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!