Hey ya'll! It's been a while since we had a proper one of these, eh?

If you guys don't mind, I'd like to talk about some personal stuff regarding what I've been up to.

Last month I had an impromptu IRL visit to my S/O. (shout out to them, i love u sm!!! ♥) and then when I returned, my mother learned she's horribly allergic to sea food and got ill for over a week. It was a scary time since we weren't certain if it was the shrimp or covid. She's doing perfectly fine now thankfully!

We've got some exciting and major news now:

We're building the game from our own in Gamemaker rather than using TML's engine. Yeah, I know, we keep going back and forth. We realized that hey, we're already rewriting the bulk of the code to customize it, we might as well go the full mile.

Right now we're concentrating on rebuilding the base systems. Thankfully, a lot of this was already done before and I have assistance from Eternal Shine and Lasers (FutureGamer25) who have been a huge help with everything. I can proudly say my coding has improved as well from our calls.

What have we got so far?

[img id: The player (with outdated player sprites) interacts with a Placeholder NPC, a red ms.paint blob from Undertale's unused assets. who says the following: "* Hmm this... is a text for the textbox that uses multiple lines of word wrap." The textbox is a detailed black box with vines at it's sides. It is based on the "Undertale: Collector's Edition Story Booklet." id end]

Overworld

Using JujuAdam's Scribble and Input add-ons, We have a fully working dialogue system with NPC interaction. Eternal wrote the collisions, character state machine code. Laser's cleaned up a good portion of my messy code in how I implemented this stuff.

I had to use Peyton Burnham's Dialogue Branching System as a base for my own in addition to Scribble, as I couldn't figure out how to customize how word wrapping worked within Scribble itself. (It uses complex buffer code that goes over my head.) My next plan of action is to use normal Scribble for the monster's speech bubbles as well as making a in-depth portrait system. I've made this portrait system before but now I plan on implementing it with structs in mind.

[img id: An inventory menu with 3 rows of 5 red boxes. It contains two apples, one glowing white as it's selected. To the left, there's 4 tabs that read: "Item, key, seed and recipe." At the top, it reads "item," and is modeled after Deltarune's overworld menu. The gold is labeled with "test." At the bottom, an item description reads: "Example Description Text that is lengthy, oh so so lengthy." id end]

Inventory

A fully working inventory that moves along an x/y axis, with tabs! This had only been possible with major help from Lasers! Thanks man!

As you can see, there's multiple tabs. You can collect seeds that can only be used on your farm. Then, you can use that food to create dishes out of your recipe book!

Currently, the only the Item inventory is finished. Keys, technically would also be but I'd have to remove the "drop" option. (Which would take 2 seconds.) The Seeds and Recipe options won't be used in the Demo, but I should still set up the UI even if it'll be left blank. (They're unlocked later).

[img id: A settings menu, a wall is broken up into pink wooden panels. The background is a painting of the surface world, a light blue sky against some green hills. There's golden flowers along the bottom. At the top it reads: "Settings." The list reads: "Return, Volume: 49%, Config:, Simple VFX: true, Auto-Run: true, Borders: Default, Footsteps: True, Language: English."]

Main Menus

Are completely done! I won't spoil it, but I have something I think is pretty special in how they behave and look. These include: Main title, Settings, Save Slots and the Credits page.

What's in development?

(It should be noted even the above ^ completed things need adjustments or are missing a feature.)

• Cutscenes System: Eternal has been working on a cutscene system for a separate project. It's finished, but needs some adjustments for this engine.

• Save System: Actually finished, though implementing it isn't. Lasers and I built this one but we're leaving it as it is for now until we have more of the game completed.

• Translation System: Already planned. We had one but Laser's wants to rebuild it.

• Lighting System: Lasers already built this off a rough system I built a year ago. it needs some minor updates.

• Sprite work: I'm revamping the art again. I think I was getting too indulgent with how detailed the sprite work had gotten, it lost it's UT charm quite a bit. I hope these new sprites balance the "upgraded to the Nintendo DS sprite art evolution" vibe vs. "the original UTDR" look. This new look is heavily inspired by "Mother 3."

• Next I'll have to experiment the background's detail as well. We'll see how that goes next month!

• Battle System: Laser's and I will be working hard every weekend to get the Battle System set up completely by October 2nd.

[img id; a 4 month calendar from September to December. The date is marked at 19th, with previous ones marked out. Text reads: (Above September) Battle system on weekends, minor fixes, sprite updates. (October) Fully playable Build (rough). (November) Refining, playtesting, translations, extra content, (December) Planned Release Month]

The story is "finished." Sort of. I plan on adjusting it when all the new team members have been fully informed of the story as well as changing details alongside the Play-Test Build. The room layout, puzzles and tilesets (although, they need to be updated) are all laid out already.