*Like clockwork, the crawls of Fall and Winter give way to the sprints of Spring and Summer.

Hey, all! It's been a hot minute since we've done a formal one of these devlogs. But with the battle recode finished up and posted, motivation and productivity have been at an all-time high!

Lemme show you a little bit of what I've been working on in just this past week alone.

VOLUME SETTINGS ADJUSTED

I can't remember if I ever showed off the settings menu, but if I didn't, then, well, here she be now:

(Ignore the FPS setting there, that may or may not be something I look into in the future)

The main deal is that there are now separate settings for music and sfx. I know it's not a groundbreaking feature, but I still felt like pointing it out.

SHADERS!

Shaders! They're everywhere! They're in me! They might even be in you, too!

Since the Battle Recode video, I realized that, for efficiency's sake, it would be nice to finally implement shaders of multiple varieties into the game. As it turns out, making individual sprites for every single occurrence that an automatic shader could just be used instead could lead to a lot of visual bugs slipping through the cracks. It would also be more efficient not having to create sprites that mimic what a shader could just do on its own.

For example, you know how you get into an overworld dodging section and the player gets an outline around their body?

Yeah, instead of creating individual "outline" assets for every one of Asriel's sprites that would be used in a dodging section, I can just do this now:

That outline around Asriel was drawn with shaders this time rather than the aforementioned inefficient method, and it is so cool how much freaking time stuff like this is going to save!

My only concern with implementing shaders is that I know they sometimes don't play nice with peoples' graphics cards. IDK if we'll run into that issue, but I'm sincerely hoping we don't, because man are they a useful tool.

MUSIC?

Oh, yeah, that's right, I made a Versotale track!

As you all know, I am not a composer. In terms of what I could do on my own for VT, the music has always been an elusive thing I need to rely on other people for. And that certainly isn't going to change. But I have been toying around with FL Studio every now and again, partly just for fun, and partly to help convey what my thoughts for a track are to the composers on the team. And I got a burst of inspiration for an Asriel theme that I wanted to get out.

I don't think it's anything impressive, per se, but I hope it's not bad either. It's meant to be a relatively simple track, intended to play in similar situations to where "Memory" would play in Undertale and where "Lost Girl" would play in Deltarune. In fact, its intended usage is probably most comparable to "Lost Girl."

WHAT ELSE?

Well, aside from that, I've been going back to getting rough room layouts implemented, and fleshing out some cutscene scripts that desperately needed some TLC.

As for what the next mini-showcase is gonna be? I don't really know, to be honest, but I'll keep y'all posted.

So, yeah, that's about it! Thanks for stoppin' by. See ya in the next one.