Development Blog - March '23

TLDR;

• Next update will include 5 new animations and a few bug fixes.
• We are currently ~50 people working on this game and are planning to further increase the core team size over the next few months.
• We roughly present an outline over 2 future collaborations and partnerships.
• Suggestions are presented on how to improve the Sandbox and turn it into a more integrated gameplay feature instead being a fully separated game mode.
• Helltaker tells you why he doesn't like to be insulted when responding to support tickets. But there are ways to banter that always work.

You can also find an audio version of this Development Blog read by Yara attached at the bottom of this post.

State of Production

This months release will be a Sandbox Animations release, that also includes some bug fixes.

Especially looking at the “stuck in bed” bug we currently have. At this point we should potentially try and make it a mission to leave your bed just for keeping the joke alive!

Step by step we are moving towards “feature completeness” with Combat coming to the game within the next 2 months, and our Waifu AI being previewed this month. As a result of this, we slowly are starting to build up the development team, to increase content delivery speed.

To get a better understanding of what “build up team size” means, take a look at who currently works at Big Bang:

Next to Melody and Shallteir, we have 9 full-time freelancers working in the core team: Helltaker, Yara, Krisu, Doople, Milad, Sultana, Corgles, Chaotic Dreams, Zul.

The support team, changing its size regularly, currently has 9 on-demand freelancers: Isaak, Michaela, Lurm, Deadcat, Haakon, HentAudio, Kame, Tyviana, Shay.

Since ANBW is fully voiced, we have a huge Cast of currently 30 Voice Actors: Projekt Melody, Cottontail, Jonah Scott/Alphonse MacKenzie, BakuSatsuHo, Freyja, Vexoria the Sun Eater, Gina Galore, Kylie Jones, Amelia, Rummy, Michaela Laws, Tempty, Yara Naika, Kari Chuu and many more to be announced soon.

We are currently training up 2 additional full-time Junior Animators: Badguy, Orch1d.

As you can see with a team size of 50+ people we have one of the bigger productions out there and in turn heavily appreciate every cent spend to support your nut between worlds!

The goal for the next few months is to nearly double the size of the core team, adding at least 2-4 animators, 1 programmer, 1 writer, 1 prop artist and 1 additional character artist.

To reach this goal, you will see a lot of new and regular content here on patreon, additional collaboration announcements, fantastic new partnerships and much more!

Our goal is to double the amount of patrons we have over the next 4 months, in order to enable us to make these adjustments in the core team size. Help us with this by spreading the word!

Helltaker: "As Head of Production my role here at Big Bang is not only to manage the day to day tasks for everyone. I also invest a lot of time into figuring out how we financially survive. One of my rules for keeping our Studio healthy, is to diversify sources of income!"

Additional to our work on Projekt Melody: A Nut Between Worlds! we recently started picking up additional opportunities for Big Bang Studio to raise the main games funding level by lending our experience and skills to other productions.

As part of that we will be announcing a collaboration with a well known publisher for a small pixel art game developed by Big Bang’s Team 2 - paid for fully by the publisher, with any additional revenue going towards Team 1 and A nut Between Worlds!

Next to this amazing opportunity we will finally reveal what we've been up to with Lovense in 2 big announcements over the next ~2 months. Being able to work with Lovense has been an absolute pleasure and we are looking forward to show you everything we have in store in that partnership!

Sandbox - What will happen Next?

The sandbox has been in a rough state from the moment it was released. Not only is it basically a small version of Unreal Engines Level Editor, it also has a lot of issues in the programming back-end, that make working and extending it a pain.

Players Feedback:

• Only small amount of players use the level creation tools
• The User Interface and User Interaction is hard to understand
• Adding new levels and scenarios is too complex
• Playing Scenarios takes too many clicks and the play-mode itself is confusing

Developers:

• Adding New Environment / Level Assets heavily increases build sizes
• 90% of the Code that needs more debugging is related to level creation / saving

Sandbox V2 - Exploration

In the reworked version of the sandbox mode, we should fully remove the Level Editor. The code for the sandbox currently mainly covers the Level Creation and Saving. Trying to rework this part of the sandbox to be more user friendly, will miss the target and would be over-scope territory.

The reason we can confidently remove the Level Editor are the incredibly large amount and varied types of environments created for the story mode. We are building - an entire city - Virtual Little Tokyo, Apartments and Living Spaces for each and every Waifu and so … much … more - to play around in.

For V2 the Sandbox could be turned into a gameplay feature called “Sandbox Mode”. This mode would be available to the player in the free roam parts while playing the story. As a result you would be able to enable “Sandbox” at any point in time when your not in a dialogue, combat, cinematic or locked mission.

Sandbox Mode would then include the ability to place characters, match their positions, select animations and switch between different character points of views. We could also retain the ability to create small playable scenarios, basically storing scenes to play after another.

Overall reducing overall complexity and focusing on what´s relevant for the sandbox mode, the animation and posing of characters, seems to be the best way forward for the Sandbox as of now.

Do you think this is a good idea to move the Sandbox forward? Let us know in the comments!

Helltaker’s Customer Adventures

As usual my development adventure stories are supposed to inform you about moments I personally experience during development with a bit of a quirky undertone and a gentle smile.

As some of you already know, I´m not just doing management and a lot of techy stuff at Big Bang, my job is also to be the customer support fairy for everyone.

So I was, as usual, flapping my fairy wings into a support ticket on the development discord and got immediately whacked in the face with someone pretty much screaming “This is not working, fix in one hour or report is out!”

Shortly: I refunded what they had spent, tried to talk things out, got insulted in the process, which ended the conversation with the ban hammer.

Not gonna lie, I feel usually I handle these types of interactions better. Wasn't too long ago… maybe 10 years or so …, when I was stupidly letting my frustration out on a poor support person, because my internet didn't work. I get frustration of having paid for something that does not end up just working.

Yeah I´m old, that´s why I ramble about my every day experiences here. I felt like it was worth sharing as a cautionary tale!

I just wanted to tell you guys that 99% of the time I´m super happy with how everyone handles feedback and critique so far!

Thank you for that. I´m very happy being your personal support fairy.

PS: Bantering is fine but please don't just randomly insult me to prove a point xD