Hey everyone!

Looks like I might've neglected GameJolt a little bit after the Discord re-opened. Why don't we chat a little bit?

The development of the new Engine, although maybe a little slow, is coming along nicely. Not only is it incredibly accurate to the source material, but it is also incredibly flexible. Back in the MTO GMS1.4 Engine, which was originally based on Downfable, I had kinda begun work with minimal actual knowledge of the programming language or even effective programming. All I'd known up until that point was basic programming logic. So the GMS1.4 Engine I'd made ended up being extremely difficult to work with and had some bugs I was never really able to fix. For example, there's a bug I was never able to pinpoint that'd cause battles to randomly skip some turns at the start, making them start halfway through. This effectively made it impossible to really make any interesting boss battles like I'd initially planned, since the game could just randomly decide that you start the battle halfway through.

But that's just one example of many, many problems I had with the original GMS1.4 version of the game. So even though progress isn't the fastest, the new Engine already far surpasses the old one, in my opinion. Why don't we take a look at the current engine?

The game opens up to a perfect recreation of the Intro Sequence from UNDERTALE. Obviously, as of right now this is a placeholder while the game is still in its Alpha state. A proper intro sequence has yet to be written and drawn.

The game actually has 2 launch modes! By default, the game will play UNDERTALE's music and use its title screen and intro sequence, but by changing a flag in the player's save file, the game will boot up with MYSTERYTALE's own music remixes, title screen, etc. Of course, as of right now both intro sequences are the same apart from music.

Why does the game have an "UNDERTALE" mode it can launch in? My plan is for the game to actually start off pretending to be UNDERTALE before transitioning into MYSTERYTALE through gameplay progress.

This should actually be quite an effective trick, given that I've been spending a lot of time trying to make the game as accurate to UNDERTALE as I could, almost to an obsessive degree even. It's not something I'd recommend to anybody else, as UNDERTALE has a lot of strange quirks and details that are hard to pick up on and recreate properly, so I might be a little ambitious, which may also contribute to why development is taking a bit long. To anyone wanting to make their own projects, I recommend simply making a mod of the original game (though be careful, as the original game's code is hard to work with) or simply not trying to perfectly recreate the source material. As MTO GMS1.4 has proven, you can capture the feel of UNDERTALE without needing to make sure every screenshot can be overlayed with a screenshot of UNDERTALE. Or, alternatively, you can always make your own stylistic choices!

Let's look about the continue screen for a moment. The text at the bottom actually changes depending on which mode the game launches in. One thing I haven't yet recreated, and might not recreate, are the specific character positions on the screen based on your game progression. These will probably have their own unique positions and such for the final game.

When launched in "MYSTERYTALE" mode, the Settings Menu gains a few additional options not normally visible. By default, you only have the Language Setting, and Joystick Config (if a controller is plugged in). The Border setting was recreated from the console versions of the game.

Just like in the console versions of the original game, you start with Simple, Sepia and Dynamic Borders and can unlock more as you progress through the game. Although Dynamic Borders are debatably the best, I kinda enjoy the Simple Border a lot, personally.

As an experimental setting, players can set the Framerate to "Smooth", which sets the game to run at 60 FPS. This feature is kind of hit or miss at times, so it's debatable whether or not it will stick around. Some physics calculations may be off by a few pixels at 60 FPS, but it shouldn't be anything drastic.

The Joystick Config is exactly what you'd expect it to be. Ironically, due to UNDERTALE's programming I'm not able to use my controllers in it or even access that game's Joystick Config without modifying the game, so the fact I can use a controller here might be a bit inaccurate, though I'd say this inaccuracy is objectively an improvement.

There actually is one other inaccuracy with this screen, specifically only available when the game is launched in "MYSTERYTALE" mode.

When using the "Reset to default" option, the game now uses the grammatically correct "Reset...", as opposed to the original game's incorrect "Resetted...". The original text is still used when the game is launched in "UNDERTALE" mode, of course. The secret "Spaghetti..." text remains unchanged.

Let's backtrack a little bit without any kind of save file.

As stated previously, the game will launch in UNDERTALE mode by default.

You should be able to perfectly overlay these screenshots with ones from the original game and the only difference would be the debug text in the top left!

Of course, not having a save file means you don't get "Fun Mode" on any of the menus.

Even the control test feels less lively.

MTO GMS1.4 actually has an unused "Name the fallen human." screen too, though since that game normally can't be launched in "Offline Mode", it never appears.

All the typical name easter eggs from the original game are here. Interestingly, neither Sans nor Papyrus use their unique fonts, something they did do in the GMS1.4 version of MTO.

That version of the naming screen also had a lot of additional name easter eggs, primarily for Deltarune Chapter 1 characters and some friends of mine from that time, along with some funny little internet maymays. For this, I've rolled it back to only 2 unique naming easter eggs, one of which is exclusive to "MYSTERYTALE Mode". I wonder if you can find them?

Fun Fact: Despite what's basically been agreed upon in the community for years now, "Chara" is never confirmed to be the Fallen Human's canon name. "The true name." is actually a meta joke based on the fact that "Chara" is Toby's placeholder name for player characters. In UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE, Frisk, Kris and the fallen human are all internally named "Chara", with the fallen human specifically being called "true chara". If anything, I'd say you could make a strong case for the fallen human's name being "Kris", but that's a topic for another day.

I believe most of you have already seen the basic test rooms in a video I posted a few months ago, so I'm not gonna go into detail over everything that happens here. Though some things did change and there are some things I want to elaborate on just a little bit.

Unlike the original MTO GMS1.4 version, this Engine has all of the movement quirks from the original UNDERTALE, just without the ability to clip out of bounds. That means you have your "Frisk Dance", you can perform the "Double Speed Glitch", you can stick yourself to walls and you can't alongside NPCs. All of this can, of course, be toggled off.

There are also some features from DELTARUNE in this new Engine. For one, the option to Hold X instead of pressing it to skip dialogue typing, the option to Hold C to skip dialogue altogether and even the running mechanics have been brought over and can all be toggled internally in the code.

Additionally, this build also lets you toggle these options from your Cell Phone.

An interesting detail I hadn't added at the time of the video I posted was with textboxes alternating between different characters. Typically in UNDERTALE, there will be about 4 frames where there's no visible face in the textbox when the dialogue changes between two characters. This is actually an invisible textbox changing the properties of the dialogue for the next character talking.

Although this is incredibly mundane, I artifically recreated the effect by adding a check for the talking character and a small pause that just hides the face from the textbox. This can also be toggled off internally.

Another feature from DELTARUNE would be Reactions! They're little comments from other characters that overlap the currently active textbox. I'd initially considered this to be integrated into the chat system, but that's rather unlikely.

You might have noticed the option "Change Windowskin" in the debug Cell option earlier! This engine does, in fact, support different looks for textboxes and similar windows, like your menu.

The Dark World windowskin also changes how text is displayed, adding a subtle dropshadow alongside a gradient effect for colored text.

There's also a rounded Windowskin, based off TS!Underswap. Though it's not actually the same graphic. The TS!Underswap windows are rounded slightly differently. Though, personally I prefer how these windows are rounded.

Aside from the Cell Phone, the other Menus work just as you'd expect them to, including the "Easy to change, huh?" easter egg. Note that Frisk's Kill Count wouldn't normally be displayed at this value, this is just a side effect of Debug Mode.

And of course, boxes!

One of my favorite features carried over from DELTARUNE is overworld bullet mechanics! It works about how you'd expect.

Some interpretations of DELTARUNE bullet areas in UNDERTALE fan-projects I've seen use custom HUDs and DELTARUNE's damage numbers. And while fitting for those games, as they usually already alter the UI and have their own style and flair, I've had to decide on how I wanted to handle it. I decided to simply have the normal battle UI slide into view when you take damage. After all, in DELTARUNE that's more or less what happens, just with that game's battle UI.

Funnily enough, this actually lead me to recreate the Battle UI before I even started work on battles.

The character outlines are automatically generated from your character and adapt to the color of their SOUL, unlike the original DELTARUNE where each outline was a separate sprite.

One of the more notably features adapted from DELTARUNE would be the party system! Since I wanted to stay accurate to UNDERTALE where possible, this meant having to somehow retrofit new aspects into pre-existing menus, but I like to think I pulled it off.

In DELTARUNE, you have much more inventory space compared to UNDERTALE. To make up for that, each party member has their own inventory. At any point in the menu, you can press Left or Right to cycle between your characters' individual menus. The "Drop" button becomes "Move", allowing you to to transfer items between characters.

When in Move mode, you can still Drop the item as normal by moving it to the bottom. Additionally, this new option allows you to just sort a single character's inventory, rather than outright moving it, so that's rather handy!

Normally you wouldn't be able to access an empty Inventory, so Empty Inventories now just display the text "Empty". If none of your characters have Items, you can't access any Inventory, just like normal.

Despite having multiple characters, you only have one Cell Phone.

Papyrus and Flowey aren't humans though as you know, they're monsters. As such, they fight with Spells. Instead of ACTs, they have Skills. You can review them from the Stats screen.

Spells work similar to how they did in MTO GMS1.4. They cost MP to use (a new resource) and let you control a bullet pattern. Though this functionality isn't yet implemented. The MP System works about the same as MTO GMS1.4's TP System.

Though not yet implemented, TP will be reworked to work more like its original Deltarune incarnation and will be used for Skills. Think of Skills as Deltarune's Magic System, just without any Direct Attacks. For the singleplayer game, Papyrus and Flowey will not have FIGHT or ACT, instead having SKILL and SPELL respectively. In the Online game, however, SKILL will replace ITEM instead of ACT.

Let's switch our attention over to battles then. Currently, party functionality for battles is very unfinished, so I'll be switching back to just Frisk.

The battle system is pretty much fully featured! You can FIGHT as normal, ACT as normal, use ITEMs as normal and use MERCY as normal.

Except now everything is so accurate to UNDERTALE, you might just mistake the two games!

There isn't really much to show here, these are just basic test monsters after all.

Fun Fact: Having the bandage equipped guarantees a successful flee!

I've also already implemented the Blue Soul and KARMA Mechanics.

Enemies can have all sorts of reactions to attacks.

Here's a fun new feature! Battleskins! Some characters may have their own UI for battle. Obviously not everyone will have their own UI, but there will be a few characters that will. Additionally, there's a look at how MP will be displayed in-battle.

There technically already are some Battleskins in MTO GMS1.4, namely for Batter, Judge, Mario and Luigi. This concept is being expanded upon for the new game. In the singleplayer campaign, each one of your party members will have their own set of buttons.

Unfortunately, there isn't really much more exciting stuff I can show off about the battle system without making a proper sample battle. I'm actually developing a little demo fight for a limited release on Discord, but I'll be developing some proper public Engine Tech Demos soon.

Last but not least, here's a look at the new design for Subspace. I'd always intended to redesign it from its old Waterfall placeholder tileset. This is roughly based off an old dream I had of a version of subspace with mostly dark colors and long corridors. I can't deny that this design feels more like something you'd see in RickyG's DON'TFORGET, which wasn't intentional. Perhaps I'll change the color scheme a little more in the future to make it stand out a bit more? I did originally want to go for something more blue-ish but just ended up really liking how this looked.

Anyway, thats a rough showcase of progress! I hope you're all as excited for the future of the project as I am!

If you're interested in helping out with music, sprites or writing, you can always join the Discord and reach out from there!

I'll see you in 5 years when I remember to write another devlog!