Hey all! I'm up at like- 3am! I realised just now that it's been roughly 2 years since I last made any type of written devlog for Jim's Basical Tutor Class itself. And wow... I feel like I'm juggling a ton of things a once right now. I hope in the coming months ahead, it's not like this for me.

So, firstly, let's start off, happy 2025! I hope it's going well for you all so far, and I hope 2026 is even better! But one thing I really am hoping for, is that 2025, is a good year for Jim's Basical Tutor Class, because a LOT has happened in the past week or so. 

Remade Model

If you're not completely up to speed right now, I completely cleaned up and remade Jim's model for the complete new era of Development. The model will NOT be changing anymore past this point, what he's using now.

Below is what we're dealing with. I've taken measures to ensure that this model will be even easier and cleaner to work with than the previous model.

That's crazy right? He looks vastly different!

You might not be too comfortable with the change now, and that's okay- his new design is actually how I intended for him to look from the beginning! He's supposed to have these big weird clown lips, and a more humanoid body. I find that the humanoid body (when actually spent more time on) fits Jim a LOT better than the Baldi body he was given before.

With this change, comes more plans to utilise Jim! My biggest gripe with Jim's old model, was that he had Baby hands, and no amount of resizing done to them would make them look right, his wireframe was also messier, and more difficult to work with. Outfits were layered in such a way that made rigging separate parts difficult. What I opted to do for this model, is make his Glasses, and Lab Coat separate objects, and add them as separate objects to the rig itself, that way. In Anim8or there is a figure mode, where you can "Weight Paint" objects, and so every bit of clothing that gets added to Jim's model from this point onwards, will not be done on his main body mesh. You can do layers in Figure mode too, so I'll be making use of that!

Dialogue

I haven't done much for Jim's Dialogue, as I haven't figured out how he'd sound in game, however, I've been making efforts to have that ready, so when it comes time to Voice Act, I'll know his speech patterns well! He'll talk similarly to Baldi (speech patterns mostly), by no means will he actually sound like Baldi. He'll have a northern accent, since the game takes place near Canada. In the demo, so your expectations aren't totally up there, I plan to use a Placeholder until I decide whether or not I will be the voice of Jim. Similarly to Foxo's Fun Schoolhouse, and Dave's Fun Algebra Class Remastered, I'll likely use a TTS voice in the Demo. But real voice acting is going to be replacing that in the event that I release a second demo sometime next year (purely an estimate and is NOT guaranteed).

Technical Systems

I've made a few changes (and I'll keep making more as I develop the game)

Menus

For starters, I've completely scrapped all "mod-like" menus, which means there's no actual Title Menu, All settings will be controlled before you actually launch the game. (in an emulated desktop)

this is how things are going to be managed going forward, and I think it'll really save me the trouble of having to make a fully fledged options menu inside of the actual game

Before any concerns come up, I eventually plan to make it so that pausing the game, will dock the window to Jim, and you'll be able to fool around with the desktop, and even change your settings in it as well.  Admittedly, it can be distracting, but if you know your way around the desktop, this shouldn't be a problem!

What's the Operating System name? ShutterStation, I came up with this name, because when I had original came up with this last year, I had made a concept for a screen transition, which was similar to an Shutter closing on a camera. It seemed very interesting to me, so I based the system around that. But for the most part, it's Based off of Windows 98 (with influence of Windows XP).

Anyways that's boring! Let's talk about the Townhall! The Townhall is where you'll create new saves (a Maximum of about 4), You'll ring a bell, which drops a checking book from the ceiling, and you'll open that checking book to view the save files. By default, your name autofills with the name you set for the ShutterStation system when you did that Setup, but you can obviously change that name. I won't spoil too much about what comes next after you check in, but all I can say, is that it'll be fun!

Lighting

Lighting has gone through about 2 rewrites, with this current rewrite hopefully being the last one! I've been trying my hardest to get this lighting system to feel immersive, while also making it completely lightweight and not resource intensive (Before the first rewrite, it was awful, and after I rewrote it the first time, it was still awful, so I went back and fixed it up, and now it works well!)

What's best about this new rewrite, is that I now have it to where light no longer phases through walls (it will of course go through windows though), and I talked about this addition before, but light switches can now be utilised without tanking performance. I'm hoping to get a level made where lights are manipulated in real time, to test the capabilities of them, essentially another system stress test, which will tell me what I need to better about the system. But for the most part, it's very similar to the Baldi's Basics lighting system.

Shaders

I've made plenty of shader changes, with some help of course. I no longer use unity fog anymore, fog is now in the shaders themselves. I've also added Light guides to materials, so that they can glow in the dark. All these technical changes, pave the way for more going forward!

I don't exactly have anymore things to share of value, however I hope you took away one thing from this announcement!

It's that this project is not going to die out, and will keep thriving going forward. I hope you all have a good 2025, and beyond, however long it takes me to complete the game in its entirety, I hope it'll be worth it. See you around!