Attention Foundation Staff, The channels have been quiet for a while. But no longer! Now I have updates on where I've been, what's going on now, and what to look forward to! (TL;DR, gained lots of skill doing freelance work, and also massive update for Halloween, plus some other stuff) I'm finally back to work on Blackout, and I even brought in a new(ish) developer, Jory Stultz! But wait (you might say), he's already been part of the game for a while? Yes, dear researcher, but mostly as a voice actor for a ton of characters and awesome writer. But while we've been away, he's been training and turned out to be pretty awesome at level design! So now he has access to the project to do some stuff to, so I'm finally not doing it all solo. I also finally got ALLLLLL of the story documents, sticky notes, documents from in game, misc ideas, and sorted them out on a single program so it's tidy and easy to see. There.... may have been a few inconsistencies in the story, or lack of story there at all. We are fixing all of that. Now (for us) the overall story finally makes sense, and we're pruning off some oddball parts and filling in holes. Awe yeah, it's all coming together. The story was scrapped long ago once the game grew up way beyond what it was supposed to, but now we have a solid base to write on, and honestly, it's kind of writing itself. You can still expect the 16+ endings for Story mode, but now the survival side will also support it as a whole. Speaking of the Survival Mode, I don't really like it. It was kind of thrown together (like most of the game), as it grew. But now with all the holes visible, it's all written out and finalized, so I have a set goal. You can expect the Survival mode to basically double, and a whole bunch of stories to actually make sense. Also, expect more cinematic experiences and you know, REAL game type stuff. It's pretty cool. Also like 4+ new maps, and 2+ total reworks, and a bunch of other map improvements. Also 3(ish) new actual+cinematic endings for survival, cause just getting a piece of paper for surviving blows. I'm hoping that we can get all this done by Halloween. If not, we should have most of it. The rest will come for Christmas. As for me, where did I go? Well, with Covid-19, I was somewhat laid off. But I didn't actually know it. They just kept telling me work would come eventually, so I spent the first month or two making a new multiplayer game, Project Midgard. It's multiplayer, playable, and semi fun, but it's not done yet. I actually stopped on it for now because I needed money. So I finally faced my fear and started looking for freelance jobs. With Blackout, Outsiders (another game I made, it actually has really good reviews. It's part of the Dread X Collection), and Project Midgard, it turned out I had a fairly solid resume. So now I have a few clients where I get full time work, and do Blackout in my free time. If you, uh, want a game made, I have some really good references. I can do just about whatever you need, and my clients highly recommend me lol. Speaking of all that, all these new projects have netted me a TON of experience. I have so much new knowledge on ways to improve Blackout in so many ways. I've already fixed half my bug list today alone, and some of those bugs have given me issues for over a year. Plus animation, lighting, performance, and improvements in a bunch of other areas. Also I had a son. He's pretty cool, I like him. As of writing, he's a little over a month old. His name is Viridian. It's a pretty big deal to me, but people don't usually care for other people's baby stories, I never did (lol). It took a few weeks to get back to normal, but now I have a routine and can steadily work again like I used to. I wanted to settle down and get comfy in my routine for a good bit before I made this post, so here we are. Also I learned how to model while I was gone, so you can get ready to see some improvements. Like those ugly, ugly EPO cards. And the save console, yuck.