21 021
The clock was buzzing its annoying tone in a repeating loop until Jack finally had enough and slammed it silent.
Turning it around with his hand and looking sideways past his pillow below his face with a tired bloodshot eye he saw the 3 blurry digits glaring back at him.
It was 6:15 am and he had to stand up to get ready. Normally he would be alright with that since he himself registered this exact time as his alarm.
But really, he was dead tired from yesterday. It had been a long time since he had been awake so long and had to go straight back up early in the morning.
And the activities the last day were a little bit too long in his opinion as well. But in general, he himself was at fault for that.
Moving up groggily and breathing in and out as if he was just barely getting any breath sure showed how tired he was. He literally could just close his eyes again and keep sleeping.
Taking a while when he finally sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his eyelids softly with a big yawn he noticed his PC's power button still shining.
"Why didn't I turn off the power?" Moving over to the computer to check the reason for that, he also turned the power for the monitor on.
The bright light nearly blasted his eyeballs out because he forgot what those flashbangs could do while still sleepy.
It took a while to get used to the light and when sitting down and looking over his desktop he still saw a few things running.
But what obviously caught his attention was the open white YouTube page that showed the upload progress of a video that he seemed to have uploaded just short of the end of the day.
"Right, I still made a few quick covers of existing songs and uploaded that." He actually was still too challenged in getting some coherent thoughts together.
It was a real pain in the arse uploading something in this day and age. It just took way too long to complete. So he basically let it run through the night without bothering much.
It's a good thing that electricity was not as costly as it would be in later years. And he doesn't even want to start talking about Europe and its horrendous prices.
Anyway, since it seemed to be finished now he could just check up on the videos.
One of them was uploaded under the name -JCFrost-. Just one of many accounts that he created solely for his music. So this specific one was his very own artist account.
And Jack was not planning to mix his music with his game development stuff for now.
Nor his gaming account under the name -Notch- would be put into association with -Primal Games- anytime soon.
Though it was not really hard to figure out that he is the creator of mentioned games when one just looked into the credits and made some investigations.
What had been actually surprising was that his name was not yet taken and he could just go and use it. Even if it was shortened and he would change that in later years.
But that was just a nice surprise that was a good thing, really.
Now looking at the video he could just sigh about the crappy 480p quality. And don't even start with the sound. He could only grimace at how some sounds just came over really distorted.
That really needed some upgrade with a good compensator microphone. The one that the camera used was not exactly good enough to tell the truth.
And that is exactly why he is currently working on better recording software in his CS lessons anyway. It would at least make the 480p quality better than most through some tweaking and when they finally allow higher resolutions to go online, he would be prepared.
He couldn't wait for the era of better tech to finally start rising each 1 to 2 years.
'1080p, I really miss you already. Luckily 720p should be around the corner if I remember correctly.'
But for a simple start, it should be alright for now. Not that he had a choice, really. He was limited by money and available technology on his side.
At least he didn't have to worry about that annoying unregistered hypercam watermark at the corner of his vid when capturing.
And that is mainly because he uses a camcorder as his webcam and recording cam.
If you know how to use tech, it's easy to transform it into good enough stuff. Well, if you have the skill for it. The money was well invested to not go for a regular webcam yet.
Sure, he could use his smartphone camera also. But that literally was just a normal webcam camera and the sound would be even worse.
Smartphones were barely good enough to make shorts right now and a camcorder was still a little bit ahead for now.
Not that a smartphone could ever beat an expensive good camera with lenses to get that extra sharpness and other neat stuff anyway.
The only thing he had to take into consideration is that if he kept it this way, he would soon be probably known as the camcorder guy or something like that because the quality had a rustic, vintage feel to it.
And that says a lot in the late year 2008. Only 10 years later and these smartphones will be called vintage.
Kinda funny how you can't be too good but being too cheap also backfires. Just the thought kinda made him smile a little since it reminded him of amateur filming like the Blair Witch Project.
Everything aside, it would not take long for him to finish up a rudimentary program for recording on his desktop later for games anyway and a camera will always shine better there.
Well, a literal face-cam with good quality that is would be something new that would catch attention.
But right now the gaming thing was a side project at best for now since he had not yet developed his own games he also liked to push that way.
So while watching his video what he saw in the vid was just him sitting there on a chair and performing two short covers of songs that existed in this timeline.
Coupled with a little bit of an introduction and a short small talk in between the two songs as well as an outro thanking people for watching, it came close to a 10-minute video.
Nothing really fancy or anything. Just a quick normal daily thing that would go on.
Jack also thought about keeping his face hidden for now in his music videos and made the camera angle so that his face was cut off just shy past his neck.
It would focus mostly on the instrument that was currently playing, in this case, the guitar, and if one looked high enough his adam's apple at the neck vibrating along with his singing.
Nodding about it being alright he even saw that it had already 14 whole views. Somehow it made him a little bit happy inside all things considered.
Then taking a quick look at his other account, there was a whole game trailer released that let him widen his eyes. It was already looked at a few thousand times.
'What the hell?' Even Jack was somewhat surprised by that. It was only a day old.
Well, after looking closer at it and analyzing it he could see the description was a little bit clickbaity.
Sure, he made it a little bit more creepy in the description and the quality of the trailer was obviously better when done digitally but how did it still get seen so often.
Was it maybe because he mixed in some slight elements of Poppy Playtime and also built up some tension like some Hollywood movies tended to do?
But there literally were only visuals and text with a background static sound barely loud enough to be picked up. He even made a short disclaimer at the start of it all that this is only a prototype trailer and the sound etc. would be changed/added later after the game is near finalization.
It seemed not to have hindered anyone from looking and even enjoying themselves from the way some comments talked about it.
Right, he should mention that he already did rethink the bigger picture of the FNAF lore and universe with various ideas of canon and fanfiction to make it more coherent and fluid lore.
Can't go and do it like the original and scrap things after being demanded to continue on and retcon things. Or maybe worse, slam everything together like spaghetti and see what sticks.
Even though he could untangle most useful and logical stuff and still make something good out of it. He, after all, knows which way it shall go and even the not connecting material could be used in one way or another.
It also gave Jack a small satisfying feeling to know the lore while others would probably still hunt for the truth.
All in all, there was a start, middle, and canon end to this game franchise. Since he would be the de facto creator, he would also make sure to use his power and creative liberty to enrich it.
Otherwise, he would kinda feel a little bit moody about just copy-pasting everything...
He would try to make it even better.
--
*What is this? Does anyone have a clue what this is about? Is it a horror movie?*
*@I think that's not an animated movie*
*Man, the models look freaking nice.*
...
*I followed the link to its Vapor. Looks like it is a horror game and it's close to being released as well. From the price of $15 and the description it has, I think it's a shorter game to finance a bigger one later. There is also another game registered on their page with only a single picture. But I got to say the quality of those pictures looks amazingly good.*
*@So we finance something else while also taking some sort of trial game in return? Not sure it's worth it. Makes me doubt how it is handled. But I'm all in for some horror. Those things in the trailer remind me of Chuckie's.
*@Haha, then let's hope he ain't getting sued for that.*
*@Not really going to happen with it having literally nothing in common but those animatronics. Those are animatronics, right? I hate mannequins. Makes my skin churn.*
--
Jack went through the few various comments, ignoring the obvious trash talkers, and concentrated more on the people that somehow seemed to be interested in it.
The one that was upvoted the most even had some good information value to others and seemed to be not offended by his plans.
Yes, Jack was doing this game literally to collect funds for his music stuff as well as bring out the big money-making game that Minecraft would become.
He even stated on his Vapor page that this game was more of a Kickstarter thing and the more people brought this game, the greater it would support later games in the same series as well as new games.
Not that Kickstarter was a thing yet.
If the reception was trash and everyone was against his approach, he even planned that FNAF 1,2, and 3 would come out as a bundle literally at the same time instead of one after the other each year.
Just to literally appease the crowd...Did that sound cowardly? Perhaps.
It was probably a stupid way to falter, but in a sense, it was a game that went 5 nights long and ended on the final night if you survived.
And large chunks of the story were well hidden behind users' interpretations of some data inside the game files. That alone is something not everyone will think about.
So Jack had to somehow include a few hints about those "hidden" files. Maybe making a few small creepy easter eggs in the installation process could wake up interest in looking around the files?
Anyway, one thing was for sure. Sister Location would wait until next year at the very least when it would be bundled together with FNAF 4 and Ultimate Custom Night. Things like AR etc would need to wait longer.
He would not budge on that decision since literally, those other games were still in the alpha stage and a backfiring on the first three would make Jack somewhat depressed for sure to keep further working on them.
That is about all he planned for this franchise. That is if it flops. But hopefully all the drawn designs and so on don't go to waste.
Just taking a look at Vanny's Illustration sitting along a massive amount of other papers made Jack smile wrily.
If the franchise becomes good, like in his original life, he could even try to milk it a little depending on how well it turns out.
Maybe after looking at the trend of the trailer reception in, let's say 10 days, he would make one game each year for Halloween and slowly build up and start selling toys and merch on a specific online site later?
Of course, he would make it more available to people, lowering the initial price for the following games and each consecutive game that followed after that each year.
To show that the buyer's support did matter a lot and with the decreased cost of expenses via money transfusions through the buyers, it basically becomes easier for new people to join the community as well as keep it alive.
But he should be careful about Minecraft later since it is a behemoth on a much larger scale all on its own.
Somehow his brain woke up and drifted through various ideas trying to figure out how to tackle this unexpected good reaction.
Jack speculated it would barely get enough reception at first - at least not that quickly.
Sighing somewhat loudly he closed everything and powered down his PC for now.
It was time he got himself ready. That being said, a cold shower and some hot coffee would probably do the trick and bring him right up to a better state.
At least this day was not so jam-packed with lessons.
