Also check out the gameplay preview on Twitter for credits on who did what in this video! :)

Heyyyyyy, guysssss. How’s it goinggggg.

It’s meeeeeeee.

Coooorthooooon.

What’s up? :)

Introduction

Gee, it sure has been a while, hasn’t it? It’s hard to believe that another year’s passed by this fast…

I want to use this time to recap you guys on how my life’s been outside of OUTDATED before I get to the mod’s development status, so bear with me for a moment! I swear that everything I’m going to mention here will be important.

Where I’ve Been

Last year’s been…wow. A lot? Or maybe not much at all. It’s been something, I guess…but to put everything simply, I’ve been spending this last year preparing for OUTDATED.

“Corthon, what the fuck does that mean?” it means that i’ve been preparing dipshit

When I had written the last Anniversary “Post”, there was a particular misfortune that was keeping me from being able to wholeheartedly focus on the mod more than anything else…which would be that I had multiple FNF mods set on the backburner that I wanted to work on alongside OUTDATED at the time. The thing is that multitasking between projects is something that I’ve learned that I can’t really do without stretching things out super wide, however (this was something that I regularly tried to do in the past and everything that I was working on ultimately suffered because of it), so I swore myself to primarily spend the next year concluding as many of my mods as I could so that I’d be able to get back on that OUTDATED grind as soon as possible. And I’m not going to lie…actually focusing on getting stuff done for once in my life was hard as hell to do!

Some mods managed to get completed. Others got put down (very much regrettably so, too…sigh). It was a tough battle of choosing which projects I wanted to push all the way to the finish line & which projects I thought better to leave behind…the unfortunate thing that they don’t tell you about being a creative is that you can only put so many ideas on the table at once without shitting yourself from overstimulation. Despite the tough choices, victories & regrets that I’ve had to make, though, I’m finally here!…I think. I don’t really plan to get sidetracked by any other FNF mods anytime soon, soooo…

(Man, freelance directing is much harder of a thing to do than people let on! I don’t think I’m going to be doing anything like this ever again after I’m done with FNF…)

That’s not the only thing I’ve been doing over the course of this year, though! Some of the preparation that I’ve been doing for OUTDATED directly has to do with the mod itself, too…

The Writing Document

Surprise! I’ve also been busy writing my ass off while you guys haven’t been looking. Crazy, right?

I’ve mentioned more than once in the past how OUTDATED’s full release is going to have lore attached to it…I made the choice to write down as much as I could regarding the mod’s story into a singular document for the past half-year: dialogue, secrets, an overview of the mod’s story, so on and so forth…I managed to finish it all last month, actually! I decided to write down everything in advance for a couple of key reasons:

1. I wanted to have all of the necessary info laid out somewhere tangible so that I wouldn’t wind up accidentally forgetting certain details about the lore.

2. I wanted a convenient place for other team members to look at my plans for the mod so that they wouldn’t need to come to me for clarification on what’s supposed to be happening during certain parts of the story.

3. Given how much writing I suspected I would have to do for it, I thought it would hopefully be less strenuous for me to treat the document like a related-but-separate project from the mod, rather than something I would have to build upon in unison with actual development.

It’s possible that some parts in the document (most likely just dialogue) will end up being rewritten over the course of actual mod development depending on both audience reception & my own feelings on the ever-so-aging writing. I only just finished writing everything for the document and I’m already having second thoughts on the writing’s quality…that may just be nervousness speaking up, though. This is the first ever project of mine where my writing gets to be front-and-center, after all, so I really want to make sure I get this right…!

I don't plan on rewriting anything at this point in time, though. I’ve been developing this story for 3-and-a-half years now, after all — this ride only stops in the case of an emergency!

Crying is not an emergency.

“But Corthon, didn’t you already say that you were writing a lore document in like, 2024? What’s the point of this one, then???”

I’m glad you asked, dear friend.

Because that question just happens to be the perfect segway to talking about how mod development’s been going. :)

ADDRESS ME!!!!!!!!

So…how’d you guys like the new preview? You guys like it?

Upset that it’s just us releasing Giggle for the fourth time? Yeah, me too.

I should probably explain why everything looks so different now…

You guys remember me saying that I had plans to try to push mod development into activity last year, right? Well, I’m happy to say that those plans ended up going somewhere! I’m proud to announce that VS Monika.EXE: OUTDATED has officially undergone…drumroll, please…

(Dunnndundundundundundundundundundunnnn…)

A reboot!!! :D

(Confetti falls from the sky to a complete lack of applause.)

…I guess I have some explaining to do now, huh?

VS Monika.EXE: OUTDATED is a mod that only I from several years ago could have possibly thought of, and while I prefer to interpret it as a point of pride, it’s something that (to me) also shows in less flauntable ways…primarily through its direction, because WOW, was I a terrible director back then. Seriously. Where do I even start?

• Team member surplus (I had about 30-something devs on the team at one point and only half of them were actually bothering to do anything)

• Tasks taking literal ages to complete (I asked an artist to sprite a basic moveset for me at one point and it took a full year for them to complete)

• General inactivity/miscommunication within the team space (It was a terrible idea to presume that randoms on Twitter would be prudent enough to properly communicate with me…)

• Me being unable to keep track of who did what when (I stepped away for a month once and when I came back I had no idea what was going on)

• Appointing assistant directors (There were three of us together and there were many disagreements as to where to take the mod from our current position)

• Scope creep (Phase 2 of the preboot’s development was going to be us implementing an entire platformer within the mod if you guys really want to know how bad this got. I need to kill past Corthon immediately bro)

I was overall acting too ambitiously with how I expected the mod to look like in its final form at the time (especially considering the lack of directing experience I then had under my belt) and I think that now I’ve undergone a bunch of side quests that have honed my abilities this past year (my artstyle no longer looks like shit) I’ll be capable of making something that both fits my vision and won’t be as much of a developmental slog to lead.

This reboot is something that I’m doing entirely from scratch — this means that pretty much everything related to the mod has been undone all the way to square one, the development team included. Turns out having a lot of horsepower hooked up to your carriage doesn't actually mean much if you can’t figure out how to get each of them to move…the reboot team is comparatively around half its predecessor’s size, consisting of both preboot OUTDATED devs that were willing enough to keep undergoing with this journey with me as well as some new people originating from either other mod teams or personal/friend spaces. The idea of a reboot was pitched a little while before last year’s anniversary devlog was published, meaning that it’s been privately established since last February, however development for the reboot has only really started up since last October–December, so, um, don’t expect too much from us at the moment right now…I’m hoping progress will get steadier from here.

when demo?????

Ahhh, but I promised Demo 3 at some point too, didn’t I? And now we’re all the way back to Giggle. Shit…

Back in December I was hoping we would be able to have a brand new Giggle Demo™ prepared just in time for OUTDATED’s third anniversary, but as you all can see, that wasn’t able to wind up being the case. Even with the backup plan in its place we were barely able to post anything for this year’s anniversary in time…I still want to post the revamped Giggle demo in time, though! I plan for there to be a lot more features packed within it compared to the first Giggle demo, like, um…

• A revamped/expanded main menu. (as you might have seen through that one visual event in Giggle…now it actually resembles its source material lmao)

• A proper results menu to mirror basegame’s.

• Achievements.

• Secrets.

• A mostly fledged dialogue/VN system.

• Lore????????? (yes)

This might not sound like a lot on paper, admittedly, but I assure you that everything will feel much larger once you guys get your hands on what we’ve got in the kitchen so far...I want our return to the modding scene to feel like a proper representation of what I want to do with the mod going forward.

I’ll most likely be revamping the Gamejolt page with the upcoming release, so I’d start archiving as much stuff from this page as possible if I were you guys…builds included! I’ll do my best to preserve as much of the preboot as I can (I plan to have the two currently released Giggle variants to be playable in the revamped demo as extras), but outside of that I’d rather really lean into the idea of the coming demo being a fresh restart to the mod. Disregard everything you’ve known about OUTDATED up until this point if you can…no more half-baked pies, no siree! (Hopefully, at least…)

(What I’m Hoping Will Be) The Future

Well, um…phew. Wow. That’s a thought, isn’t it? The idea of going further beyond…I suppose I’ll just have to stay optimistic, then.

Well, for starters, I think that after the revamped Giggle demo I’ll keep going forward with episodically releasing more small-but-substantial demos for OUTDATED instead of working on & releasing the Full Ass Thing™ all at once. This might seem like a spotty idea at first, but I’ve allowed myself to think about it for a while, and I think that this will be the decision that will benefit the most people:

• I’ve noticed that teams tend to get pretty excited/motivated about the mod they’re working following a release or milestone, so I want to try to exploit that: if I set up the roadmap so that hit destinations frequently enough, that might help keep team morale consistently high, which will in turn (hopefully) keep them active & working.

• Frequent destinations/releases should also keep the team from fizzling out from stress — having development segmented into edible chunks should give the team something reasonable to look forward to at a time without having to worry as much about time eroding motivation.

• The more active the mod is publicly, the bigger the audience will most likely get, and considering how specific this mod’s concept is I’m going to want my reach to be significant if I ever plan on expanding the team (which I don’t know how likely that will end up being, given how I’d rather keep the mod to just familiars for now, but, well…you never know. Maybe I’ll need to ask for a couple of favors at some point or something.)

• Given how you guys have spent about 3 years with no actual new content up until this point, I’d rather just go with this plan for your guys’ sake, LMAO. I want to give you guys a reason to really wait & stay in your seats this time instead of getting bored and leaving the theater room after enough time passes.

I also plan to set up a little roadmap dedicated to tracking how far we are into the mod to accompany the planned gamepage revamp that’ll come with the demo release. Given how I have a pretty solid idea as to how I want releases to progress from beginning to end, I think it’d be fun for you guys to be able to keep tabs on that along with us in order to keep everybody on their toes…that way, there’ll always be something for you guys to look forward too! Yay!

I’ll also (also) formally drop the “monthly/seasonal” devlog thing that I originally wanted to do when I started writing these, given how the speed at which we work isn’t really fast enough to warrant frequent public updates…what I’m thinking I’ll do instead is have Progress Reports that will be published with every single demo release, with each one talking about what exactly to expect for the next release (+ the team’s status around that time) as well as extra stuff such as external updates & showcasing preboot content if I happen to feel like/have room for it then. I’d also like to keep doing more Anniversary Devlogs, of course — these would be dedicated to taking a step back and talking about the bigger picture regarding the mod, as well as reflecting on the previous year from then (like what I’m doing right now!)

I’ve also (also, also) still been trying to figure out which way to lay out the general fundamentals in my head! While I’d certainly say that the stability of the team is much more bearable than it was in the preboot team, there are still things that I’d consider to be pretty shaky, and so I’m trying to set things up so that the team doesn’t wind up falling into the same pitfalls that the old team did. I should have all the people that I need to put together at least something for the mod, I just need to figure out how exactly to put everybody into such positions that everyone will be comfortable with…efficiency at the max n’ allat jazz.

I’m also (also, also, also) planning to make reference sheets for the cast at some point! Yay! Just to make sure I can more certainly keep my artstyle aligned with the established one this time and not accidentally improve past the point of being able to draw in the old one anymore…these ref sheets should also be helpful for any other artists tasked with making character assets for the mod, as well as fanartists that may want to draw the characters in the mod’s artstyle, so hopefully these will wind up being beneficial for all parties! :)

Conclusion

“Is OUTDATED back?”

Ehhh…I dunno…if you consider it to be? I guess? I don’t, personally.

Even if things might be picking up again for OUTDATED development now, I still don’t want to call the mod “officially back” yet until we’re able to start doing stuff beyond remaking Giggle for the bajillionth time. I can’t help but feel like I’ve done nothing but waste time these last few years…hopefully this time I don’t screw things up and the mod will be able to really start going somewhere.

Sorry for keeping all of us in limbo for 3 years, everybody. I’ll try not to let it happen again. If it turns out that this attempt winds up failing, too, then I’ll probably just let go of this mod for good in that case — I’m willing to keep trying for now, though. I’ve thought too much about this world and its characters to want to suddenly halt it in its tracks.

I could start getting really sappy again and go on about how much this project means to me if I really wanted to, but…eh. I’ve done that a bajillion times already at this point. Whining feels good, but I’d rather just do whatever I can to back up my words with actual effort at this point. What else can I do at this point, anyhow?

Thanks for sticking around, guys.

Let’s try to make this year our year, okay?

— Corthon