooldown, the cycle will repeat. Dr. Reflex's programming is already pretty much complete. From what playtesting I've done, he can create some really funny - and terrifying - scenarios, so I can't wait for when you all will be able to meet him in-game!
What's not complete is the artwork and sounds. Similar to First Prize, Dr. Reflex will have a sprite that rotates based on what angle you are seeing him from. This is not only cool looking, but it's also important for gameplay as, unlike other Baldi's Basics characters, he can only see you if you are in front of him or in his periphery. The difference though is that his sprites will be animated! I explained some of this in an earlier update, but the plan is to use stop motion to animate him from eight different angles, which is looking to be a lot of work, but I think it will be worth the effort! I haven't done any animation yet, so for now I just have these static placeholder sprites to show off. I also have yet to do voicework. I haven't settled on how I want him to sound yet, all I know is that his catchphrase will be "Thiiiiiiink... Fast!" which he'll yell as he first chases you down and starts his minigame. I think that's about everything there is to know about Dr. Reflex at the moment. So, I'll wrap this status update up!

Wrapping up

Recently I said that a January release for Baldi's Basics version 0.4 was a pretty safe bet, and I'd say that's still likely! However I have yet to sit down and make a bunch of rooms for the new level generator (Largely due to sound propagation stealing my attention for a bit!), so between still needing to do that and Dr. Reflex's animation work, things may take a tiny bit longer. 0.4 will come out in February at the latest, but January is still a real possibility. I will keep everyone updated as we get closer to those dates. Aside from all that, I've also been doing the usual bug fixing and polishing as needed. The changelog for 0.4 is going to be massive haha. Thanks to everyone for you support and patience!

[ 2023-12-12 20:15:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, I'm here with a status update to discuss some cool stuff that's been going on! First, Baldi's Basics turned five years old a week ago! To celebrate, I'm happy to announce that I have teamed up with Makeship to create a new Baldi Plushie! Click here to check it out!
This plushie will only be available to purchase until April 28, so don't wait too long! If at least 200 units are sold, the campaign will be successful and the plushie will be produced shortly after! If not, all orders will be refunded, so there's no risk in placing an order early. I worked with the team at Makeship to make sure this plushie was just right, and I'm super happy with how it turned out! But that's not all I want to talk about! As some of you might know, one of the reasons Baldi's Basics Plus has received so few updates as of late was because I realized I was totally unorganized and needed to finish the game's design document. Well, the core of that document is finished and so I've recently begun active development on the game again! Let's go over what I've been working on over the past month.

Level Control Improvements

Mainly, I've been reworking some old systems that were in dire need of improvements, and cleaning up parts of the project that have become obsolete or messy to manage. With the game design document's core finished, I've gained a much better understanding of what the game needs to be capable of, and one big thing that needed changed was the way tiles - the individual cubes that levels are built out of - are controlled. In current versions of Baldi's Basics Plus, all the data for tiles is stored with the tile game objects themselves. This causes some issues, especially with level generation since large numbers of these tile objects need to be created and destroyed during that process, which is very slow. What I've done is switched over to a more data-oriented system, where tile data such as navigation and shape info, position, the presence of objects and posters, etc. is now stored separately in a "cell" variable. Tiles are now just the objects that you see in the game, and they are linked to their corresponding cells, but don't actually hold the data anymore. This means that I can now do stuff like generate levels without having to create and destroy stuff until the process is finished, which means the level generator can do a lot more per-frame. The level generator should be lot faster when Plus version 0.4 launches! With these changes, the level control systems are also a lot more flexible than before which should open up some cool possibilities!

Map Improvements

Something a bit smaller, but cool, is that I've made some tweaks to the map. Map tiles are now filled in with a matching transparent background color, making it easier to read. Doors and windows now have unique tiles on the map. Icons for things like items and notebooks now remain upright when viewed through the quick map, and additional icons have been added to elevators to show where they are and their current status. I've tweaked the map colors to make more sense (Class rooms are now green, faculty rooms are now red, principal's offices are now yellow, and hallways are now white). Lastly, I've added a subtle background affect to certain rooms when viewing the advanced map which makes it easier to identify them. I have more plans for map improvements, but this is what I've done so far!

Level Generation Improvements

The other big thing I have to talk about in this status update is that I'm making a big change to the level generator! In the current version of Baldi's Basics Plus, almost everything is procedurally generated. Too much, I've come to realize. So the way level layouts are generated is great, there are no issues there, the problem is with how the contents of individual rooms are procedurally generated. I think when I started this project my mindset was "the more stuff that's procedurally generated, the better!", but I've since come to realize that isn't necessarily the case. Currently, rooms in Baldi's Basics Plus are really boring. There are a few different types which place furniture and decorations in certain ways, but they all feel stale. My plan for a long time was to eventually take some time to improve the process for room generation to add more variety, but I realized that in order to add enough variety to make rooms that really feel interesting, it would take a lot of additional programming. Too much, in fact. It would basically be like programming a unique level generator for every type of room. Even sharing as much code as possible, it would still be a lot of work, and I haven't even mentioned how prone to bugs and bad layouts such systems would be (I'm sure many of you have seen quite a few desks sticking through windows by now!). So, I'm switching to a different approach. In Plus version 0.4, all rooms will be premade. Levels will be generated as before, and when it comes time to place rooms, the generator will randomly select from a list of potential rooms, find a position and rotation that the room fits in, and then load it and its contents into the level. This not only makes it easier to make a wide variety of interesting rooms, but it has other big benefits. It improves level generation speed, it helps avoid potential softlocks (Like teleporting only to get trapped behind a desk), and is much easier to maintain, among other things! Now, initially this might seem a bit less interesting, but I'm confident that this will result in levels that are much more interesting to explore, especially as I add more rooms to the game. I'll be able to add rooms with furniture layouts that have interesting affects on gameplay, rooms with weird shapes (Like the smiley face used in the map you can see above!), even rooms with unique gimmicks! I'll try my best to find the right balance between common, simple rooms and rarer, weirder rooms to keep exploration fresh for a long time! Oh, once I got this system up and running I also adapted it so that hallways can generate with custom made areas as well, like this open area with a pillar in the middle!

Spring Cleaning

With these big changes almost finished, the next thing I'll be doing is some spring cleaning! There are lots of outdated and obsolete assets and scripts in the project, so I'll be cutting out all the stuff I don't need and making sure the project is easy to work on before I start working on the stuff you all are waiting for- New content! Work on the next character has begun. I've drawn some (bad, but effective) concept art to figure out what colors he'll be using. Once I pin that down, I'll have to order some art supplies... Anyways, that's all I have for this status update. 0.4 is on its way, and remember, once 0.4 releases, that will be the beginning of a new update schedule: Major updates every two months! Thanks all for your patience and support!

[ 2023-04-07 21:06:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello! Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.3.8 is now available! This version has more improvements and adjustments that I made since 0.3.7 while wrapping up Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered (Which released a couple weeks ago if you didn't hear!). This update is pretty significant because it is the final 0.3 minor update (Assuming no major issues show up)! The next update should be version 0.4. With Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered complete (Which admittedly sidetracked me more than I intended) I can now put my full focus back on developing Baldi's Basics Plus. While working on Classic Remastered I was also working on the Plus framework, but now I'll be able to get back to making brand new content for Plus, not just improvements and polish. The first step of this will be finishing my Baldi's Basics Plus design document. Then, I'll be back to active development again. Once I release version 0.4, I will start releasing new major updates approximately every two months. As I work on the game, I'll basically just include whatever features are ready to go when it's time to release each major update, with minor updates mostly being for bug fixes and very minor adjustments. With all that said though, here's the changelog for 0.3.8!

Additions

• Added new sounds for
  • Doors locking and unlocking
  • Trying to open a locked door
  • Using a water fountain
  • Inserting a coin into a vending machine or coin door
  • Buttons
• Created a new texture for buttons.
• Added the ability for certain parts of textures to glow in the dark. This has been applied to buttons, vending machines, and math machines.
• After starting the game, if you press and hold "alt" until the Basically Games logo disappears, all your settings (Except for controls) will be reset. This is useful if you've messed up your settings and somehow are unable to change them back.

Adjustments

• Downgraded It's a Bully's audio clips to match the rest of the game's audio.
• Principal's keys no longer instantly open a door when used. Instead, you will now hear a sound signifying the door has been unlocked. Then the door can be opened freely.
• Made it so you can now look backwards while jumping rope.
• You can now move a little bit during a jump while playing jump rope! Now when you get caught by Playtime in a bad spot, you might still be able to get where you need just in time!
• Alarm clocks can now be set to go off after 15, 30, 45, or 60 seconds. Once dropped, just click on it to change it! It will be set to 30 seconds by default.
• Arts and Crafters' teleportation destination is now determined the moment you are teleported, rather than the moment the attack starts. The behavior now works a bit more like you'd expect as you won't get teleported to exits you close after the attack sequence starts.
• The game will no longer load at a resolution smaller than 480x360. The options menu will no longer show options smaller than 480x360. If the config file is manually changed to a resolution lower than 480x360, the resolution will reset to the default setting.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the player would get sent out of bounds if they were teleported while being pushed by First Prize.
• Fixed issues with color glitch shaders (As seen in the ending sequence) flickering.
• Fixed blurry skyboxes in the Linux version.
• Fixed an issue that caused the lighting of certain objects to change depending on how close you are to them.
• Restored whirlpool audio, which was missing in some of the previous versions.
• Fixed door audio coming from a location next to the door, not on the door itself.
• Fixed an incorrect caption for one of Baldi's voice clips.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the player to interact with an object they were facing when clicking the "resume" button on the pause menu.
• Fixed a bug that caused 1st Prize to make a slam noise when cutting his wires while moving at a high speed.
• Fixed WD-NoSquee uses being used up when clicking on a door that is locked or open.
• Fixed cafeteria ambience not being assigned to the sound effects audio channel, meaning it wasn't affected by any audio settings.
• Fixed a bug that caused players to become vulnerable when teleporting out of a locker.
• Fixed a bug in the Grapple Challenge that allowed players with a full inventory to replace items with their grappling hook and have the item they picked up get immediately replaced with another grappling hook.
• Fixed a room in the Stealthy Challenge that was walled off.
• Fixed the way the game detects what the default resolution should be. It will now use your primary monitor's current resolution (As set in system settings, not its native resolution).

On top of all that, version 2020.3.38 of Unity was released a couple of months ago which fixed the MacOS freezing issue from before, so the MacOS version is now exactly the same as the others and the Vsync setting has been restored! And with that, I've got a game design document to finish! See you all when 0.4 releases!

[ 2022-11-04 17:51:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello MacOS players! I'm happy to let you all know that Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.3.7 is finally getting released on MacOS! There is one small change I had to make to get the MacOS version working however, which unfortunately has the side effect of increasing load times, particularly for randomly generated levels. Here are the details: The reason I didn't initially release the MacOS version is because of a bug I discovered that caused the MacOS build to freeze very frequently. After doing some digging I isolated the issue and discovered that the freeze only occurred when changing the game's Vsync mode. As it turns out, the issue isn't on me, it's an issue with the current version of Unity 2020, which is what Baldi's Basics Plus is currently built with. This means that I can't fix it, I have to wait for Unity to push a fix. The issue is in their bug tracker, and currently a fix is "in review" for Unity 2020, but I'm not sure how long I'll have to wait for it to be pushed out as I reported the bug nearly two months ago. A new version of 2020 released yesterday which did not come with the fix, so I decided the best thing to do would be to work around the issue for now, rather than to keep MacOS players waiting any longer. I made two changes to the MacOS build to work around this issue. The first is that I removed the Vsync option from the options menu. Vsync will be on by default. The second is that I removed pieces of code that disable Vsync while levels load. The reason for disabling Vsync during loading is to reduce load times as much as possible, as the level generator/loader does each step one-at-a-time each frame. By unlocking the frame rate during loading, it can complete in one or two seconds on fast PCs (I realize now that there are more efficient ways to generate a level than the current methods used by the game, but I probably won't revisit the level generator code for a while). Since I can't currently do this on MacOS, Vsync stays on and load times will probably be noticeably longer than they were on faster Macs (On slower Macs, you probably won't notice much if any difference). Of course, this isn't a permanent solution. Once Unity resolves the issue (Which hopefully won't take much longer...) all versions I release after that should be the same on MacOS as on all other platforms, and load times should return to normal. Until then, this seemed like the best solution. Thanks for your patience everyone!

[ 2022-07-22 18:40:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.3.7 has just released! It's a small patch to address some issues many players were reporting with the in-game cursor movement being treated as a joystick input. While there were ways to fix it when it happened, this patch will hopefully prevent it from happening anymore. Note, that due to the changes made, this update will reset your current control maps! The MacOS version is still on hold until further notice, sorry about the wait! I've figured out what's causing the issue and it actually seems to be a problem on Unity's end, not mine, so I'm waiting to hear back from them regarding a bug report I sent. Fingers crossed the issue gets worked out soon! Here's the full changelog:

Adjustments

• Made menu controls visible in the Rewired control mapper. You can now change controls for mouse cursor movement, clicking, map zoom, etc.
• Adjusted default control map settings. By default, the arrow keys can be used to control the in-game cursor, and enter to click.
• Holding the control key when the Basically Games logo disappears will reset the controls to the defaults.
• If the game detects a bad mouse mapping, it will reset the mouse control map to the defaults (A bad mouse map would be assigning mouse movement to a few Joystick inputs or removing the cursor maps, among other things). This is to prevent a scenario where the in-game cursor becomes impossible to move.
• The "check for updates" button on the main menu now leads to the game's Steam news page.

Bugfixes

• Fixed several issues with the way Rewired was setup. This will hopefully prevent the weirdness that was occurring in 0.3.6 (If not, the bad mouse map detection should act as a failsafe).
• Fixed glitched invert axis icons.

[ 2022-05-21 03:11:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.3.6 has just released, and with it comes a lot of bug fixes! Thanks to everyone who reported bugs, that was a huge help. The MacOS version is still on hold unfortunately, as I still haven't figured out what's causing it to freeze. With these bug fixes out of the way though I'll be able to spend some more time digging into the issue. Here's the full changelog, as well as some known issues I haven't taken the time to fix yet. You don't have to worry about reporting those!

Adjustments

• Renamed "subtitles" to "captions".
• The player can now move around a little bit while being hugged by 1st Prize.
• When being pushed by 1st Prize or Gotta Sweep, the player will automatically open any doors they collide with.
• Updated copyright.
• Added the ability to past seeds into the new seed entry system. Just press Control/Command + V when a valid seed is saved to the clipboard!
• Placed the Hide-and-Seek button in a more prominent spot to make it clearer that it's the main mode.
• If a file's resolution is manually set by modifying the config file, that resolution will be added to the list of available resolutions in the options screen until the setting is changed and the game is closed.
• Camera no longer renders while pause screens and field trips are open. This should allow for smoother performance on low end hardware while on these screens.
• Added transitions when loading and leaving field trips and when entering and leaving Johnny's store.
• Adjusted the value of the minimum mouse camera sensitivity setting.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed windows not having the correct broken glass texture (Not sure how that one slipped by, whoops!).
• Fixed Rewired control mapper maps being reset every time the game is started.
• Fixed Steam Input not working during in-game field trips.
• Fixed the "NO" button on the quit confirm screen not having a transition.
• Fixed the player being able to click through windows.
• Fixed gum passing through windows.
• Fixed the grappling hook not latching onto windows.
• Fixed apple trees not having apples.
• Fixed the water fountain spout and grappling hook cracks rendering over other sprites.
• Fixed the water fountain spout sprite billboarding. It is now static.
• Fixed captions being stuck reversed when losing, quitting, or beating a level while upside down.
• Fixed being able to pause during in-game field trips by opening the Steam Overlay.
• Fixed 1st being able to pass through players under certain conditions.
• Fixed sometimes being left behind by 1st Prize when passing through doors.
• Fixed display issues on resolutions thinner then 4:3.
  • Fixed hud elements overlapping or going off screen.
  • Fixed menu screens being too small and low res.
• Fixed multi-part posters not loading into levels properly.
• Fixed being able to press the pause button and unpausing the game while using the Rewired control mapper.
• Improved the appearance of the dither transition on non-integer scale resolutions with the pixel filter on.
• Fixed party music playing from 0,0,0 instead of the Principal's Office.
• Fixed window breaking missing a caption.
• Fixed many dither transitions playing way too fast.
• Fixed visual issues when quickly opening and closing the map.
• Fixed the jump rope rendering on top of pause screens.
• Fixed objects close to the camera near clip plane rendering on pause screens.

Known Issues

• The principal's office tape player desk sometimes sticks out a window.
• Arts and Crafter's clones during the teleport animation don't always match his orientation during Gravity Chaos.
• Holding the quick map open when opening the advanced map causes a bit of visual weirdness.
• Pressing opposite directional buttons to move the quick map can cause it to move at slow speeds.

[ 2022-05-13 15:14:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.3.5 is out now on Windows and Linux! Before updating, note that, due to changes made since 0.3.4, settings and control maps will be reset. If you have a complex control map setup, please make sure you know what it is so you can recreate it after updating! MacOS users, unfortunately I'm encountering a pretty bad freezing issue with the MacOS build. I haven't been able to fix it or even diagnose it. It's... Weird, to say the least. I'll try to get to the bottom of it soon, but for now I've decided to delay it until I find a fix. Here is the changelog for most of the changes found in 0.3.5. Additions from the changelog in the previous post are in bold. Also, one bug fix which I thought was fixed (The blurry skyboxes on Linux) actually isn't fixed. Not sure why I thought it was but hey, I'll do what I can to get crisp skybox pixels on Linux!

Additions

• Added support for the Steamworks API. When played on Steam, the following features are enabled:
  • Full Steam Input support.
  • The game automatically pauses when the Steam overlay is opened.
  • An achievement system has been implemented, but the game will not receive any achievements until the 1.0 update.
  • A new file button appears if the game is being played on Steam Deck or in Big Picture mode. This will open an on-screen keyboard allowing you to enter your name with a controller.
  • Clicking on the seed button to enable a custom seed will open an on-screen keyboard on Steam Deck or while the game is running in Steam Big Picture mode.
• Rumble support. If enabled, the controller will rumble when Baldi is nearby and when being caught by Baldi. If the controller being used has two individually controlled rumble motors, the side of the controller that corresponds with the direction Baldi is in relative to the player will rumble more than the other.
• Added a visual effect when getting caught by Baldi, similar to the one in Baldi's Basics Classic.
• Added a slam effect for when 1st Prize is stopped while traveling at high speeds. This sound will get Baldi's attention.
• Once all notebooks have been collected, Math Machines re-light for bonus questions! Answering bonus questions will reward the player with YTPs.
• Added screen transition effects. When moving between menus, a dithering transition is used.
• Added instructions and a jump rope counter that appears on screen when playing jump rope.

Adjustments

• All menu screens now use the in-game cursor. The OS cursor of your computer is no longer used for anything in the game, except for the control mapper.
• All menu screens (And other UI based screens, such as the field trips) now render to a 480x360 render texture, which is then displayed on screen. This ensures all GUI elements remain pixel perfect.
  • This screen uses a shader that can filter the pixels so that they appear square, even on non-integer scaled resolutions, with minimal blurring. This eliminates some strange effects where pixels may appear to be different sizes on some displays. This filter is optional, but it's recommended to leave it on for the best appearance.
• Created a brand new options menu that is compatible with the in-game mouse and features more settings. Changes/additions include:
  • Divided settings into multiple pages.
  • Settings now have tooltips with more info on what each setting is for.
  • Added a rumble toggle.
  • Added a reduce flashing toggle (Currently doesn't do much as Baldi's Basics Plus doesn't have much flashing at the moment).
  • Added a vsync toggle.
  • Added a pixel filtering toggle for the improved GUI rendering.
  • Separate sensitivity settings for mouse and controller sensitivity, and for the in-game cursor and turning speeds.
  • Added buttons to delete a file (The erase toggle on the name select screen has been removed), to reset endless mode high scores, and to reset field trip high scores.
  • Replaced all sliders with segmented adjustment bar thingies (I don't know what they're called).
  • Improved the design of the Rewired control mapper.
    • I plan on eventually adding a fully custom control mapper that uses the in-game cursor and allows for control maps to be saved per-file, rather than being shared across all files. As it turns out though, creating a custom control mapper is complicated! For now, the one included with Rewired (Which is what Baldi's Basics uses to handle input) should be good enough.
  • Added a button to access the Steam Input control mapper if Steam Input is active.
• Cleaned up the pause menu and added a quit confirmation screen.
• Updated most menu text to use text from the localization file.
• All tiles (The wall, floor, and ceiling cubes that levels are made out of) now use a single mesh, instead of a bunch of quads as before. These meshes are textured with texture atlases generated at runtime. The reduced mesh count, along with some other adjustments, has drastically reduced the number of draw calls per-frame (I'm talking dropping from a few thousand to a few hundred!) and improved performance quite a bit.
• This new tile setup required a new system for windows. Windows are now generated similarly to doors, with their own quad and game object, rather than simply being a transparent poster for a wall.
• Sprite billboarding is now handled via shaders instead of a script (With a few exceptions). This has also improved performance a little bit.
• Moved credits to the about screen. The game now closes after clicking the exit button without any further player input.
• Volume settings now use Unity's Audio Mixer system to control the volume of different types of sound effects.
• Some sounds now have custom volume multipliers. This is used to make several sounds that were too loud before quieter.
• Improved randomness of color glitching shader effects (Currently only used in the current end sequence, but will see more use later).
• Adjusted TextMeshPro assets so that the fonts are spaced better.
• Gameplay HUD elements will now scale such that they remain pixel-perfect no matter the resolution.
• Gave the stamina meter (Staminometer) a proper design.
• Created a custom dithering effect for shaders that isn't bad like Unity's built in one is. This new method seems to be compatible on everything, including Mac OS (Which the old one didn't play nice with), so now the same shader is used on all platforms and fog dithering is available on Mac OS.
• NPCs now exist in their own layer in order to improve collision. Mainly, NPCs should no longer get in the way of the player trying to click on objects.
• Posters with text now generate text at runtime, rather than having text baked into the texture. Poster text is now controlled by the currently loaded localization file. This change was made to make localizing the game into other languages easier.
  • As a result of this change, some posters have had their designs tweaked.
• Game save data and most options are now stored in separate files. This is in order to prepare for Steam Cloud save support, which will be implemented at a later date. Some settings, such as resolution settings, will not be synced on the cloud since they will probably not be the same across different devices.
• Removed Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered exclusive code that was left in the previous version.
• Optimized the class NPCs use to "see" the player so that it no longer generates garbage.
• Made it possible for sounds to contain multiple subtitles. This is used to prevent longer audio clips from having too much text for one subtitle being displayed at once.
• Reworked how NPCs detect being looked at by the player. It is now much more consistent than it used to be.
• Reworked Arts and Crafter's behavior to be more manageable, and more similar to how it was in Baldi's Basics Classic. He will now run away if he sees the player for a short amount of time, whether the player is looking at him or not.
• What counts as looking at Arts and Crafters is now a bit more generous.
• Arts and Crafters is now hidden when he spawns so that he cannot be found in strange locations before being triggered to appear somewhere.
• WD-NoSquee has always worked such that, once used on a door, that door can be opened four times before the effect wears off, whether it is opened by the player or by an NPC. Now, NoSquee is only used up when the player opens the door, not when NPCs open it.
• Textures and sprites now have their contrast slightly increased as lights get darker.
• Mrs. Pomp now pauses the environment and NPCs when grabbing the player to tell them about her class.
• Mrs. Pomp now drags the player further into her class room before letting go and locking the doors.
• Reduced the possible time range for the Gravity Chaos event.
• Implemented a new detour system for NPCs when they target the player. During Gravity Chaos, this system is used to direct most NPCs to gravity flippers if their current orientation is opposite the player's. This prevents NPCs from annoyingly trying, but failing, to collide with the player over and over again during the event.
• Reworked The Test's speed increase method. It now will increase to a new pre-determined value each time the player looks away from The Test while in his sight. After a certain number of times doing this, The Test will instantly travel to the player's position when looked away from. Be careful!
• Level loading will now only begin when the elevator screen door is closed. With this change, you can no longer see the level begin to load when starting a new game or beating/losing a level.
• The name entry screen has been moved to the same scene as the main menu, allowing for a smoother transition between the two.
• First Prize now has an improved method of grabbing the player. Should be a bit smoother than before!
• Removed the jump button. Jump rope now uses the action button for jumping.
• Tweaks to the default control map.
• Updated info on the about page.
• Principal of the Thing will now only spawn in his office.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a minor error in Playtime's animation.
• Set sprite shaders to the Unlit Sprite material setting. This has fixed some odd issues with certain sprites.
• Fixed the game loading incorrect window and resolution settings on startup.
• Fixed issues with the skybox rendering weird from certain angles.
• [strike]Fixed skyboxes being blurry on Linux.[/strike]
• Fog now properly renders on the skybox.
• Fixed a bug that caused deleted files to not actually be deleted (They would only be removed from the in-game list of names, but the actual file would remain).
• Fixed a lighting calculation issue.
• Fixed flipping upside down not also flipping audio and subtitles.
• Fixed an issue where the dangerous teleporter and whirlpools could spawn the player in game breaking positions.
• Fixed an issue where Arts and Crafters would try to run from the player while chasing them or trying to teleport them.
• Fixed an issue where Arts and Crafters could collide with the player during Gravity Chaos while oriented opposite the player.
• Fixed a bug that would softlock the game if Mrs. Pomp caught the player to tell them to be at her class while in her class room.
• Fixed whirlpool triggers being able to interfere with clicking on objects.
• Fixed grappling hook being able to pass through roto halls.
• Made the frequency at which the funny sound in Johnny's store plays framerate independent.
• Fixed NPCs, whirlpools, and gravity flippers being able to spawn in off-limits areas like elevators
• Fixed for being visible on the map screen (Was this a thing in version 0.3.4? I'm thinking I may have accidentally re-introduced it and then fixed it again since that update lol).
• Fixed elevator screen sometimes being visible for a frame at its normal scale before playing the zoom animation.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the level generator to crash if it couldn't find a valid place to put an elevator on the side of the level it initially chose to put it on. Now, if no valid location is found, it will try other sides until a valid location is found.

[ 2022-05-07 20:27:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Yes, I'm still alive.

First off, 0.3.5 will be released this week! It's just about ready to go, I just want to spend some time playtesting it before shipping it. Second off, I'm sorry about the lack of communication over the past year. I'll be talking about what's been going on more in depth in the near future, and returning to posting more regular status updates, but for now just know that Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered's release is just around the corner and that regular Baldi's Basics Plus' development is getting back on track! Thirdly, Baldi's Basics Plus is 25% off for Steam's Going Rogue Sale! If you've been thinking about picking up the game now's a great time! This update is pretty major for a minor one. I've been working on Classic Remastered over the past year, but a lot of that time was spent working on fixes and improvements to the Baldi's Basics Plus framework, benefitting both projects. Lots of polish, lots of optimizations, lots of internal changes that will make development smoother going forward. Here is the changelog for most of the changes found in 0.3.5:

Additions

• Added support for the Steamworks API. When played on Steam, the following features are enabled:
  • Full Steam Input support.
  • The game automatically pauses when the Steam overlay is opened.
  • An achievement system has been implemented, but the game will not receive any achievements until the 1.0 update.
  • A new file button appears if the game is being played on Steam Deck or in Big Picture mode. This will open an on-screen keyboard allowing you to enter your name with a controller.
  • Clicking on the seed button to enable a custom seed will open an on-screen keyboard on Steam Deck or while the game is running in Steam Big Picture mode.
• Rumble support. If enabled, the controller will rumble when Baldi is nearby and when being caught by Baldi. If the controller being used has two individually controlled rumble motors, the side of the controller that corresponds with the direction Baldi is in relative to the player will rumble more than the other.
• Added a visual effect when getting caught by Baldi, similar to the one in Baldi's Basics Classic.
• Added a slam effect for when 1st Prize is stopped while traveling at high speeds. This sound will get Baldi's attention.
• Once all notebooks have been collected, Math Machines re-light for bonus questions! Answering bonus questions will reward the player with YTPs.
• Added screen transition effects. When moving between menus, a dithering transition is used.

Adjustments

• All menu screens now use the in-game cursor. The OS cursor of your computer is no longer used for anything in the game, except for the control mapper.
• All menu screens (And other UI based screens, such as the field trips) now render to a 480x360 render texture, which is then displayed on screen. This ensures all GUI elements remain pixel perfect.
  • This screen uses a shader that can filter the pixels so that they appear square, even on non-integer scaled resolutions, with minimal blurring. This eliminates some strange effects where pixels may appear to be different sizes on some displays. This filter is optional, but it's recommended to leave it on for the best appearance.
• Created a brand new options menu that is compatible with the in-game mouse and features more settings. Changes/additions include:
  • Divided settings into multiple pages.
  • Settings now have tooltips with more info on what each setting is for.
  • Added a rumble toggle.
  • Added a reduce flashing toggle (Currently doesn't do much as Baldi's Basics Plus doesn't have much flashing at the moment).
  • Added a vsync toggle.
  • Added a pixel filtering toggle for the improved GUI rendering.
  • Separate sensitivity settings for mouse and controller sensitivity, and for the in-game cursor and turning speeds.
  • Added buttons to delete a file (The erase toggle on the name select screen has been removed), to reset endless mode high scores, and to reset field trip high scores.
  • Replaced all sliders with segmented adjustment bar thingies (I don't know what they're called).
  • Improved the design of the Rewired control mapper.
    • I plan on eventually adding a fully custom control mapper that uses the in-game cursor and allows for control maps to be saved per-file, rather than being shared across all files. As it turns out though, creating a custom control mapper is complicated! For now, the one included with Rewired (Which is what Baldi's Basics uses to handle input) should be good enough.
  • Added a button to access the Steam Input control mapper if Steam Input is active.
• Cleaned up the pause menu and added a quit confirmation screen.
• Updated most menu text to use text from the localization file.
• All tiles (The wall, floor, and ceiling cubes that levels are made out of) now use a single mesh, instead of a bunch of quads as before. These meshes are textured with texture atlases generated at runtime. The reduced mesh count, along with some other adjustments, has drastically reduced the number of draw calls per-frame (I'm talking dropping from a few thousand to a few hundred!) and improved performance quite a bit.
• This new tile setup required a new system for windows. Windows are now generated similarly to doors, with their own quad and game object, rather than simply being a transparent poster for a wall.
• Sprite billboarding is now handled via shaders instead of a script (With a few exceptions). This has also improved performance a little bit.
• Moved credits to the about screen. The game now closes after clicking the exit button without any further player input.
• Volume settings now use Unity's Audio Mixer system to control the volume of different types of sound effects.
• Some sounds now have custom volume multipliers. This is used to make several sounds that were too loud before quieter.
• Improved randomness of color glitching shader effects (Currently only used in the current end sequence, but will see more use later).
• Adjusted TextMeshPro assets so that the fonts are spaced better.
• Gameplay HUD elements will now scale such that they remain pixel-perfect no matter the resolution.
• Gave the stamina meter (Staminometer) a proper design.
• Created a custom dithering effect for shaders that isn't bad like Unity's built in one is. This new method seems to be compatible on everything, including Mac OS (Which the old one didn't play nice with), so now the same shader is used on all platforms and fog dithering is available on Mac OS.
• NPCs now exist in their own layer in order to improve collision. Mainly, NPCs should no longer get in the way of the player trying to click on objects.
• Posters with text now generate text at runtime, rather than having text baked into the texture. Poster text is now controlled by the currently loaded localization file. This change was made to make localizing the game into other languages easier.
  • As a result of this change, some posters have had their designs tweaked.
• Game save data and most options are now stored in separate files. This is in order to prepare for Steam Cloud save support, which will be implemented at a later date. Some settings, such as resolution settings, will not be synced on the cloud since they will probably not be the same across different devices.
• Removed Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered exclusive code that was left in the previous version.
• Optimized the class NPCs use to "see" the player so that it no longer generates garbage.
• Made it possible for sounds to contain multiple subtitles. This is used to prevent longer audio clips from having too much text for one subtitle being displayed at once.
• Reworked how NPCs detect being looked at by the player. It is now much more consistent than it used to be.
• Reworked Arts and Crafter's behavior to be more manageable, and more similar to how it was in Baldi's Basics Classic. He will now run away if he sees the player for a short amount of time, whether the player is looking at him or not.
• What counts as looking at Arts and Crafters is now a bit more generous.
• Arts and Crafters is now hidden when he spawns so that he cannot be found in strange locations before being triggered to appear somewhere.
• WD-NoSquee has always worked such that, once used on a door, that door can be opened four times before the effect wears off, whether it is opened by the player or by an NPC. Now, NoSquee is only used up when the player opens the door, not when NPCs open it.
• Textures and sprites now have their contrast slightly increased as lights get darker.
• Mrs. Pomp now pauses the environment and NPCs when grabbing the player to tell them about her class.
• Mrs. Pomp now drags the player further into her class room before letting go and locking the doors.
• Reduced the possible time range for the Gravity Chaos event.
• Implemented a new detour system for NPCs when they target the player. During Gravity Chaos, this system is used to direct most NPCs to gravity flippers if their current orientation is opposite the player's. This prevents NPCs from annoyingly trying, but failing, to collide with the player over and over again during the event.
• Reworked The Test's speed increase method. It now will increase to a new pre-determined value each time the player looks away from The Test while in his sight. After a certain number of times doing this, The Test will instantly travel to the player's position when looked away from. Be careful!
• Level loading will now only begin when the elevator screen door is closed. With this change, you can no longer see the level begin to load when starting a new game or beating/losing a level.
• The name entry screen has been moved to the same scene as the main menu, allowing for a smoother transition between the two.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a minor error in Playtime's animation.
• Set sprite shaders to the Unlit Sprite material setting. This has fixed some odd issues with certain sprites.
• Fixed the game loading incorrect window and resolution settings on startup.
• Fixed issues with the skybox rendering weird from certain angles.
• Fixed skyboxes being blurry on Linux.
• Fog now properly renders on the skybox.
• Fixed a bug that caused deleted files to not actually be deleted (They would only be removed from the in-game list of names, but the actual file would remain).
• Fixed a lighting calculation issue.
• Fixed flipping upside down not also flipping audio and subtitles.
• Fixed an issue where the dangerous teleporter and whirlpools could spawn the player in game breaking positions.
• Fixed an issue where Arts and Crafters would try to run from the player while chasing them or trying to teleport them.
• Fixed an issue where Arts and Crafters could collide with the player during Gravity Chaos while oriented opposite the player.
• Fixed a bug that would softlock the game if Mrs. Pomp caught the player to tell them to be at her class while in her class room.

Some more changes may be made between now and release, and if so I'll highlight them in a new post when the update releases. Thank you all for your patience as I figure all this game dev stuff out!

[ 2022-05-02 17:42:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.3.4 has just released! This update was mostly focused on fixing bugs introduced in 0.3.3, but it also contains a few other changes as well. Here's the full changelog:

Adjustments

• Made changes to Mrs. Pomp's behavior
  • After telling the player to come to her class, she will now run back to her class room instead of walking back.
  • The way she drags the player to her class has been overhauled. Before this worked by freezing the player's movement and pulling them along a path towards the targeted class room, and Mrs. Pomp would follow the player. Now, the player is pulled towards Mrs. Pomp as she runs to her class room. The player's movement during this is slowed, but not frozen. If the player manages to be separated from Mrs. Pomp, they will gain full movement again and stop being pulled towards her, until she realizes she lost the player, at which point she will return to grab the player again. This continues until she gets the player in her class room.
  • This change was actually introduced in 0.3.3 - Instead of freezing the player in place when she pulls the player into her class room, she now shuts and locks all the doors. With this change you can now move around the room as she teaches, and even escape with keys.
  • Once Mrs. Pomp finishes teaching, she will now reset after a few minutes, at which point she can invite the player to another class.
  • Mrs. Pomp can now open any locked doors (Not swinging doors) that she comes into contact with.
• Balloons now spawn in random positions in their designated rooms, instead of in the center.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the missing closet door in the grapple challenge.
• Fixed Gotta Sweep not spawning in the closet in the grapple challenge.
• Fixed endless medium high scores being saved to the endless random leaderboards.
• Fixed the custom seed field not unlocking when beating the game.
• Fixed the missing tape player in the endless medium map.
• Fixed the incorrect subtitle colors for the many of the voice lines for Baldi and Principal.
• Fixed missing subtitles for a couple of the Principal's lines.
• Fixed being able to get scolded for breaking rules in the principal's office in the stealthy challenge.
• Fixed the alarm clock sprite not being affected by fog.
• Fixed the balloons being stuck in one corner of the room in the Hide & Seek ending.
• Fixed the detention time text being misaligned with the detention description text.
• Fixed a bug that caused the elevator doors in the grapple challenge to close even before the player left the elevator.

[ 2021-07-02 21:24:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.3.3 is finally ready, and will release this Friday, June 25. As I mentioned in the previous devlog discussing the game's development roadmap, this update is mostly revamped internal stuff, so while there isn't much in the way of new content, this update is very important in fixing up some bugs and making sure development moving forward goes smoothly. You can read that devlog here if you haven't: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1275890/view/3053982465480232793 The normal development cycle will begin as soon as the game design document is finished, and I'll be sure to let everyone know when that happens! One of the most important pieces of information about this update is that some changes to saving were made. Due to these changes, any saved games of Hide-and-Seek will be erased, so be sure to play any games you have in progress before updating! High scores will also be reset, so if you'd like to keep those around to share your best pre-0.3.3 scores, you'll want to take a screenshot of them! Save files, settings, and the seed unlock for Hide-and-Seek will not be lost or reset upon updating. Below I've included a changelog for the update. Due to how long this update has been in the works, I'll probably miss a few things, but this should cover most notable changes.

Adjustments and Additions:

• Updated Unity to 2020 LTS. This may bring some improvements along with it, such as an improved Time.deltaTime which may make the game run a bit more smoothly.
• I have implemented a new system for loading pre-made levels. This system works by loading in prefabs at runtime similarly to the random level generator, but unlike the level generator, the levels are loaded from data files storing which elements go where, instead of created by making random decisions based on the seed. All pre-made maps have been converted to this new format, which fixes a slew of issues they previously had due to the old, poor loading system. The levels using the new system are
  • Endless medium
  • Speedy Challenge
  • Stealthy Challenge
  • Grapple Challenge
• This new system also makes it easier for me to make levels by hand, something I'll start doing for many future challenge maps.
• All levels now use one single Unity scene. When new levels are loaded, this scene is loaded and the desired level is then generated/loaded. This, among other changes, has drastically reduced the size of the game.
• Save system now uses encrypted Json files instead of BinaryFormatter for security purposes. The file extensions for save files have also been changed.
  • As part of this update, old saves will be converted to the new format. The old format save files will be deleted as part of this process, so if you'd like to keep your old format save files for any reason, you should back them up.
• Reworked Arts and Crafters teleportation again, hopefully for the last time! It now teleports both the player and Baldi again, but now Baldi will always be a set distance away from the player, with the player always spawning near an elevator. The player should always be placed between Baldi and the elevator. The way teleportation locations are now selected should prevent both entities from spawning somewhere where they would be trapped.
• All items now have large and small sprites. Small sprites (32x32) are used in UI elements, and large sprites (64x64) are used for the pickup sprites.
• Added ambient noises.
• Adjusted pause screen button positions so that quit isn't so easy to accidentally click on.
• Added the boots and apple items, and the fog event, to the possible things which can appear in randomly generated endless mode maps.
• Made some improvements to subtitles
  • Text will now adjust in size in order to fit lengthier subtitles inside the box.
  • Added subtitles to both field trips and Johnny's store.
• The maze in the farm field trip is now shuffled after every five rounds.
• Added a buffer to Math Machines that should prevent balloons from getting too close to them. This should help prevent players from accidentally clicking on balloons when trying to submit an answer.
• NPCs can now travel through portal posters.
• Notebook colors are now randomized.
• Many Baldi and Principal of the Thing lines have been re-recorded so that they all sound consistent.

Bug Fixes

• With the new level loading system in placed, many bugs that existed in premade maps were fixed, including
  • Math Machines using outdated textures and sounds
  • Elevators using outdated textures and sounds
  • Snack and soda machines not getting the "Out of goodness" sign when used up
• Fixed a few bugs with subtitles
  • Subtitles no longer appear when pausing the game.
  • Subtitles will now be visible for sounds that started playing before subtitles were turned on.

I probably missed a few things, but that about covers the most important stuff. Again, remember to play out any saved games of Hide & Seek before updating! Finally, I just wanted to mention that with 0.3.3 complete, I'm going to get back to work on finishing Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered. Look forward to news regarding that game's release date soon!

[ 2021-06-23 21:10:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, Micah here! I'm posting another update to let you all know what's going on with development, as well as what to expect going forward. First off, at the end of March I uploaded a video for the original game's three-year anniversary. In it I discussed how development has been going and why the next update has taken as long as it has, among other things. You can check it out below if you haven't seen it yet: [previewyoutube=GUNA7YiOXWc;full][/previewyoutube] To summarize, I discussed

• My move in January, which kept me pretty busy.
• I've been working on a level editing and loading system for premade maps. This will replace the old awful method used to save and load premade levels as found in the challenge maps and endless mode in the current version.
• Version 0.3.3 will release soon with the premade maps completely remade in this new system in order to fix all the bugs caused by the old system, as well as a handful of other tweaks and improvements.
• Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered, which is a remake of Classic built in the Plus framework, will also be released soon, and is being used as a development testing ground for the new premade maps system, mobile support, and VR support.

Since then I've been working on finishing Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.3.3 and Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered, and wow, I can't believe it's already almost been two months since the video released! Time is flying by. I was hoping to have both of those things released by now, but as I mentioned before I no longer want to rush things out and sacrifice quality. I am sorry about the wait though. Baldi's Basics Plus 0.3.3 will likely release first, and won't take much longer. Classic Remastered will follow shortly after that, so keep your eyes open for those announcements! With that update out of the way, I'd like to talk about the rest of the game's development. I talked about this nearly a year ago shortly after the launch of Baldi's Basics Plus, and some of my plans have since changed as I've learned a lot from this first year of post-release development. I want you all to know that this current update hiatus was not at all what I wanted or planned for the first year of the early access, and I'm sorry for how long you've had to wait for updates. I want to make sure this doesn't happen again, so I'm taking the time to properly plan out the rest of development before I get started on game updates again. I know this may seem counterintuitive, but once I have the game design document finished and an update schedule made (A schedule of features and their respective updates to be added in, not deadlines) I feel confident that I'll be able to release updates at a consistent pace for the rest of development. To give an idea of what you can expect the rest of development to be like, I've put together a roadmap which summarizes my plans:
Currently on the timeline, I'm right before the release of 0.3.3. Once that and Classic Remastered are released, I'll be finishing up the game design document and update schedule. Once that's finished, I will begin actively developing the game again and end the current update hiatus with the release of 0.4. At this point major updates should release consistently until the final early access major update. Once this releases, there will be a second update hiatus as I work on the release version of the game. The reason for the second update hiatus will not be due to poor planning like this first one, but rather due to the fact that the final update will be significantly larger than any of the previous updates, and so it will take a lot longer to finish. This is because there's a lot of content that I plan on saving for the release version of the game, rather than sprinkling in via the early access updates. Along with this roadmap, I figured it would also be a good idea to mention what kind of content you can expect to see in the early access updates moving forward, and what you can expect to be saved for the release version. Early access updates will largely be focused on self-contained content such as

• New characters
• New items
• New level elements
• New activities
• New events
• New field trips
• New decorative elements

Things saved for the final release will largely be things that aren't part of the core gameplay or that rely on other aspects of the game being finished, such as:

• New challenge maps
• Better menus
• Horror and story elements
• Achievements
• Polish and attention to detail
• And stuff I don't want to spoil!

The reason for holding off on certain elements largely has to do with the fact that if I were to do a lot of work on them now, I'd have to re-do them later once more content is in the game and more stuff finalized. If I were to make more challenge maps during development for example, I'd probably eventually end up completely redoing them as I add more level elements to the game, which would effectively make the time spent developing the older versions a waste. The menus are another example. I could spend time now to make them look a lot nicer than they do, but then I'd just end up completely redoing them near the end of development which would make working on them now a waste of time and resources. I say this to remind everyone that the current lack of polish, horror elements, personality, and many other elements in the game largely has to do with the way development works, not that I've forgotten about those things or don't care about them! And I think that's everything I wanted to say today! As always, thanks for your patience and the support while I get this crazy game sorted out, it means a lot. Know that I'm just as eager to get back to releasing updates as you all are to play them, so I'll try my best to finish the game design document soon and get back to active development!

[ 2021-05-22 01:11:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Celebrate the 3-year anniversary of Baldi's Basics with a presentation by the game's developer featuring a few surprises and a status update on the development of Baldi's Basics Plus! Premieres on March 31, 2021 at 6:00 PM EST - 3:00 PM PT Subscribe to be notified: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjn_VTuen4-SV1uIARB_suw

[ 2021-03-30 16:19:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 0.3.2 is out now, and it brings with it the new farm field trip! Here's the full changelog:

Adjustments and Additions

• Added the new farm field trip! In this minigame you'll need to quickly click and drag animals through a corn maze and into the barn.
• Adjusted the camping minigame difficulty to be slightly easier in-game. There is now one more three fire problem than before and one less four fire problem than before.
• Pressing and holding escape for one second while playing an the endless variant of a field trip will allow you to exit it at any given moment. There is no pause function during these minigames to prevent cheating.
• Reworked Arts and Crafters. The "attacking" animation is now completely different and less annoying. Now only the player will be teleported and Baldi will be unaffected.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed apple trees not having apples.
• Fixed a bug that prevented basketball hoops from ever generating and other objects from not generating in the maximum possible quantity set in the generator settings.
• Fixed Arts and Crafters often breaking after attacking and getting stuck while playing the loud sound effect.

[ 2020-12-19 01:25:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.3.1 is out now with a handful of bug fixes! Here's what's changed:

Bug Fixes

• Made it so lunch tables require more space to spawn in faculty locker rooms, preventing blocked off areas from being created.
• Mrs. Pomp's map timer now updates as soon as it appears to reflect the correct amount of time.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when buying a map on level 1 or 2, and then beating the level before losing a life.
• Playtime's music, conveyor belts, and the party music now all have subtitles.
• Added some missing subtitles.
• Certain NPCs besides Baldi will now ignore conveyor belts, as they were previously getting stuck on them.

In the next few weeks, a new version of the farm field trip will be added, and the pre-made maps will all be re-worked so that they no longer have so many bugs. I hope you'll all look forward to that!

[ 2020-12-04 20:31:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 0.3 has just released, the Speed Up-date! The focus of this update was not adding new content, but making improvements to existing content. It might not sound like much, but some of the improvements made are literally game changing! The main change is that the overall game speed has been increased and the game has been re-balanced! This change was something I've wanted to add for a while, but I didn't want to take it lightly. It's a big change and I wanted to make sure it was done right, and I think it was. The reason for this change is simply that with the larger levels and longer time required to beat the game, using the speed of the original game proved to be a bit too sluggish. Of course, I was also careful not to make the game too fast, as Baldi's Basics is meant to be a slower, more methodical experience than most other games. I think I managed to get that balance just right. I've had a handful of people help test the new speed and they've all agreed that it's a huge improvement over the old speed. Of course the speed of Baldi has also been increased, so almost everything else in the game has been tweaked accordingly. Even things like detention now count down faster than real seconds. When you first start playing this update, the new speed might seem off-putting at first, but please be sure to try playing the game a few times and I think almost everyone will become used to the new speed and agree it's a big improvement! Among all of the following changes, I also want to mention that I have a couple more big things planned to release via minor updates in the coming weeks. First off, with the revamped field trips I was not able to finish the new farm minigame in time, so I opted to leave it out for now but it will be added shortly. Second, I plan on completely changing the way pre-made maps are saved (In development) and loaded, which will future proof them and fix the bugs currently found in them. I'm sorry for the delay on these features and thankful for your patience!

Adjustments and Additions:

• Increased the overall game speed and re-adjusted overall game balance.
• Added a save and continue feature! Whenever you're in the elevator while playing Hide and Seek, you'll now have the option to save and quit your game. The next time you select Hide and Seek mode, you'll continue exactly where you left off! Saved games are saved to your file, so you can even close the game and come back later and you'll still be able to continue.
• Field trips are getting revamped! There's a new camping minigame, and a new farm minigame will be added in a minor update to be released in a few weeks. The new field trip minigames are designed to be simpler and quicker, but also more fun and engaging.
  • You can also play an endless variant of the new minigame when you play it through the Field Trips mode!
• Because of the field trips being completely changed, old high high scores will be erased!
• Items are no longer lost when losing field trips.
• While using a controller, you can now press and hold the run button to increase the speed of the virtual cursor.
• Changed the ending to something much better... But it's still a placeholder (The dab was never really intended to be in the game at release).
  • You might be able to see some cool new shader effects in action in the new ending...
• Reworked how Baldi moves. His speed is now controlled completely independently from his slap rate. His speed as his anger increases is also now controlled by a curve, and each level has its own curve to allow for a more finetuned difficulty per-level.
• Baldi will now always reach the same speed once all notebooks are collected, no matter how many are collected before he spawns. The player still gets an advantage when notebooks are collected before he spawns, but once the last notebook is collected he will always be at the max speed for the level.
• Instead of spawning NPCs once the player walks a certain distance away from Baldi, Baldi will begin counting down from 10 once the player leaves the elevator area, and when Baldi finishes counting, all NPCs will spawn.
  • Furthermore, NPCs (With a few exceptions) can no longer spawn near the player. If an NPC tries spawning while the player is nearby, they will wait until the player wanders away before spawning.
• Made improvements to the level generator:
  • Added decorative objects
  • Large rooms will now always have swinging doors placed on opposite sides if possible
  • When generating extra hallways, sometimes they would stop at large rooms and not connect, creating very bad dead-ends. Now these will be forced to connect, reducing the chances of dead-ends generating in levels
• When picking up items with a full inventory, the currently highlighted item will now be swapped with the item you picked up, instead of the highlighted item being destroyed.
• When solving a Math Machine, Baldi will now stop and give the player positive reinforcement. While he is stopped, collision with him will not cause you to lose a life. If Baldi is hot on your heels, this could save your life!
• Math Machines use a new sound for correct answers.
• Changed a Kickstarter backer photo at their request.
• Vending machines will now run out of stock when used.
  • Note that currently, vending machines in pre-made levels will not display signs when out of stock.
• Each level now always generates with a static number of notebooks, instead of a varying number. Level 1 always has 4, level 2 always has 7, and level 3 always has 9. The only exception to this is in rare cases where not enough class rooms generate to place all notebooks.
• 1st Prize's subtitles are now cyan.
• Reduced the price of the map on levels 1 and 2.
• Added some more game testers to the credits. Give a big thanks to Josh, Padre Snowmizzle, LiNX 4, Dave Microwaves Games, and JayskiBean for offering their feedback on the game changes!

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed coin doors occasionally spawning in blocked off areas, potentially trapping players.
• Added many missing subtitles and fixed some typos.
• Fixed a bug that could cause extra halls to generate without being connected to anything, creating small areas completely blocked off from the rest of the map.
• Fixed a bug that caused objects next to a library to be silent.
• Fixed a bug that caused Mrs. Pomp, Beans, and 1st Prize to not stay in the Principal's Office during the party event.
• Fixed the water fountain blocking NPCs lines of sight.
• Fixed a bug that caused subtitles to behave weirdly when entering the library.

[ 2020-11-21 23:42:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Baldi's Basics Plus version 0.2.2 is available now! Since I never uploaded a changelog for version 0.2.1, I'll also include that in this update.

0.2.1

Bug Fixes

• Made it so that 1st Prize can actually spawn.
• Fixed Johnny's subtitles (They are disabled now, as they aren't important for gameplay. Once I set up a system for non-directional subtitles, I will re-implement them).
• Fixed the store entrance icon not displaying correctly on some displays.

0.2.2

Bug Fixes

• Fixed endless mode using the old texture for Gotta Sweep's closet.
• Fixed NPCs' vision not being affected by fog properly.
• Fixed Principal of the Thing sending players to detention twice in a row for no reason.
• Fixed issues caused by changes made to the way billboarded sprites work that would occasionally cause sprites to flip upside down and do other weird things during the flood event.
• Fixed some visual issues with the credits.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused posters to not render properly, making them invisible.
• On OSX, fixed a bug that caused fog to always be white, even if it was supposed to be a different color.
• On OSX, fixed a shader oversight that resulted in sprites causing extreme slowdown (On some OSX systems).
• Fixed inaccurate textures on the roto-hall signs.

Adjustments

• Items purchased from the store will now go straight to your inventory, instead of the counter, if there's room. Items will only go to the counter once the inventory is full.
• When exiting the store, the confirmation dialogue will now only show if there are items on the counter.
• The text on the exit confirmation dialogue has been changed to make clearer the fact that items left on the counter will be lost.
• Shortened Johnny's voice line for when you mouse over the map fill item. He now simply says "This will fill out your map!"
• Safety Scissors can now be used to stun 1st Prize for 30 seconds. The effect is cumulative, so using multiple scissors on it will result in the stun lasting even longer.
• Updated the item description for Safety Scissors to offer clearer details on its use.

[ 2020-09-19 21:23:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 0.2 is finally out! Before checking out this changelog I recommend playing the game and discovering the new stuff for yourself. Here's most of the changes from 0.1.5:

Adjustments and Additions:

• Added 1st Prize! He's back and ready to start hugging you again!
• Added Johnny's Store! You can now buy items or have your map filled with the YTPs you earn. The store will also show you a description of any item you mouse over. Johnny will keep you company while you shop!
• Added many new ways to earn You Thought Points, including:
  • Picking up regular notebooks (+10)
  • Finishing jump rope with Playtime (+25 if you do it perfectly, the reward drops by 5 each time you mess up)
  • Field trips (+100, +200, or +300 depending on performance)
  • Time bonus
  • Grade bonus
• Added lots of new artwork, mostly replacing graphics that were previously placeholders. Updated graphics include:
  • Elevator screen. This has been completely revamped. There's even some music that plays while you wait!
  • Elevator in-game. The doors and inside now have proper textures. Also added new elevator door sounds.
  • Gotta Sweep's closet. The door now uses a new "Supplies" texture, and the inside uses whatever textures the halls are using.
  • Math Machine. This now has a design that is final! It will even light up to let you know if your answer was correct or not. Note, I'm aware that the pre-made maps still use the old design. This will be fixed once I rework the way pre-made levels are built and saved.
  • Grappling Hook. The icon is the same, but the projectile uses a much nicer sprite, and cracks appear where it hits a surface.
  • Staminometer. The stamina bar is no longer just a boring bar!
• The elevator results screen now displays accurate values instead of placeholders.
• Added a new event: Gravity Chaos! If you're upside down, any NPCs who aren't won't be able to interact with you, and vice-versa!
• The grappling hook can now be used 5 times before it's used up.
• Baldi can no longer end the game if his ruler is broken.

Bug Fixes:

• Made changes to the sprite shaders that should prevent automatic batching, which was causing sprites to turn dark when multiple of the same sprites were near each other.
• Fixed the script that handles multi-angled sprites (1st Prize, The Test). Viewing angles weren't quite right before.
• Reworked the script that NPCs use to "see" the player so that they consistently detect the player even if the player is moving quickly or is inside the NPC. This occasionally caused strange behavior.
• Fixed clunky vertical mouse movement with the in-game mouse. It should be super smooth now!
• Fixed portal posters not rendering properly.
• Fixed Chalkles not rendering properly.
• Fixed the arrows not pointing in the direction the Principals are moving in in the Stealthy Challenge.
• Fixed some materials that were using old shaders that did not have fog or lighting effects.
• Fixed a bug that made it impossible to enter lockers while being pushed by an outside force.
• Corrected the color of Principal of the Thing's "I'm coming!" subtitle.
• Fixed a bug that caused NPCs in field trips to descend below the map.

That's it! I'm sorry for taking so long to get this first major update out. Trust me though, things are speeding up, and 0.3 will be released much more quickly! I hope you'll look forward to it!

[ 2020-09-13 04:17:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Adjustments:

• Whirlpools no longer pull you all the way down to the ground.
• Increased the speed at which teleporting whirlpools form (The ones that appear where an entity is getting teleported to, not the ones that appear when a flood begins).
• Reduced the number of whirlpools that spawn in the flood event (The previous amount was only meant for testing purposes. Oops!).
• The tape player and pay phone now have a cooldown before they can be used again.
• Playtime now gets sad and cancels the jump rope minigame if you enter a locker while playing.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that would allow math machine balloons to get dragged down near then ground when being held while the player got sucked into a whirlpool.
• Fixed the playground skybox. You should no longer be able to see objects from inside the school above the fence!
• Marked all shaders as opaque. All shaders are now cutout shaders. This fixed pretty much all sorting issues in the game!
• Stamina now recharges while inside lockers, while teleporting, and while getting sucked up by a whirlpool.
• Tweaked the NPC navigator to ensure the height value of destinations is always the same. This should reduce the vertical shaking that you'd sometimes see from NPCs. It should also prevent bugs where certain NPCs would sink down into the floor.
• Fixed a bug that would cause NPCs to get stuck when wandering into open areas with only one entrance/exit and with no wall-less tiles.
• Fixed a bug that would allow the player to retain the effects of the Faculty Nametag after it wore off if they died or quit with one and then used another before restarting the program.
• Fixed a bug that would cause players to be stuck in the wrong layer (Removing all collision) when quitting while "hidden" (In a locker, while teleporting, or while getting sucked up by a whirlpool), and then hiding again before restarting the program.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to use tapes on tape players and quarters on payphones without the items being used up in explorer mode, allowing the items to be used infinitely.
• Fixed a bug which caused "8" to show up as a subtitle when the fog event started.
• Reworked the cameras a bit to remove conflicts when being assigned to multiple locations. This was primarily to fix a bug where the camera would be in the wrong location when entering a locker while playing jump rope.
• Fixed a bug that allowed whirlpools to spawn in locations that they shouldn't, like inside the elevator.
• Fixed a bug that allowed whirlpools to send the player to locations where they could get stuck. This should no longer be possible.

Thanks for playing, and I hope you're all looking forward to 0.2!

[ 2020-08-15 19:49:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 0.1.4 has released with a bunch of bug fixes and adjustments, here's what's changed! Adjustments:

• Re-added Baldi's countdown and "ready or not" audio clips.
• Whirlpools no longer remove items. Instead, they will now suck the player and NPCs in and teleport them somewhere else on the map!
  • Also adjusted the amount of whirlpools that spawn in a flood, and the strength of whirlpools.
• Tweaked shaders for potentially better performance when fog is not active.
• Updated to the latest version of Unity 2019 (2019.4.5f1).
• Added a text prompt on the sign-in screen to enter your name if no names have been added.

Bug fixes:

• Made multiple fixes to the level generator. The following changes will result in seeds changing!
  • All types of swinging doors should no longer be able to spawn on top of each other.
  • Rooms can no longer spawn at the corners of halls and other rooms. This is to fix a bug that could allow rooms to spawn, but have no connection to a hall or room. This most commonly occurred with Gotta Sweep's closet.
  • Fixed multiple bugs which allowed things such as lockers to spawn over windows and posters to spawn behind wall-covering objects.
• Principal of the Thing can no longer get stuck inside It's A Bully while trying to send him to detention.
• [strike]Stamina now recharges while inside lockers[/strike] Okay so this is embarrassing... I fixed this, and then this introduced another bug, so I fixed that, which ultimately... Unfixed this and I didn't realize it until after I released the update. OOPS! Expect this to be fixed in the next update.
• Math Machine notebooks will now appear on the map in endless mode when they respawn, but before the new problem is solved.
• The level generator will no longer connect tiles to null tiles, which are used on elevators. This fixes a bug that would allow hallways to rarely connect to the inside of the elevator.
• Fixed a bug where Playtime wouldn't return to normal speed when using a Nametag while she was chasing you.
• Fixed upside down locker textures.
• Principal of the Thing will no longer stop running when being pushed by an outside force when using the Principal Whistle.
• Fixed a missing subtitle for when notebooks respawn.
• Fixed Chalkles sprite fade-in. It will now fade in from black to white, instead of from transparent to fully opaque.
• Fixed Cloudy Copter continuing to blow wind even if he leaves his location to go to a party.
• Skybox was supposed to render properly in the playground in this update, but due to an oversight it's not quite right yet. A proper fix will be in the next update.
• Elevators can now be exited from the inside when they are closed as a failsave if the player somehow accesses a closed elevator.

[ 2020-07-25 18:26:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 0.1.3 of Baldi's Basics Plus has released! Here's what's changed:

Changes:

• The Nametag item now works against Beans and Chalkles. They will ignore you while you are wearing it.
• When wandering into open areas, NPCs will now avoid picking the edges to walk to if possible. This means that hiding in a corner or against a wall with a chalk eraser cloud is a guaranteed way to successfully hide from someone, as there is no chance they will wander close to the wall. Just make sure they didn't see you before using the chalk eraser!
• Principal of the Thing can now send It's a Bully to detention if he sees him bullying the player.
• Extended time for the party event. It will now last anywhere from 50 to 80 seconds. Previously, it could last from 30 to 60 seconds.
• Extended time for the mystery room event. It will now last anywhere from 90 to 120 seconds. Previously, it could last from 45 to 60 seconds.
• Added a version number to the sign-in screen.
• Lowered guilt time for using the BSODA from 3 seconds to 0.8 seconds. With this change, Principal of the Thing practically has to see you use the BSODA in order to scold you for it.
• Removed the rare one-way walls from level 3. Yes these were intentional and yes, the cursed things will make a comeback some day.
• Subtitles that are missing a value will now simply display the key it's looking for instead of the generic "Localized text not found" message.
• Removed some unnecessary debug warnings that could potentially cause slowdown.

Bug fixes:

• NPCs can no longer pass through Math Machines
• Doors now make noise when opened by NPCs (Before they only made noise when closing after opened by an NPC).
• Fixed a bug that caused notebooks to spawn a bit further away from the math machine each time they were spawned in endless mode.
• Made improvements to save functionality that will hopefully prevent save data corruption.
• Instead of crashing, the game will now display an error screen when a corrupted save is attempting to load.
• If the high scores data file is corrupted, the game will now automatically reset it to defaults.
• Fixed a bug that caused the backer credits not to display.
• Fixed a bug that allowed buttons to spawn in mystery rooms.
• Fixed the invisible trees in the playgrounds of pre-made levels.
• Entering "-" into a seed field will no longer crash the game, and will instead select a random seed.
• Fixed a bug that caused Mrs. Pomp to start attacking the player when they clicked on a locked door.
• When getting moved while inside a locker (By using a teleporter or getting teleported by Arts and Crafters for example) you will now be removed from the locker.
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to place portal posters on tiles that Chalkles could spawn on.
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to place portal posters on tiles that are blocked on the player's side of the wall.

[ 2020-07-07 22:07:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Baldi's Basics Plus entering early access was a huge milestone for the game, but it's also just the beginning for things to come! Now that the game's been out for a few days I figured I should share what my plans are for the rest of the game's development cycle, from now until the day the game leaves early access and officially releases. If you've already bought the game, this will give you an idea on how often to expect major and minor updates. If you haven't bought the game yet, you can use this info to decide if you want to grab it now or wait until after future updates have released. The choice is up to you! Oh, and of course, all of this stuff is subject to change! Hopefully it won't change much, and if it does, hopefully it will be change for the better!

Update Schedule

I have no strict schedule on when I'll release updates, but I do plan on releasing them fairly consistently. There will be two types of updates during the development cycle, major and minor updates. Minor updates will consist of bug fixes, tweaks, and improvements to existing content. Major updates will introduce new content, and may also include major overhauls and additions to existing content. Minor updates can be expected about once every week or two, while major updates can be expected about once every couple of months. This will continue for a while. Eventually, once the game has an amount of content that I'm satisfied with, I plan on taking a longer period between updates to work on one big, final update that will bring the game pretty much to its finished state. This final update won't focus on new content so much as polish, horror elements, secrets, etc... I don't want to say much about what I have planned for the final update, as I don't want to spoil anything, but I think the fact I even have to worry about spoilers should tell you something about what to expect. After the final major update I'll continue with minor updates until the game is stable enough for an official release!

Pricing

Currently the game costs US$10. As I've mentioned in the early access info, I do plan on increasing the price as the game receives updates. Currently I'm planning on increasing the price a little bit two times. Once at an undecided date to coincide with a major update roughly half-way through development, and once more to coincide with the final major update (Not the official release, but the final update before the official release). Of course, anyone who buys the game at any price will receive all future updates for free. I'll be sure to announce price increases before they happen, so if you're unsure about buying the game now, but still want to snag it at the current price, keep an eye out for that.

My Thoughts on the Game Right Now

I'm pretty happy with the game overall at the moment! I've expressed in the past that I wish things were further along than they are now, but even if things do go slower than I'd like, that won't stop me from finishing this game! I've received a lot of great feedback from players so far, and have already used some of that feedback to make game tweaks in the 0.1.2 update. While I'm pretty happy with the state of the core game, there are some things I've been thinking about that I'm going to be making some major changes to.

Field Trips

Somewhere along the line I forgot to make sure field trips were fun. That seems like a pretty big oversight, but you'd be surprised how often fun can be forgotten about in game development when something seems cool! When I made the camping field trip demo, I primarily made it as a proof-of-concept, a way to say "Look, you'll be able to play mini-games and win items during the main game!" I also made it with the hopes that YouTubers would play it and help spread the word of the Kickstarter, and they did! I seriously cannot thank them enough. However, I didn't really spend much effort in ensuring the field trip was fun to play, and looking back, the fact that it didn't doom my Kickstarter by being as boring as it was kind of amazes me, haha. When it came time to add field trips into Plus, I made a big mistake! Instead of coming up with a new, fun idea for a minigame, I just ported the camping demo into Plus. No changes or anything to make it fun I just moved it over pretty much exactly as it is in the demo. It's at this point I kind of lost sight of what field trips should be. After that I added the farm field trip, which I think is slightly better, but not much. I write all this to say... Yes, I'm aware field trips feel like chores right now, and I'm going to address that issue! I'll eventually rework the current two field trips into something fun (Or scrap them entirely if that doesn't work out) and future field trips will not be added unless they're fun to begin with. They won't last so long, and they'll be more engaging. I'm sorry you all have to suffer through the current field trips if you want a chance at getting an apple... But hey, maybe the apple is still worth it! :P

Game Speed

I mentioned this on my Twitter a little while ago, but I've come to realize - both through my own play testing and feedback from others - that the game is currently too slow. The speed currently is equal to the speed of Baldi's Basics Classic. I used that speed initially as an easy starting point for Plus. While the speed of Classic is great for Classic, since the game is so short, I've quickly come to realize that it's a bit too slow for Plus, due to the fact that it's much longer (And will be even longer in future updates!). A play session through the three levels currently in the game can take over an hour! I've actually been meaning to increase the speed a bit for a while now, but just never got around to it. Now though it's moved up pretty high on my priority list. The speed increase won't be huge, I'm thinking something along the lines of making the walking speed the current running speed. This means that the game will still have the same slower, more methodical feel to it that it currently has, but levels will be quicker to complete. I also intend to keep the relative speeds of NPCs the same, so balance will remain similar to how it is now. On a related note, I also plan on adding a save and quit feature so that you can take a break from longer play sessions that you don't want to lose progress in. This will also help prevent play sessions from becoming too long!

What's Next?

The first major update, version 0.2, will come with some new features, including the in-game shop that will put the YTPs to good use! It will also include a handful of new items and events, a new character, and a new field trip. Before I begin working on those things however, I'm going to turn my focus towards some internal stuff that needs re-working. Namely, the way I create pre-made levels. Besides the fact I haven't built a proper dev tool to build levels by hand (The only way I can do that currently is with a painfully slow process where I click and drag prefabs into scenes by hand), I also currently have a very poor method of turning randomly generated levels into pre-made levels. The issue is that when I save a generated level as a pre-made level, it loses references to the prefabs used to build it. So, when I update a prefab, it doesn't actually update in the pre-made levels, which is why there have been some strange bugs in Plus that only occur on the challenge maps and the medium endless map (For example, if I were to update the door prefab, that change would instantly apply to randomly generated levels, but not the pre-made levels, which could cause some unexpected behavior, and makes updating things needlessly difficult). Once I take some time to create some proper level building tools (For myself. I'd love to add such a feature to the game, but making it user-friendly enough to add to the game would require a lot more work) and a good method for saving generated levels, my workflow will improve a lot when it comes to things like adding challenge maps. Because of this, the gap between now and the first major update may be longer than gaps between future major updates, but then again, maybe all of this will be finished a lot quicker than I expect.

That's all for now!

I think that about covers everything going on with development for right now! Once the next major update is nearing release I'll be sure to post about it with more details on what to expect. Until then, I'll continue with minor updates to version 0.1. Thanks for the support everyone!

[ 2020-06-24 19:16:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 0.1.2 of Baldi's Basics Plus has been released! Here's what's changed: Adjustments

• Playtime now gets sad when you cut her jump rope.
• Mrs. Pomp's timer will disappear once her class is dismissed.
• Gave Mrs. Pomp a new voice line for when she spots a player.
• The Principal whistle now makes the Principal of the Thing come to your location super fast. This is accompanied by a new voice line (This item will become even more useful once PotT will be able to send NPCs to detention in a future update).
• Nerfed Principal of the Thing. Once aggroed, it is now possible to lose him. He will travel to the last location he saw you, and if he doesn't see you again at this point he will begin wandering until he sees you again. He will remain aggroed until he manages to catch you.
  • This does not apply to the Stealthy Challenge.
• Nerfed Gotta Sweep
  • Slowed him down slightly.
  • He now longer sweeps with a force equal to his velocity. Now the force is a bit less, meaning the player and NPCs will slowly phase through him instead of always being at the forefront of his sweep.
• WD-NoSquee can now be used on blue lockers! Silenced lockers can be used three times before they start making noise again.
• Nerfed Beans' gum. It does not slow the player down as much as before. It still effects NPCs the same as before, however.
• Safety Scissors can now be used to cut off Beans' gum.
• One-way swinging doors can now be traveled through in any direction while open.
• The version number on the main menu can now be clicked to view all devlogs on Itch.io.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a game breaking error that would occur if the NameList.dat file is corrupted. If the file is corrupted, the game will now search the save directory for save files and create a new NameList file based on the existing saves.
• Mrs. Pomp will no longer chase the player while they are wearing a name tag.
• Fixed the Baldi "jump scare" only working sometimes.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to place portal posters on walls adjacent to the edge of the level.
• Detention time will now properly jump to 99 after reaching a 60 second detention, instead of maxing at 65.
• Fixed some missing and incorrect subtitles.
• Playground trees should no longer occasionally appear dark.
• The map background is no longer effected by fog.
• Fixed a few names that were cut off the sides of the screen in credits on 4:3 displays.
• Subtitles no longer appear while inside the library.
• Fixed a typo in farm field trip description.
• Fixed the "jump scare" audio continuing to play when re-trying a level.
• Fixed some environment audio loops not being effected by volume settings (Changes made to settings only apply to sounds that begin playing after changes are made)
• Fixed the You Can Think Pad not rendering on certain challenge maps.
• You can no longer see the game in the background when using the control mapper mid-game.
• Fixed the bear traps using a placeholder sound.

[ 2020-06-20 00:57:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

I've just uploaded a new update to fix some big bugs that were reported. Here's a full list of everything that's been changed:

• Fixed the game crashing when completing challenge maps.
• Custom seed values are now limited to int32 min and max values.
• Fixed a few bugs caused by trying to view the advanced map in field trips or the elevator.
• The pause menu will now display the current seed to aid with bug reports.
• Fixed Baldi not moving in the farm field trip.
• Subtitles no longer prevent menu items from being clicked on.
• Increased desk and lunch table spawn buffers so that they can no longer spawn so close to each other that they block areas off. Also reduced the size of their hitboxes.
• Objects can no longer spawn in the center of the Principal's Office.
• Implemented item slot hot keys and removed unused item slot 6 key option.
• Fixed the advanced map crashing on pre-made levels.
• Fixed pause screen weirdness, which involved the system cursor sometimes not re-locking and multiple menu screens rendering on top of each other.
• The game will now load the last player's screen settings on start. Different players can still have different screen settings, and whoever played last will have theirs loaded when the program is started. Loading a different player will immediately switch to their screen settings.

[ 2020-06-13 16:06:57 CET ] [ Original post ]