Hello, and welcome to the 13th progress update of Baldi's Fun New School Ultimate! In this update, I'll be sharing some updated release plans for upcoming versions of BFNSU (such as Beta 1), along with news about what's been going on in the meantime. I hope you'll enjoy hearing what I have to say, and now it's progress update time!

But First, An IRL Update...

So, I thought I would get this out of the way before I move on to the exciting development stuff. One reason why development on the Beta 1 update has not been going as fast as I thought it would is because I've been more busy lately with IRL stuff, such as working a part-time job (which I recently had to start doing more hours for), other work outside of BFNSU development (such as house chores), and, on September 21st, launching a small business (of which you can find a website that I've created for it here) I've been preparing over the last few months since June, which means I will need some time to run and manage that business.

Some JSP merch is also planned to be offered there (which might also include some BFNS series related products), so that's something to look forward to as well!

As you can see, my life outside of BFNSU development is quite busy, although despite that, I'm still trying my best to find time to work on the project when I can. Thankfully though, I've recently gotten some additional help on the project! Speaking of which...

New Development Team Members!

Yes, that's right! No longer is Baldi's Fun New School Ultimate being developed on my own, as it has been since the beginning. Now, I have 2 additional development team members who will (or are already) helping out with development work on the project. As you might have already heard, those new team members are GrandGames, the creator of the Baldi's Brand New Game mods, and SeenWonderAlex, the creator of Baldi's Basics The Ultra Decompile!

With these 2 experienced Baldi's Basics mod developers helping out on the project, I'm hoping it will speed up the project's development, especially since now I don't have as much time to work on BFNSU as I used to. In fact, it turns out GrandGames is great at creating animations, and in only a few days since he joined the team (which was on August 10th along with SWA), he's already greatly improved the Floor Builder with a ton of new animations, including unique ones for placing and deleting objects from each category!

For reference, this is what the Floor Builder was like in an earlier iteration. As you probably noticed, there were no animations and sound effects used at all, making it feel very static.

Now, as of the latest iteration, this is what the Floor Builder is like following the additions by GrandGames. As you can see, the addition of animations and sound effects make it feel a lot less static!

Overall, with these new team members helping out, it should really help improve BFNSU, and hopefully make the development of Beta 1 and future updates go along faster. But, what else has been added to the Floor Builder since the last update? Well...

Scaling Up, Colorful Tiles, And Settings!

Some other additions that have been made to the Floor Builder has been fully implemented object scaling, the ability to input custom colors for minimap tiles, and the beginnings of a settings screen.

First, with the object scaling feature, you'll be able to change an object's scale between 0.25x and 10x normal size, allowing for a wide range of possible sizes that can be set for objects when building a floor. For example, you could create a hide-and-seek schoolhouse filled with giant objects that the player has to navigate around while avoiding Baldi and his friends! Just think of the possibilities with this feature alone!

Second, with changing the color of the minimap tile for a chunk you're about to place, you'll be able to choose between a selection of preset colors (such as red, blue, etc), a "no color" option (for tiles which you don't want to show up on the minimap, such as mystery rooms), and probably the most exciting one, a custom color input option that lets you input a 6 digit hex code (like FFFFFF for the color white) which lets you change the color of minimap tiles to a certain color that you want to use. To find the perfect color, I recommend using a color picker, such as this one.

Third, I recently starting working on a settings screen for the improved Floor Builder. Unlike in the alpha versions, where it was split into 2 separate buttons for 2 separate settings screens, all of the settings for a floor will be accessible from one screen which will let you switch between different pages of settings via a sidebar containing numbers that you can click on when you want to change to a different page of settings. Which should make for a nice improvement compared to the previous implementation.

Now, with all that out of the way, there's one more thing I would like to quickly mention. It's time for some updated release plans!

Updated BFNSU Release Plans

So, here are my latest release plans for Baldi's Fun New School Ultimate. Please note however, that this could end up changing in the future, but as of now, I think releasing updates like this would end up working well.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this progress update, and thanks to everyone who has contributed, given suggestions, and has helped me out with the development of Baldi's Fun New School Ultimate. See you in the next one, which I'll be posting on September 21st, 2024 at approximately 11 AM EST!