Howdy folks!

It's officially summertime! Birds are singing, flowers are blooming... To start off this wonderful season, I've got a huge progress update to share with you all, so let's get right into it!

As most of you will probably know, development of the main game has been pretty slow lately. This is due to the fact that I had both college and a part-time job taking up most of my time. During the last two months, my college has been putting everyone under crunch-time to finish off our last couple of assignments, which left me with little to no time to do any major work on the game since I had a lot of other priorities.

However, I'm pleased to say that I have finally finished all of my college work, and development on DF is back to going full-speed ahead! I've got a lot of work done over the past few days, and so I'm here to share what's new in the game with you all! To start, let's discuss a pretty big change to the overall project itself.

Game Structure

To start, I'd like to discuss a major change to the game's structure. For context, the original plan for the game was that it would be chapter-based, as I've said before. The Story Mode would be divided into three chapters, each taking place in their own single "world" unique to each of them. These three chapters would be released individually as they got made, and as they were released the Multiplayer mode would be updated simultaneously to include the new world featured in the chapter.

However, after discussing it with the team, we've decided that the game will no longer take a chapter-based approach. Instead, the game will now receive more frequent updates which add new and more compact worlds to explore, compared to the three large worlds that were intended to be made. I realized that the scale of the game was simply too much of a commitment for what it is, and so the game will now have 1 large world and 5 smaller worldss in total, instead of 3 large ones. What was once called "Chapter 1" will now be the first world, and 5 more smaller worlds will be added after that in new updates. These new worlds won't be as big as the first world, but will still have lots of collectibles to find and characters to meet. Not only that, but the updates will happen more often, so there'll be more for you to play in the long run!

Overall, this change just allows me to have more creative freedom with how the game plays out, and I hope that this new structure is satisfactory to you all. And to clarify, each time a new world is added in Story Mode, the world is also simultaneously added to the Multiplayer mode in the same update, so there'll be more stuff to do in Multiplayer as well. I hope you look forward to it!

What's new in Story Mode?

I'm glad you asked! Let's go over some changes that have been made since the last time I talked about the game. First, to coincide with the change to the game's structure, one of the main elements of the game was also changed significantly, and so I'd like to talk about that.

Most of you will probably recall the "Memory Piece" mechanic I've talked about previously, which is basically that there were three different-colored sets of "memory pieces" to collect in each world, and completing a set would unlock a memory cutscene for you to watch. There would be three memories for each of the three worlds, totalling nine memories to unlock in total. However, this mechanic has now been altered.

There will no longer be three different-colored sets of memory pieces to collect. Instead, there is only one type of memory piece to collect which is colored white, just like the puzzle pieces in the DF demo. Each world in the game will have a certain number of these memory pieces to collect, similar to the Music Notes from Banjo-Kazooie, and they all go towards unlocking the four memory cutscenes, which are required to progress in the game rather than being optional. Basically, the number of memory cutscenes has been cut down from nine to four, although these four are now more important than before. Here's what the memory pieces look like in the overworld now:

So yes, collecting things is a requirement to progress, and so you can essentially consider this game an Undertale-styled collect-a-thon (or collect-em-up, whichever you prefer). Don't worry though, there isn't a *huge* number of things to collect, so even if you're not a fan of games about collecting things, it shouldn't hinder your experience.

Now, a collect-a-thon simply isn't complete without a progress menu to gauge how well you're doing, so here's what the progress menu looks like now:

I hope you look forward to exploring the worlds of Story Mode! It won't be too long now, he's been waiting after all.

What's new in Multiplayer?

Again, I'm glad you asked! I've mainly been working on the new PvP system and the Master Quest (for details about this, see the previous devlogs). At the moment, I've just got a few screenshots to show you, so take a look!

And that's all I'll show you guys for now! Hopefully that's piqued your interest in the new Multiplayer mode, which will be releasing simultaneously with the first Story Mode world in the coming months! Stay tuned!

Alright, so what's the deal with U14P6?

The deal with U14P6 is that it's out right now! The brand new update to the multiplayer demo is available for download right now, with a lot of new content and bug fixes galore! Here's the changelog:

- Added new collectibles exclusive to Offline Mode! Collect spaghetti, star pieces, and hard-to-find annoying dogs! Talk to certain characters to summon these new collectibles to begin your search. Your reward for finding all of these new collectibles is located in a certain locked room that you've all been wanting to get into for a while now...

- Added a new sidequest to both Online and Offline Mode: Jiggywiggy's Trial! In honor of Banjo-Kazooie's 21st birthday (which is today at the time of writing this!), a new quest has been added based on the series! Enter Jiggywiggy's Temple and begin your search to find 10 hidden jiggies in the game! A funky reward awaits...

- Added two new random encounters: Vegevoid and Erroron! These are the glitched counterparts of Vegetoid and Aaron. You can now find them in all of the grind rooms!

- Added a lock to the Gold Frisk skin so that they can only be used once the regular Frisk skin is LV 10 or above.

- Made significant changes to the PvP invitation system in order to help prevent crashing.

- Tweaked some of Toriel's fireball attacks to last longer.

- Buffed Chara's PvP attacks to move faster and inflict more damage.

- Replaced SwapSans' blue attack with Gaster Blasters.

- Minor improvements to a few other PvP attacks that were brought to my attention.

- Replaced the old quit menu with the proper "Quitting..." message from Undertale. Hold down ESC to quit the game.

- Made a few improvements to the design of some areas in the overworld.

- Added a new grey door in the Void that provides a shortcut to the Surface.

- Added a spinning animation to the Puzzle Piece collectibles.

- Changed the Puzzle Piece menu in the Extras to explain what happens when you collect all of the puzzle pieces.

- Fixed an oversight where selecting "Go back" on the Mode Select screen would take you to an old menu that was meant to be removed.

- Fixed a bug with Offline Mode where it wasn't possible to buy the Badge.

- Fixed a bug with Offline Mode where the Stats menu wouldn't display properly.

- Fixed a bug where the Mettaton minigame would crash in Offline Mode.

Woah, that's quite a long changelog! I'll be keeping an eye out for any problems this update might bring, since at this point they're inevitable with how fragile the demo's source code is. If any quick fixes for U14P6 are released, I'll add the changelogs for those here in this devlog so that you're all in the loop. Hopefully that doesn't need to happen, though! Hopefully.

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(EDIT: It did, of course it did. Here's the changelog for U14P6F, available for download now.

- Added a new ending when all of the Offline Mode collectibles have been gotten. You just need to find where it is.

- Changed some dialogue to give more obvious clues as to what must be done to get all of the Offline Mode collectibles and the new ending.

- Fixed a bug where some of the new NPCs in Offline Mode would not say their new dialogue when all of their respective collectibles were found.

- Fixed a bug where Erroron's attack would not inflict damage.

- Fixed a bug where the Master Sword was not able to be accessed despite no longer having it equipped.

- Fixed a graphical error where the Warp Zone menu would sometimes appear underneath certain objects.)

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Alrighty, so that's all of the latest DF news done and dusted!

Now, what I'm about to show you is something that I've been looking forward to revealing publicly for a while now. Initially I was nervous about sharing this with you guys, and considered just keeping it quiet and seperate from DF completely, but I feel like some of you are probably curious about what comes next after DF is finished. It's a question that I've received many times before, and so I feel like it's finally time to talk about it.

The game that I'm about to show you is a passion project of mine that I've been putting a lot of work into for many months, and it's being developed simultaneously with DF, so that once DF is over I've got something I can immediately get to work on. However, it has nothing to do with Undertale, and is a completely original project. If you're not interested in that, you're free to close this devlog and go play U14P6 if you'd like. But for those of you that are willing to see what comes after DF, I'd like to introduce you to...

...my brand new original game, "DoodleTrip"!

DoodleTrip is a collect-a-thon game with RPG elements that draws a lot of inspiration from early N64 games like Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Super Mario 64, etc.

You play as a man named Wendell, who finds himself stuck inside the world of his old childhood drawings, taking on the form of his younger self. Wendell must collect a variety of items in order to reach the only way back to the real world, which is in the evil King Darkmore's castle. With a total of 4 worlds, each with 3 zones and a boss to fight, there's plenty to explore when the game comes out, whenever that may be! There's no set release date just yet, since I want to take my time with this game and make it the best that it can be, but don't expect it this year!

If you'd like to see updates on how the game's doing, I'll be posting videos and screenshots of the game as it gets developed on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/RickyGDev

But I won't say much else about DoodleTrip on here now, since I know you guys mostly come here for DF. Don't worry, I won't talk about this game too much on GameJolt going forward. I just thought I'd show you guys what I've been up to besides DF :) I hope you like it so far!

(Please note: the music tracks used in the video are simply placeholders until I can replace them later down the line. All credit goes to the original composers! Links to them are in the description of the video.)

Anyway, that about wraps this devlog up! Thank you for reading this entire thing if you did, I know it's a lot to read through! I'll speak to you all again next month for another progress report for DF. Until then, stay determined!