{Warning: Extreme yapping session below} 1 As 2025 summer rolls to it's last month, so has the first third of the third quarter of the year passed, with this knowledge you may remember the Hairball trailer that released on the anniversary. Behind the outdated and mediocre cutscenes and stupid monlogue that someone split for a funny joke (you know who you are) was a release date for V1 at Q3 2025. A few months later from then and we are now almost halfway through Q3 so you might be wondering. Is Hairball V1 still releasing in Q3? 50/50 Now i know that sounds like a cop-out answer but it's the best i can give, With modding being very unexpected at times you never know when a mod will be complete, additionally it's easier to say Q3 2025 then something like September 12th (not the release date) since the team doesn't need to worry about meeting deadlines since there are none, only release windows and sometimes those windows won't be met. If it doesn't come out in Q3 it could be cool to release it on Halloween but i can tell i'm not the only one with that idea. Wouldn't want to pile on with 8 other mods that day. So expect a release date at any time. Also i won't give a definitive Date until 1 day before release So V1 is the next update releasing right? No, there is one thing before V1 which i will talk about below. The way this will work is that i will talk about what's in this thing being released and V1 as a small way to hype the 3 hairball fans and the sss community 2 First thing is an Update to the Demo. This will impliment the V2 of No More Reports made by @Alacey_ninja, @Splatatneo_ALT and @IMISSTHEQUIET since currently it has been mostly muted vocal wise as per vocalists request (much to many's dissapointment). With that said the only thing being added is NMR V2, outside of that nothing will be added or changed. The art currently in the demo will stay the same and the upgraded better art will be in V1 instead to keep the demo feel demo-y. Also NMR V2 only goes up to the fakeout reveal with the 2nd half being the same. Now i hate the SVG Chromatic in that half as much as you all do (I genuinely believe its the reason we lost MOTM, no i'm not petty im stating the obvious) but there is no way to replace the chromatic since there is no NMR FLP anymore and no-one want's to remake a 3 minute song. Other then that there isn't much to say about this hotifx 3 V1 Now this is more of a big update mostly overhauling a lot of the mod's content including -11 New Songs -1 Remade Song -GPU removed -Better Art -And a Story! Currently a lot of V1 is done music wise and almost all of it art wise. Most of the art has been remade to look sleeker and better (photo's in project) except character designs since those are perfect. Now i have gotten messages on the demo about how some people didn't know theres more then two songs. In V1 there is a obvious indicator that there is more. After No More Reports a message shows up on the screen saying that you found a crumpled up sheet with something written and that it could be some sort of code. This leads into how the story will play out in V1 Progression Now originally the idea was an overworld system like Mario's Madness. However since this mod is already taking so long that has been moved to V2 and this code sheet will be temporary. Now the codes will do something in V2 but it won't progress the storyline. But V2 is a year from now (might actually come out after GTA6 even if that joke is older then the 'hellhouse is never happening' joke) so i won't mention it. Once you enter the folder icon you can press 'X' to view codes (an indicator will be visible in the corner that this is possible) and you can input the codes to the text box and start a song. After a song the next code will be written in and you won't be able to input the previous song and only the next one (songs already played are scribbled out). Songs that you complete get added to the freeplay menu so you can replay any songs you like. After you finish all of the codes a message appears saying that you have finished the current story and have unlocked non-canon songs in the menu (being Scoundrel, Mindbreaker and Real Charachter). This does mean that unfortunately the storyline in V1 will be incomplete and unfinished, ending at a slight cliffhanger. V2 will complete the plot and end at a satisfying conclusion. Turbohacks Now Turbohacks is due for some overhauls, Especially with story since Gobo_SVG's (yes that's his name) personality has been changed to fit the story. Instead of being some cranky, somewhat insane guy he's more of a mentor assisting Scratch through the world he finds himself in since Gobo knows the area and it's inhabitants. The area is called The Overworld. Like Scratch Gobo has his own motives to help. those motives will be shown in V1's dialogue Dialogue Dialogue is the 2nd most important part of Hairball (Music is 1st iyc) since Almost all of the story is shown through (Continue below)
The Characters talking (The rest is in the journal and cutscenes but more on those later). An early example of the dialogue is in the project and some dialogue art is in the same sprite (do note that the text box is a placeholder and the actual one will have a bracket to show who's talking like in DDLC or Splatoon). Dialogue will usually be at the start and end of songs unless it doesn't fit (I.e Vector And Bitmap or Hellhouse). The dialogue also let's you learn of the characters personalities to give them more character The Journal The Journal is the number 1 source of the backstories of characters, It's basically the Lore Book. After a song you unlock pages on the characters from the perspective of Gobo (Sort of like how Apple 3.0 does it, and while the similarities are coincidental since i had the idea to expand the journal beforehand i can't deny i took a bit of inspiration after Apple came out). In special cases other characters may write into the book. The main example is SVG himself who 'somehow' found access to the book to fix slight mistakes. Another example is number one (self proclaimed) diva of The Overworld Zoitera! an example of this is attached as well (also any blue text is Gobo, Post Scriptum) Cutscenes Cutscenes are not too important with a total of 2 planned for V1. One after NMR and one before 4TheChase. These are only there since it's easier to show, not tell what's happening in that situation (P.S as of the 28th we are now using @LodgingOOF_21929 's cutscene engine which allows layered cutscenes which should make animating so much easier. side note check out SSS Vs Minecraft which uses the cutscene engine it's insanely good and the guy in general peak art) Songs (In Game) My plan for The Songs is that visually each one feels unique in a way such as Feline Fury going from bad to peak or Vector and Bitmap having buggy sprites and fabricated lag. This way you don't feel like your playing the same song 11 times. The songs have a lot of events to them but not too much to not feel cluttery (except one part of one song that is meant to throw you off guard. Hairball fans will know what that song is) Story The story is the most important part of Hairball to me. It's what i spend most of my time on since i try my best to make it as good as possible. Despite my hard work the story is actually very straight forward. Now of course i won't say anything about the actual story since that's what V1 does. In a way the Demo sets up the story and V1 actually starts it. It's like the Demo is the blurb of a book and V1 is the actual book (weird analogies are weird analogies) but i hope people will enjoy the plot shown. One cool thing is that there is a subplot for the mod. i won't say what happens but it does focus on a certain character that was left behind in the Demo ;) Final Statements Now i know some of you didn't read any of this but that's fine. that will leave more mystery to you and you can go in blind. To the readers i hope i didn't spoil too much, i only want to hype you all up to the actual mod releasing. Until that happens i hope you all have a great rest of Summer and i hope to see you all when V1 releases since the team has worked incredibly hard to get it out to the world and none of it could be possible without the Hairballers (yes that's what we call them). Keep being yourselves! -Lappylap4 oh also B4lls V1 i guess that will release someday i don't care much it's a cover mod (P.S next update is the final one and adds everything)