Howdy, folks!

Today is May 22nd, 2020. It is officially DF's 4th anniversary. What once started back in 2016 as a dorky hour-long Undertale sequel, has now expanded into an ambitious project way past what I thought I was capable of.

I was still in my second year of high school when I first started this game, and now I'm moving on to university this year. That is an incredibly weird feeling.

I say this every year but I'll keep saying it: thank you all so much for being here. This game would not be able to exist without you!

To celebrate this anniversary, I'm excited to share a little bit of Story Mode news with you!

As you may know, the plan for DF's development has changed a little. What will be happening is that DF Multiplayer will be completely finished before we start Story Mode. v2.5, the next update, will be the final update for about a year and a half, and will have the completed "Master Quest" in it, with all of Multiplayer's endings.

Master Quest as a whole will be receiving an upgrade, with new NPC interactions and lore, so you'll need to restart the quest when 2.5 comes out (in however many months it takes to make).

After v2.5, we'll be spending about a year and a half working on Story Mode. There likely won't be another demo again, I want to finish the ENTIRE GAME before I release anything new. I'll still post progress reports when there's stuff I want to share, though!

Anyway, what I'd like to share about Story Mode today is about the main character, Harlow. Originally, Harlow's design was based pretty heavily on Kris from Deltarune, hence why their eyes weren't visible.

I've always felt that Harlow's design was a bit lackluster. It was serviceable, but could have been more unique.

So, I'm pleased to show Harlow's brand new design, which will be debuting in Story Mode!

Here's some concept art drawn by Pixel:

And here's a look at their new in-game sprite:

As you can see, they've changed quite a bit!

Harlow now has a completely new hairstyle, their left eye is now visible to allow them to be more expressive, and they're wearing a heart locket given to them by Asriel and Chara!

Harlow will be a lot more talkative in the new Story Mode. The original Chapter 1 did not feature as much dialogue as I would have liked. Since the game had such a large focus on collecting things, it seemed like the plot went completely on hold while you walked around and did everything. This will NOT be how the new Story Mode will play! I believe that I've found a good middle-ground between open exploration and Undertale's more linear story-based gameplay.

...I wonder what the "TAPES" are for?

Moving on to Multiplayer news, v2.4.0 is available RIGHT NOW! This update has been in the works for about a month, so I hope you enjoy it! Here's the full changelog:

- Added two new AU vessels: Storyshift Chara and Storyshift Asriel! I held a survey on my Discord to see which vessels would be the most requested if I were to add more, and these two showed up the most! I may be adding more vessels based on those survey answers in the future!

- Added a new Session system to the game. Multiplayer is now divided into three different "sessions", which you'll be automatically placed into one after logging in. You will only be able to see and interact with players in the same session as you. This is to help the relieve the load on the server, improving the overall performance of the game.

- Added a new "spare" counter for pacifists. The game will now keep track of how many enemies you've spared, which you can view in STAT, and there is also a new "spare" leaderboard exclusively for pacifists!

- Added in the ability for pacifists to unlock all of the weapon and armor chests! If you're at LV 1, interacting with chests will tell you how many enemies you need to spare in order to open them. The LV 20 trophy has also been given a pacifist variant for getting a certain number of spares. Now pacifists can 100% the game, too!

- Added a new "direct message" (DM) system to Undernet! You can now send a private DM to an Undernet friend. Just look up your friend's profile, and you'll be able to press [ENTER] to start typing a message. This is useful if you want to tell your friend to meet you somewhere, for example. You can use the command "/toggledm off" to turn off DMs if you don't want them to pop up.

- Added a new Trophy Room! You can access it from the Hall of Fame, and in it you can view all of the trophies you've earned! There is a pedestal for each trophy, with a description you can read so you can check what you need to do to earn them! This also means that trophies are now available in Offline Mode too.

- Added new icons to the ITEM menu. You can now see little icons next to the names of your items to see a visual representation of what the item is. This was mainly added as a feature for Story Mode, which is in development.

- Added a new win condition to PvP. If at any point during the battle your opponent went below 33 HP, you will automatically win the fight if they disconnect from the game. So now, even if someone rage-quits, you will still earn the win from them if the fight progressed far enough!

- Added a brand new overworld track for the CORE area, remixed by Ethosein!

- Added new rooms to the CORE to make it a slightly larger area, and to add a little bit of world-building for the Master Quest story. Some pre-existing rooms have also been redesigned.

- Added a new second attack for Hathy, so that it isn't the same spinning heart attack every time. Speaking of the spinning heart attack, it has now been made slightly shorter so that you're less likely to get an "unavoidable hit".

- Added a new animation for the damage value in the battle system UI that makes it appear like its "shooting out" of the enemy, then fades away.

- Added the ability to see all of the vessels you've acquired so far in Offline Mode on its menu screen. Similar to how the original Undertale shows characters on the main menu as you progress in the game, vessels in Offline Mode will now be standing around on the menu as you unlock them.

- Added visual clues to the locations of the three followers in the overworld, so that their location are less cryptic.

- Added a new Theovania cover made by Perpetrator for Underfell Sans' PvP theme.

- Added a new way to spare the "Bad Tom" boss. A new ACT command has been added to his fight, which will allow you to spare him if you use it enough.

- It is now possible to kill the "Gasterbot" boss by betrayal-killing it.

- Tweaked the soul movement in battles so that now it can go right up against the border instead of leaving a gap.

- Updated Harlow's PvP sprite with a new design.

- Updated the multiplayer rules. Be sure to read the Help Guide to familiarize yourself with them!

- Removed the ability to go back after selecting "Login/Register".

- Removed "Bob Armor" from the game, as pacifists now have access to all armor. Instead, it is now the "Tem Armor", the second most powerful armor in the game at 500 DF. If you had the Bob Armor before, it will be removed from your equipment.

- Removed a lot of old sprites from the game that were no longer needed.

- Buffed the Bone type in PvP. It now has a new attack and your opponent is only able to gain a maximum of 10 TP per turn.

- Buffed the Electric type in PvP, specifically the electric wall attack now moves and spawns faster.

- Nerfed the Fighting type in PvP, specifically the "knives from above" attack.

- Nerfed the Water type in PvP, specifically the fish bubble attack.

- Receiving a bank transfer now tells you the username of who sent the transfer.

- Joker's PvP theme (the Last Surprise Megalo) will now play as the battle theme in regular enemy encounters while you're using Joker.

- Changed the friend request system so that it now asks you to add someone from the Game Maker Server website instead of in-game.

- PvP fights are now forced to stay in fullscreen the entire time.

- Fixed an exploit that allowed you to fight in PvP twice in a row.

- Fixed a rare visual bug where the third local chat message might still display text even after the second message was cleared.

- Fixed a crash bug when fighting Alpha Toriel. Her attacks have also been buffed.

- Fixed a bug where the Game Over screen would not load correctly when dying to Hathy.

- Fixed a bug where the AFK status would not turn off when hit by an overworld attack.

- Fixed a bug where Inktale Sans and Errortale Sans vessels were not saved in Offline Mode.

- Fixed a bug where if you selected a locked vessel from the Vessel Menu, it would reset your costume value, changing your local chat icon to the wrong one.

- Fixed a bug where the shop's inventory counter did not update correctly.

- Fixed a bug where the tem key would disappear if you used it in the overworld.

- Mobile controls now get highlighted in yellow when pressed, to make it easier to tell what is being pressed.

- Made improvements to the Vessel Menu internally so that it is now much more efficient.

- Updated to a newer version of GMServer for security and performance improvements.

And that's v2.4.0! As always, it's pretty long huh xD

That's pretty much it for today's post. There's a party going on in DF Multiplayer all day today to celebrate the 4th anniversary.

Again, thank you all for your support these last 4 years. I can't wait to get this game finished for you guys next year!

Until next time, "don't forget"!