Happy holidays, everyone! We hope you've all had an excellent day and holiday break thus far, because we have, and it's because of that we've been very productive recently!
Lately, the art department has been flourishing, with the reformatting of spritesheets, touchups on old content, recovery of old content, and new content all at the same time. The one-man music department is also doing excellently, thus far, as well. Finally, programming is off and on as usual, but good progress made nonetheless.
Let's get into it. :^)
ART
A lot of art you may or may not have already seen, as in this update we focused a little more on giving our Gamejolt page some love, remastering art and adding new art, as well. If you haven't noticed any changes or if you're new here, feel free to have a look around! There are still a few things I need to touch up here and there, but we have a lot of new stuff you might like. :)
Let's start with some slight or minor redesigns. Louis and Sunny got some facelifts to make them more unique, with Louis' hat being upgraded to properly look like a real trapper cap, and Sunny's hair being messy to better reflect his personality contrast to his sister, Renee.
An important part of a story is the passage of time and the environments we explore, right? Ever got bothered by games that tried to convince you the hero(es) SERIOUSLY wore the exact same thing for the potential MONTHS they had been journeying? Or how about when characters enter certain states like being soaked in water but absorb all moisture from their clothes and skin in under 60 seconds? This stuff always bothered me, and I didn't want to take that same path.
Unlike Undertale™, Undertale: The Otherground does not take place over the course of a single day, nor do Louis and his friends just sit in their outfits when conditions call for change. Thus, Louis and friends will change outfits as the narrative progresses, like Louis being drenched with water when he first arrives, and how he doesn't dry off until he finds a place to stay, where he changes out of his wet clothes for new ones and is implied to wear several different things in the in-game week's time skip you're not able to experience. Other examples include the twins bundling up in purchased/stolen clothes for the cold area, or Louis and Hui dressing down the best they can for the hot areas.
Another exciting change, at least for me, is FINALLY the creation of unique UTTO UI. I wanted to go for a simple, but charming style so as to not be over to top or minimalistic. What you see below are the dialogue and battle boxes (battle being unique so that the corner pieces from the dialogue box don't compromise moving space). There was really nothing to put inside for Gamejolt, so I just had a little fun with it. :^)
MUSIC
The music department's been busy with a lot of sick songs for us to listen to, replacing the themes we've flagged on this Gamejolt for a few months. Here's a list of the new songs:
REPLACEMENT SONGS:
Snowcapped Road
Through Smoke and Steam
Maelstrom
Jungle of Ashes
REMASTERED SONGS:
Charlatan
All of these songs can be accessed via our Gamejolt OST library. However, we have a question. Should we release our public soundtrack in somewhere like Soundcloud? I've seen some Undertale games, True Genocide, in particular, directly post their songs 100% interactable right from the devlog itself whilst taking minimal room using their Soundcloud. It's really interesting, and I wondered if we should give it a try or mind our own business.
I'll slap a poll down below for your opinions!
PROGRAMMING
We were so close to a completed and recorded Christmas sneak peek, but because of personal lives to live, the programmers fell a little short. We have progress, but not enough to give an interesting and high-quality video of what we wanted to show.
Instead, we can prove our progress by showing screenshots of the game running, at the least. In this compilation, you'll see that we're going for a very Undertale x Deltarune style for Otherground, UTTO trying to stand as a perfect medium between the two giants of the Undertale universe. You'll also see a lot of test rooms and content, all of which (besides Sans, obviously) are going to be polished and used in the real demo.
Have a look, please!
Battles are obviously the roughest part as of now, so please do be patient with what you see right now. Other than that, I hope you were at least entertained if not impressed!
Just a lot more polishing and we should be good to go. :)
CONCLUSION
Thanks for making it to the end with me! It's been a great year in terms of developing our skills and making genuine progress on our project. So much has happened, like tight friendships being forged, growing up into a legal adult when I turned 18, changing my internet identity from "MyHiddenThomas" to the simpler and dumber "poody_blue", and much more. I have the people around me to thank, as well as you the person reading, for all the laughs, hope, and encouragement I've felt this 2019.
With that said, I'd like to thank you again for making it to the end of this devlog, and I'd also like to wish you a wonderful rest of your holiday break! I'll see you in 2020! :)
Thank you for following the development of Undertale: The Otherground.
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