I have made more renders of the following cameras: Corridor B, Hub, Barrels, and Long Water. I managed to figure out how to blend two textures into one and texture paint on details. I mainly did this in Long Water with the vents and rust. I did see another addon called Bmixer+ that helps the workflow process of all this, but I haven't bought it yet.

I have also made a demo custom night screen that helps with testing. I also added a temporary win condition in the form of surviving for 6 minutes, as well as getting the power on the cameras to eventually actually die.

I plan to buy the following addons for this project:

• Physical Puddles Pro 2.0 [Cyber25] - $12

• One-Click Edge Wear - £3.12

I will also look at some premium materials as I currently cannot find one that I am happy with for the floor.

Update: Okay, so I bought the edge wear plugin for Blender, but unfortunately it was outdated. I contacted the guy who made it, Lazy3D, and asked to refund it. He then said he can refund or offer a discount for up to $12 on another product. I mentioned that I was also going to buy the puddles plugin for $12 and that I wouldn't mind a small discount on that instead. He then gave me the whole puddle plugin for free, $12 off! Very kind of him. The seller is Lazy3D so I recommend him for Blender plugins.

Meanwhile, I've made the "office" area far better looking with puddles, rust and texture adjustments. I also have mapped out three camera locations so far. It has been long making these locations as I'm not accustomed to Blender yet, so small issues take longer for me. But hopefully this will pass soon.

I also made a small adjustment to the camera animation. I took inspiration from Five Nights at Candys as the camera in that game had wires sticking out the side, so I added some to mine too. I also adjusted the lighting on the camera as previously there was little to no lighting and it looked very flat when it the cameras were up.

Today I almost finished the night 2 outro cutscene, I just need to add a fade out. I also started the tedious process of mapping out the game world in Blender. The original images were made in Hammer++ using Half-Life 2, but of course I do not have the rights to this material to sell, so I am replacing all of these with my own creations. I managed to make part of the “office”, with some very nice wrapping pipes around the large sewer pipe. It has taken me quite a while to make just these few shots (around three hours) and I just wanted to take a step away from cutscenes for now.

My friend, PC, has given me feedback in the form of some helpful plugins that I can use. These are Dustify, One-Click Dust, Physical Puddles Pro 2.0, and One-Click Edge Wear. A few are paid addons but I don’t mind if they are helpful and I really appreciate PC for suggesting these to me.

On the 29th and 30th, I worked on the outro cutscene for night 2. This is where things start to go wrong, both in lore of the game and with trying to make the cutscenes. This cutscene represents the death of the cat and I took heavy inspiration from Silent Hill’s otherworld with rusty walls, metal grated floors, and tense atmosphere.

I came across a relatively big slowdown with development on the 30th. Clickteam Fusion 2.5 is old. The way I have been making cutscenes is having 1024x768 frames as animations for an active object. This scene had the most by far, a total of 240 images, all at 1024x768. With all three animations in game, I checked task manager and saw that the game was using 1 GB of memory just for this cutscene. The main game didn’t even use that, sitting around 600 MB. Other cutscenes sat at around 500 MB.

So, I had to cut down on the framerate, halving the total frames to 120 in total and it worked no problem. I also worked on adding sound effects to the scene too, making sure to use the licensed samples for SFX I purchased from the Horror Game Sound Effects pack. I am just missing the final part of the cutscene now where I plan for a frame to fall off the wall and smash. That part is already rendered, I just need to implement it.

Today I finished up the sequence for night 1. I added a second cutscene after the sewer just like I had in my script where the player walks through a dark corridor and says a few lines of dialogue.

I also added the outro to night 1, where the player comes across a room with a table, two chairs and two coffee mugs. A memory is played out here, referencing Salem. He quotes "Does being here help?" and then looking at a corridor with chains hanging, red light, and rusty pipes, he says "Yes... it does. Thank you." which I hope is vague enough to imply that this was a cherished memory and one that came right after some struggle.

I have also began work on the intro sequence for night 2 which is set in a pet store. I have got some cool cage assets, all free to use which is good, and made some signs in Photopea as textures.

Another big thing I decided to do was to actually buy some licenses. I purchased two licenses today, one for a sound pack called "Cinematic Noises" from loopmaster, and another called "Horror Game Sound Effects" from the Game Creator Store. The Cinematic Noises I can use for any music/ambience for the game with no issues, and the sound effects pack I can use for any sound effects I need. Now I don't have to worry about any licensing issues as I do plan to sell this game on steam eventually.

After taking a short break from literally working on the game, I decided to write up some lore. I already have an intro where the player goes into the sewer hole.I have wrote up every scene for the intro and outro of each night. Each scene will reveal an abstract piece of the protagonists story, what lead him to the hole, and why he's even there. I also have an ending in place. Below is a summary of events that I asked ChatGPT to summarise for me:

"James is drawn back to a sewer he cannot stop thinking about, a place tied to the collapse of his relationship with Salem, a woman already carrying deep unseen pain before the death of a cat she cared for pushed her into a severe psychological breakdown. As Salem withdrew, disappeared into treatment, and became unreachable, James’s grief curdled into bitterness, obsession, and a warped need to “save” her, eventually leading him to take her into the sewer, force the source of her trauma back in front of her, and kill her during the chaos that followed. The game’s events unfold as fragmented, contaminated memories of that buried act, with Knife representing James’s hollow, mechanical guilt and Shadow representing Salem’s lingering, invasive presence, turning the sewer into a haunted space shaped as much by delusion and remorse as by the crime itself."

The premise is not deep in any profound way, but I did want the scenes to be abstract. So, on first glance, you might not pick everything up unless you paid attention. When I get home tomorrow, I intend to make more of the cutscenes, specifically for the intro. There is a second scene I wish to add after James enters the hole.

I have burnt myself out. After working on this project for the past week, spending hours and hours each day thinking and working on this game, I hit a wall today. I have been working on the main menu, night select screen, and coded a simple 20 second interactive intro to night 1. But today I have felt awful, my mood has been so low, even though I should be excited about the project. I think the excitement of the main gameplay was carrying me through with momentum, and once things slowed to main menu screens and tedious cutscenes, it just kicked me. I will be taking a short break with this project, only for a few days. I should return on the 27th or 28th to continue.

On a positive note, I am quite happy with the interactive cutscene I added for night 1. It subtly adds lore to the game and is a nice eerie intro.