welcome back to the not-so monthly shadowfell devlog, where up is down and left is right

(the controls were binded incorrectly)

it's been a while since last devlog!
this was supposed to be out in july, but we were on hiatus for a little while. recently we've been picking up progress again though!
let's roll it in!!

NEW LOGO

that's right!! courtesy of our new team member Xeron we have an entirely new logo!!

we actually have quite a few new team members! lemme list em off:
- Xeron (promo art)
- goinks (of Green Sans fame)
- SKL (spriting)
- YaBoiNando (spriting and concept art)
- cerealrei (spriting)
- PixelToons Jafar (spriting)
- Ph4nt0m1 (spriting)
- booitsrue (concept art)

we brought in a lot of art-people because shadowfell is a pretty visual project and i felt like i couldn't handle all the art myself, HOPEFULLY with all this help things should go a little quicker and smoother!

TOTAL REWRITE

so there's been some reworking going on behind the scenes
originally the game was going to be split into several chapters, but we've decided to cut down a slight bit on scope as well as give the kitchen dark world a bit more of a cohesive theme: tropical islands!

(a bit of shoddy concept art)

maybe in the future i'll show off what the original concepts for some of this stuff was

speaking of the future, there's another thing we've decided:

we're planning on releasing a tech demo/proof of concept at some point, showing off a tiny bit of content in CARRION ISLES, one of the first areas in the game.

this probably won't be out anytime too soon but it's something to look forward to!!

CODING PROGRESS

thanks to neon-gr33n, the coder mentioned in the last devlog, coding has actually been going pretty well!
due to how complciated this project is however, there's still a LOT of stuff to get done.

i rewrote the dialogue system to make it more flexible and easy to use. it's much easier getting dialogue into the game now with minimal hassle!

(granted, it's not perfect yet...)

the battle system is functional, but still pretty rough and def still a work in progress. neon-gr33n handled most of the backend-stuff for this, and it was so complicated that i made him write a 12 page long document detailing how the fuck it actually works

anyways...
after a lot of deliberation we decided that we're gonna use a "3D" overworld, one with platforming just like in the mario & luigi games. the main reason we were avoiding this in the beginning was because we thought it would be an absolute NIGHTMARE to code.

...and it is!
but we're still doing it anyways.

for a little perspective on how long it takes me to figure out stuff like this in code, coding SANS' collision, yes just SANS', took about a week of on-and-off work.

here's a few gifs to show the process of coding this hellish game

all of this to reiterate the point from last devlog: i'm not a good programmer LMAO please be patient with me

ENEMIES APPROACHING!!

woah!! what's this?!
some enemy designs from our boy Nando?!?!?

if you're wondering why the fork guy isn't in the hd lineup it's because nando forgot him LOL

these'll be the pirate-y enemies for the CARRION ISLES, the tropical swashbucklin' islands based around pirates of the caribbean!!

but what's a good pirate story without... a kraken

MUSIC PROGRESS

couple of new songs have been thrown together, have a look!!

this one's for a section early in the game, our equivalent of the "legend" section from deltarune (if that wasn't obvious)

this is... what
no what the fuck is this
who is this
peppermint???

before you ask yourself "wait, haven't we heard this one before??" the answer is YES!! you can think of this as the "nyeh heh heh" of "COOKING WITH GAS !!!"

that's all for this time! i hope you-

...

wait a minute...

but what's this??? a new section in the devlog?!

QUESTION OF THE MONTH

so over the time i've been showing off progress on this fangame i've gotten some questions that i've answered, but wanted to ellaborate on and talk about in more detail.
i figured i'd make this a part of the devlog to talk about the more intricate side of designing a game based on the skelebros.

here's one from my (now-deleted) twitter:

this is a question that's often asked with any project that's even remotely associated with undertale, "will there be a pacifist route", "will there be mercy mechanics", you get the picture.
there's a simple answer that lies in the source material of this fangame:

i'm not completely sure if i've made this clear, but this fangame is ACTUALLY a mario & luigi fangame in undertale's clothing so to speak.

basically, the answer is no, we don't have any plans for a pacifist route.
there's a couple of reasons for this, but the two main ones are scope and complexity.

implementing two (or more?) seperate routes for the game would mean a hell of a lot of writing, spriting, and coding, a lot of effort that could just go into working on the main campaign. the game is already very ambitious, but adding this extra layer on top of it would make it impossibly huge.

regarding complexity, the mario & luigi battle system is already quite complex (even disregarding the changes like the "pass" move and the extra "solo" moves we're adding), adding an act/mercy system on top of that would make things even more complicated, and i feel people would feel seriously overwhelmed with the amount of options.

i understand a couple other aus have received some quite harsh criticism for not including multiple routes (inverted fate and true genocide come to mind), but something a lot of people misunderstand about undertale is the mechanics are based around the narrative. it's SUPPOSED to be a subversive story that goes against classic rpg tropes, but when you're making a fangame that doesn't go for the same kind of subversion it doesn't NEED the mechanics that contribute to it.

shadowfell saga isn't a deep or complex story, it's a half-shitpost and half-character study and we're mostly focusing on the game being FUN first and foremost.

hope that suffices as a good answer for that common question!!

that's ACTUALLY the end of the devlog, jeez that was a long one

if it isn't clear by now, we ditched the "monthly updates" thing. we'll just be posting devlogs when we feel like it!

have a good one!