Howdy!
In the spirit of UNDERTALE's 6th anniversary, we're posting this month's progress report!
As we've all been dealing with various responsibilities (school, work, etc.), development has been a bit slower as of late. However, we're still plugging along in more ways than one!
In this month's devlog, we'll be discussing what we've been working on, and showcasing some new content.
Also, we're verified now! That seems important to mention, huh?
Without further ado, let's start!
Brief Catch-Up!
In case you missed our August 2021 devlog, here's a quick recap!
All rooms have been added for Stardust Woods, with 31 rooms total!
Not everything for these rooms has been added just yet, with some writing, assets, and in-game implementation needed for the last few rooms.
We also estimate Stardust Woods may take, at most, between an hour to an hour and a half for someone's very first playthrough--though this is a rough estimate, and does not yet account for blind players' experiences.
In terms of that month's general updates:
Script Writing -- Focus on writing final rooms of the area, earlier rooms' content (per-route variations, reset-specific dialogue), and accounting for changes to miniboss pre-battle cutscenes upon dying and reloading.
Battle Writing -- Progress on writing for Stardust Woods' minibosses, with most in stages of complete ACT trees and writing. New ACT interactions have also been discovered for different enemies, and added in-game.
Enemies & Monster Attacks -- Focus on creating assets on monster attacks based on concept art and ideas, and implementing them in-game.
Soundtrack Updates -- 15/27 planned tracks complete, ~3 nearing completion, and 9 others ranging from early concepts to not yet started.
Fast Travel -- Work on considering and implementing methods of fast travel throughout Starlight Isles.
Android Support -- Adjustments to the new puzzle/movement mechanics for Starlight Isles on Android platforms, to make gameplay run smoothly for users.
As for everything else covered:
Screenshots -- We showcased some spoiler-free screenshots of Stardust Woods' later rooms, and demonstrated a new quality of life adjustment to the JOURNAL.
Ready Your Weapon! -- We also showcased another quality of life change, where using weapons with unique crosshairs for the first time will notify the player to prepare them.
Koffin Keep -- We briefly discussed our overall plans for the area moving forward, and Koffin-K himself.
Other Updates -- We briefly went over some details about Spep Mode, soundtrack uploads, an eventual developer commentary stream, and the demo art book.
Progress Updates
Since last month's devlog, we've been making slower progress with the last rooms of Stardust Woods. Our biggest roadblocks right now are the writing and assets required to proceed, and our team members have been a bit preoccupied -- that's not to say we haven't made any progress, though!
EDIT: Hey! Quite literally the day before this devlog released, we made some progress with important writing for a sequence leading up to the end of Stardust Woods.
In terms of our developments from last month's devlog:
Script Writing -- We've been working on ironing out specific plans and visuals for certain cutscenes in order to move forwards with writing.
As specified in the recent edit above, we've been able to move forward with some writing after one of our roadblocks was figured out! We're going to need some more assets in order to implement everything in-game completely, but the writing itself is moving forwards.
Battle Writing -- In order to proceed with battle writing, we've been figuring out the progression for certain battles.
Enemies & Monster Attacks -- We haven't made too much progress here, besides some attacks we've added in for random encounter monsters here and there! The most noteworthy ones we have are for Woodwork and Mordax.
Fun Fact: Mordax, created by PooterStapot, was the second place winner of our 2019 OC Contest -- and so they were added as a random encounter enemy!
Soundtrack Updates -- We currently have 17 tracks completed out of a planned 27!
There's also ~4 tracks nearing completion, and 6 others ranging from early concepts to not yet started.
Music hasn't currently been a huge priority, as we've been focusing on getting writing fleshed out for the rest of Stardust Woods, and preparations for Koffin Keep.
Koffin Keep -- As we get closer to in-game work on Koffin Keep, we've been working on trying to figure out more of the area's progression, goals, interactions, obstacles, and specific overworld layout. We currently have:
Some basic plans for the very beginning, which ties into the final cutscene written for Stardust Woods.
Further developed the entire area layout, gameplay, and progression.
Concept art for the area's visual identity (color palette, environment concepts, etc.)
Multiple rooms (currently 3) added in-game with placeholder assets.
Spep Mode -- We've made some basic progress with Spep Mode. This includes some visual effects unique to the mode, early changes to cutscenes, and implementation of modified game mechanics unique to the mode. We've also gotten some basic ideas done for the story for Spep Mode.
While we can't share any specifics regarding what we've been doing here -- if you need a point of reference for the kind of absurd/surreal humor you'll come across within Spep Mode, look no further than our April Fools 2019 game, Team AAA Underswap. (It's going to be horrible. Trust us on this.)
Quality of Life
In response to the roadblock we've had with going forward for Stardust Woods, we've started revisiting some bits from Demo v1.0 we felt could use some quality of life (QOL) updates.
One of these is some improvements we've made to the Game Over screen!
Before, we had it so text could be skipped as an anti-frustration measure for when players died repeatedly -- something that wasn't present within Undertale.
We've now added some changes to the Game Over screen to have slightly faster text fading, and implemented a specific "anti-frustration" variant that speeds it up even more!
The conditions to getting this variant are as follows:
Died to a specific battle group >= 3 times
Died in this session >=3 times
Pressing at least 12 keys/directions within the 2 seconds before the heart shatters
Holding C and having autoskip enabled in the options menu
We've also started revisiting some bits of Ruined Home we felt could use some more attention, and things we'd overlooked for the release of Demo v1.0. Nothing too major has been done here, just some slight adjustments, additions, and quality of life features.
One of these is that you can read the directional signs in The City of Old! Before, they just kind of existed as scenery objects you couldn't interact with. This gives a slightly better sense of progression, and of where you need to go.
Crafting A Character
(Above artwork by SuperKirbylover.)
While we've been unable to move forward with certain writing for Stardust Woods, we've been doing a lot of important work on our characters!
A lot of this has included:
Identifying and expanding upon relationships between characters.
Further developing characters that needed attention.
Establishing loose plans for major characters' dates, hangouts, and major scenes.
We've been doing this for quite a lot of characters, too! Most notably...
Papyrus
Sans / Crossbones
Koffin-K & Co.
Asriel
Flowey
Alphys
Undyne
Muffet
Napstablook / Sir Scratchalot
Mettacrit
Mad Dummy
We're incredibly happy with the progress we've made in this regard -- especially fleshing out character backstories more, establishing a "cause and effect," and exploring motivations for characters' actions. For example, we've finalized the reasons behind why Sans became the superhero "Crossbones," and why the dastardly Koffin-K is as evil as evil can be!
(Above artwork also by SuperKirbylover.)
Here's some instances of character relationships and interactions we've been working on, in relation to their backstories -- and just getting a feel for not only how characters act, but how they interact with others.
We're really looking forward to the eventual completion of Starlight Isles, and progress with other areas. You're going to love what kinds of things we have in store.
New Music!
"Resting Spot" by Ludicis is a new song that'll play in some special areas!
"Pupbeat" by junnboi, colinator27, and Beethovenus is a brand new take on a familiar dog-related song, which uses an entirely new motif in a style reminiscent of the original.
Fun fact: When I (Beethovenus) was really little, I used to hum something I called "the dog song" whenever I saw dogs. In addition to the funny coincidence, we decided to immortalize this little tune within our soundtrack--adapting it to the style of Dogsong in a familiar, yet brand new way.
Community Spotlight
Time for our fourth Community Spotlight!
We started these back in June 2021 to highlight community fanworks, and fellow fan-projects.
Recently, the team behind Omega Timeline: Poppy's Story - Poppy Goes to the Store to Buy Milk put out a brand new gameplay showcase!
Here's some more info about the project, in the words of the creator, FMS...
What is Omega Timeline: Poppy's Story?
Omega Timeline: Poppy’s Story (also known as Ask Poppy) is a slice of life UT AU Multiverse story set in the titular Omega Timeline, a location founded by CORE!Frisk amidst a white void, which is a safe heaven for genocide survivors, people from timelines in a dire state, or just a place for people that aren’t necessarily in peril to hang out in.
The story follows the life of Poppy Marusina, adoptive granddaughter of CORE!Frisk, throughout her everyday life in the Omega Timeline, her family, and what comes with living in a place with so many look-alikes. With so many tragic stories around them, how can one’s story not end up blending with everyone else’s?
What is Omega Timeline: Poppy's Story - Poppy Goes To The Store To Buy Milk?
It's an Undertale Fangame that serves as a side-story to the blog! In this game, Poppy needs to buy milk for breakfast. As such, you explore a single area of the Omega Timeline: the Timeline Plaza, in order to buy milk from the store. And you really can do that immediately as soon as you arrive at the plaza. However, you can also sidetrack and do quests for NPCs, or just interact with them. The idea is that we'll (ideally) feature characters from Undertale AUs all over as NPCs!
There are no battles, or high stakes, it's literally just buying milk. (Or not, you could do that too.)
And yes, the title is a mouthful.
They're also looking for coders experienced with GameMaker Studio 2, and artists experienced in UNDERTALE-styled talksprites and overworld sprites!
If this fits you, and you'd be interested in helping out, go ahead and contact FMS through the details in the video description!
Next up, we have a video showcasing a fanmade Friday Night Funkin x TS!Underswap mod, called TS!FridaySwapFunkin' Vs Crossbones.
The mod itself is being developed by a team of people, posted by Alexim34_2 on GameJolt--you can visit their page for a full list of credits!
The video above, which features outdated footage, was posted by a non-team member who got permission to upload it.
While we aren't affiliated with this project, nor is it official, we thought a shoutout could be cool! We're really interested in seeing how this project progresses.
Here, we have some fanart of Queen Toriel by Chinchilla_arts!
We wanted to include this because we haven't seen much fanart of our post-Starlight Isles characters--especially Toriel--and really liked how she was drawn here!
After that, we have two pieces of fanart by chickenpants93 -- Chara relaxing with Asgore and a Froggit, and the skeleton brothers!
We thought the colors were nicely-chosen and the drawings overall were very cute! The first one especially has a lot of personality, such as the Froggit looking down at the journal.
We also have some fanart of Chara relaxing on a bench, by Cloudycitrus!
We really liked the style of this piece, as well as the colors and pose done for Chara. It's really cute to see fanart like this!
Finally, we're featuring an entire 3D model of Mettacrit by ThePhilPlays, as well as some poses!
We were really surprised and amazed by this one with how accurate it is to both Mettacrit's design and his in-game art, as well as the overall quality and attention to detail. As soon as we saw it, we knew we had to include it.
That's everything for this devlog!
Before we go, though...
UNDERTALE is a game that's truly special to us -- its characters, aesthetic, writing, and story. It's touched our hearts, helped us out of hard times, and allowed us to discover and pursue new passions in life.
When we released the TS!UNDERSWAP Demo last year, we didn't expect the overwhelmingly positive feedback we had gotten -- that we somehow managed to give people the same feelings that playing UNDERTALE did for the very first time.
We can't put into words just how much this means to us. We're incredibly passionate about this project due to our love for the source material, and the brand new stories we're creating for its characters and our own. It's astonishing to think that we've managed to let people experience these characters and story all over again, in a brand new way.
We want to keep working on this project for as long as we can, and see it to completion. Knowing that we've been able to give people these feelings has motivated us to keep going, so we can pay tribute to something that's so special to all of us.
We wouldn't be here if it weren't for you, Toby. Thank you.
And to everyone else: stay tuned for more updates from us!
After all...
There's always more in store over the horizon.
- Beethovenus and Team Switched
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