WEEK OF 2023/02/17: SHOUTOUTS TO GOOD SMILE EDITION

HELLO FIRST AND FOREMOST WE HAVE FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN' NENDOROID BOYFRIEND FIGURE FOR PRE-ORDER BY GOOD SMILE!!!

PRE-ORDER ON GOODSMILE WEBSITE PRE-ORDER ON GOODSMILE WEBSITE PRE-ORDER ON GOODSMILE WEBSITE PRE-ORDER ON GOODSMILE WEBSITE

dave talks about more of it later in the post go read dat fools post!!!

as well as various mischief, our producer KAWA introduces themselves in the post!!!! go read about em and see how they r helpin funkiiiiin (they meant to post their blog last week but missed it, lol!)

Hello Funkin', this is Kawa

by kawa-kitsuragi

Hi there! I'm Kawa Teaño, the newest part of the Funkin' crew. I've joined as the producer of this outfit!

What is production, anyway?

The thing about games - and especially games as ambitious as Friday Night Funkin' - is that there's a lot of moving pieces at any given moment over the course of its development.

Is that one feature implemented? Should we prioritize bugfixing or a new mechanic? What's the status of that new song, and which of the five saved versions is the most current one? How about that one animation?

In smaller projects, smaller teams, it's mostly feasible to have the people that do the work also own this kind of management work - but it's very quickly overwhelming! It's my job to be the central point of knowledge, knowing the status of things and keeping it moving without getting too distracted by any other responsibilities. And on top of that, figuring out how to responsibly manage all of your trust - your money and your expectations! - is part of the work too:

What's the status on that one piece of merch we promised? Can we find someone who'll make that thing who's willing to communicate our way? Where's this one legal contract?

It might sound boring - and to a lot of other people it maybe is! But I love this kinda thing - getting to touch bits of every part of a game, learn how a bunch of lovely nerdy specialists work, while also making sure it actually exists in the world instead of just half-formed ideas, encouraging the best in everyone - it's extremely my jam.

If you wanna learn more about this role in the industry, here's a community that's mentored me a lot and here's a surprisingly insightful panel from a bunch of production vets

Other stuff I've done

This ain't my first rodeo helping rad people make games happen, though Funkin' is definitely the most ambitious. For the last year and change, I've been helping out at Strange Scaffold, a studio making lots of little indie games across PC and console, including things like Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, which is as weird a game as it sounds.

I also help make a really cool virtual conference happen, and enable a bunch of weird fake sports nerds to make data crimes. Indeed, for the latter I maintain a chatty, relaxed tool directory, which says a lot about how I do production as a whole!

What all this should tell you is: despite being the most organized nerd in the room, I come by my weirdness honestly.

Get hype for the future of Funkin'

I'm so excited for y'all to see what we have in store for you! We've got a great update in the oven and merch in store, and overall I've banked a lot on helping make sure y'all get the rad game you all deserve. See you around!

payroll mischief

by ninjamuffin99

this week i had a bit of a fever for most of it, so sitting down at my computer to code was pretty light until the end of the week (past few days as of writing lol)

SO i decided to spend some time getting my mind sorted with some administration stuff. Getting KAWA on payroll I definitely wanted done this week, since it's about the time when they should get payroll anyways!

payroll for us entails sending EMPLOYMENT OFFER LETTERS and all that to whoever we are hiring, and then once all hands get shook, we harass them for a W4 tax file, and bank info. We then simply toss that to our accountants, and they handle mostly the rest with the payroll processing company! Glamourous! One thing about being a REMOTE-ish company is that you need to register tax bullshit on a PER STATE basis. You have an employee in Nevada? Gotta send some documents to the STATE OF NEVADA and get all those taxes bullshit in order. Got someone in Washington? Gotta go through that process all over again. Most of this is handled by our nice lil accountants though, ur mileage may vary and also THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE OR ACCOUNTING ADVICE OR EVEN A HOW-TO

BUT ANYWAYS every once in a while, the lawyers will need us to send something back or fill out an extra form, each state has slightly different rules and requirements.

New York state requires you to sign an extra document, but also you need that shit mf NOTARIZED! I never got anything notarized before the fuk! Basically though that just entails hunting down a notary place in ur local area, and payin them some coin to NOTARIZE it and give you an extra stamp of approval. We got the documents on Monday or so, and it took us a day to catch our bearings (even if I had fever!). Had to make an appointment for WEDNESDAY at around noon.... the payroll company processes the weekly payments later in the afternoon the wednesday before the payment... so we really wanted to make it before then so Kawa could be paid this week!!

I woke up relatively early for myself (10AM) and took the classic Tylenol + Ibuprofen combo, and biked to the notary place, since it was mostly downhill to there... and also because I missed the damn bus!!! Anyways to end off this boring ass progress update, got that shit notarized, scanned it in at the local library (who tf owns a scanner themselves) and got it all sent. Got back to my girlfriend who was dying in bed all alone for the day from fever, woops! We got payroll to figure out sorry! It all got processed all nicely and now producer Kawa is now a PAYROLLED EMPLOYEE!!!!

TIME TO DO THAT WITH THE STATE OF ARIZONA AND THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA AND ALSO HOW TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET MYSELF ON PAYROLL AND ALSO FIGURE OUT HEALTHCARE AND MORE ADMINISTRATIVE BULLSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT

but anyways thats my major contribution for the week towards FUNKIN CREW stuuuuuuuf

Phantom Says: Boyfriend Nendoroid is Out! 19 Page Comic Special Launch!

by phantomarcade

Well, it's a bit after Friday, isn't it? Heeheehehee, ahhh... yeah. This week has moved my sleep schedule all around, as usual.

But screw all that!!! Boyfriend! GoodSmile! Nendoroids! We've kept the secret for so long, but finally, the Boyfriend Nendo has been shown to the world! And it's also finally on pre-order!

Adorable lil guy, huh? When GoodSmile reached out a while back, it had us all pretty excited! Over months I helped greenlight this and get all the designs polished up to make it as much of a treat for fans as possible. And in the mean time, I felt I couldn't let the opportunity pass to write up a story that coincides with just such an event. So today I put out the 19 page FNF Nendo Comic Special: Smile Good, Boyfriend! While Boyfriend is over at GF's house to play horror games, the real horrors are the fucked up plans Daddy Dearest has in store for him, involving a special new cursed relic daddy is using....

Check it out here!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhantomArcade3K/status/1626780743660630016

Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/phantomarcade/fnf-nendo-comic-special

Lemme tell ya, I'm beat! This comic was in the works alongside normal game development ever since I knew the pre-order was coming, I had always wanted to do a longer form comic, and finally a worthy chance to celebrate seemed to be a good reason. But god damn, the final hours of wrapping this were a lot, so please enjoy it! I have a new found respect for manga artists, I seriously can't believe they do shit like this every single week....

Truth be told, there's 2 other long form stories I had in mind, but... only time will tell! As for now, this is the most tired I've been in a while, and there's still assets the team needs atm, yipes! Our newly hired project manager Kawa has been reminding me every few hours each day how much has piled up since the last few days were dedicated to wrapping this big project up. Haha, well that's life out here sailing the 7 seas of being an artist!

Each and every FNF related thing I can possibly make, like this comic, I'll continue to do so with my entire heart in it, so please, continue to look forward to the many other fun surprises coming this year. As for me, I think that about wraps it. There's a lot left to do tonight, good thing I've still got a good amount of coffee left....

-PhantomArcade

Splatoon 3 Salmon run.... All Grizzco weapons this weekend? Hmmmm.....

blog bot shenanigans

by ninjamuffin99

another effect of my fever based couple day vacation was it gave me a smiiiidge of an excuse to work and focus on the other aspect of the funkin blog…. THE BLOG BOT.

funk blogbot is a discord bot made with DENO and discordeno deno lib. deno is a bit of a new kid on the block, but its juuuust different enough from what i know and juuuuust familiar enough to really let me damn sink my teeth into it. got to coding away and learnin how it all works, and ive gotta say… pretty slick and fun! discord bots r good excuses to work on something small in a new language and get sum exp

got it all configured, even got that dipshit DOCKER stuff figured out too

While trying to make sure I don’t get too derailed with work, I think it’s healthy to poke around with different things like this, different languages, developer workflows, etc. the package management is pretty nice, altho haven’t used it on big project yet…. but nevertheless its still inspiring to see the other side. I don’t imagine myself ever creating a programming language or the sorts, but it’s starting to get fun to imagine things like “oh I want this feature from this language, this feature from this one, etc”. Basically I want haxelib to work good...

its all on github, I'll move it to the FunkinCrew github repo eventually, for now it lives right here

github.com/ninjamuffin99/blogBot

CLOSING THOTS

by ninjamuffin99

we got nendo for preorder... been a minute since we had MERCH for sale.... or really... since we had something releasing all nice!!! Shoutouts to crew of GoodSmile, they reached out ages ago, and slowly they toiled away at it and whatnot, and it turned out pretty damn good!!!! And as far as I know..... goodsmile isn't evil.... so it feels good to work with crew like that teehee... we hate evil people!!!!!

SONG OF THE WEEK